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After the incident, the French interior minister claimed that Britain’s “soft-touch” rules were to blame for the recent Channel disaster.

Gérald Darmanin said in his statement that the UK is a place “where you can work without papers and where you have little chance of being deported”.

Darmanin is said to have called for a migration treaty between the UK and the EU to limit the number of border crossings following the tragedy.

But Downing Street rejected this, with a spokesman saying: “We have no plans to be part of an EU asylum programme, but we will continue to work with European partners to close smuggling routes and destroy those criminal gangs.”

Discussing the increasingly worrying situation in the Channel, Migrant Support Coordinator Kay Marsh stressed that “people are dying in the Channel because our system is broken” and called for an “overhaul” of the current asylum process.

Marsh explained: “I understand the problem is a broken system. People are dying in the Channel because our system is broken. We need a complete overhaul of the immigration system.

“We need alternative, safe and legal routes to asylum, so that people can be brought here safely and legally without having to risk their lives in a small boat.”

When asked by presenter Bev Turner what alternative barriers the Labour government could use to tackle the migrant crisis, Marsh claimed a new processing centre could be built in France to prevent people crossing the Channel.

She told GB News: “There are a number of different things we can look at. Humanitarian visas were used for the situation in Ukraine, people were brought here very quickly when they needed it, very safely. They didn’t have to navigate small boats or the asylum system at all.

“If we can build a processing center in Rwanda, we can also build a processing center in Northern France, where people can file their claim before they have to get on a boat.”

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