The French Navy fired live rounds at me but waved migrant dinghies through. Here's the truth about what your billions are buying - Chris Philp

Communities have failed to integrate, British workers have been undercut, and our generosity has been abused, writes the Shadow Home Secretary

The French navy fired live rounds near my boat in the Channel. I had gone to see for myself what tens of thousands of illegal migrants see, which is a crossing the French authorities refuse to stop. Yet it turns out they can summon plenty of will when a British politician is the one on the water.

If France showed people smugglers a fraction of the seriousness they showed me, the boats would stop. Instead, the French wave the dinghies off their beaches, hand out life jackets, and pass the immigrants to the British coastguard as soon as they can.

We watched it happen first-hand as French officers distributed life jackets to the men in the boats and let them go.

Last year the French stopped only a third of embarkations, and this is despite hundreds of millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money paid to France to do the job. The conditions attached to that money are so weak that funding is only withdrawn if it fails to deliver ‘value for money’, which, in practice, means nothing at all.

The bill for this failure lands on the British taxpayer twice over.

First in the cheques to Paris, then in the hotels. More than £5million a day is spent housing illegal immigrants in hotels, in towns that were never consulted and cannot cope.

Andy Burnham, meanwhile, has learned nothing from the failure of Keir Starmer.

He now proposes to weaken the modest progress that had been made on tightening the route to settlement.

Mass immigration has failed. Communities have failed to integrate, British workers have been undercut, and our generosity has been abused.

It does not matter who leads Labour – they will not take the action required, because they do not believe the action is required.

The Conservative position is clear. We should admit only a small number of highly skilled immigrants, leave the European Convention on Human Rights, which is the single legal instrument that prevents removal, and under the Conservative Party’s BORDERS Plan we would deport every illegal immigrant within a week of arrival.

The boats stop not because the French have finally decided to act, but because there is no longer anyone willing to pay to get on one.

Until then, expect more of the same. The French will guard their waters against the wrong people, and the crossings will continue.