UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told a weekend political podcast that women waiting on the French coast to board small boats have very likely been sexually assaulted during their travel, and that some men in the same groups have also faced abuse and threats. She said criminal networks, not British authorities, currently decide who reaches that shoreline and prepares to cross.

Mahmood argued that such a process should not determine who may enter Britain and settle. Last week the Labour government announced programmes to bring people identified as refugees directly from Afghanistan and Palestine.

On the same programme she called opponents of large-scale immigration troublemakers who would harm her if they could, would expel her from the country, and reject her British identity because she is Muslim.