Small boat crossings predate Brexit
What was claimed
There were zero small boat crossings before Brexit.
Our verdict
False. There is plenty of evidence of small boat crossings taking place both before the UK left the EU in 2020, and before the EU referendum in 2016, although numbers have increased substantially since 2018.
On Monday, in a response to a video of the Reform MP Robert Jenrick talking about small boat crossings, the Labour MP Oliver Ryan said: “The reality is there were 0 boats before Brexit”.
This isn’t correct. While it’s not clear whether Mr Ryan was dating “Brexit” from the EU referendum in 2016, or the UK’s actual departure from the EU in January 2020, there’s plenty of evidence of small boat crossings taking place before either date.
HM's Armed Forces would not, as a matter of principle, use "lethal force" against unarmed civilians in the Channel.
— Oliver Ryan MP (@OliverRyanUK) October 12, 2026
The reality is there were 0 boats before Brexit; they will be stopped through agreements, strong processes & robust enforcement.
The facts don't lie, Reform do. https://t.co/YqkKnnfLGS
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We wrote about this last month when the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson MP made a similar claim.
The government only publishes official data on small boat arrivals from the start of 2018 onwards. This documents 214 boats carrying a total of 2,236 people arriving before the UK formally left the EU on 31 January 2020.
But as we said in our previous fact check, there are many reports of migrants using small boats to reach the UK before this, including well before the EU referendum. The Migration Observatory says reports of these types of crossings “go back over 50 years”.
The evidence suggests small boat crossings did become much more common in the time after the Brexit referendum, and specifically after 2018. A report from the Home Affairs Committee published in 2022 said that prior to this “irregular migration on a substantial scale focused heavily on ferry and rail routes, with only a handful crossing the Channel in small boats each year”. This increase has been attributed to many things besides Brexit, however.
We’ve contacted Mr Ryan for comment.
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