The Government’s £200,000-a-year border security commander has admitted a solution to the Channel small boats crisis “isn’t going to happen very quickly’.

Martin Hewitt, who was appointed to the role a year ago, told MPs he was “frustrated” by rising number of arrivals across the Channel.

In the year to 29 September, 33,556 people had arrived in the UK by small boat. That’s 721 more than at the same point in 2022, the highest year on record.  The total number of crossings made in 2022 was just over 45,000.

When Mr Hewitt was asked by MPs to set out his attempts to crack down on people traffickers, he said: “This was always going to take time.

“This organised criminality has been developing for six or so years. It has become, and has continued to become more sophisticated.

“The approach that we are taking, and we’ve started taking since Border Security Command, is about bringing together the range of attacks that we need to make across all the different elements to suppress and to ultimately undermine that criminal business model.

“Now, that isn’t going to happen very quickly.

“I think there has previously been the kind of views that there is one thing, or one or two things that will, will provide the answer.

“I very firmly believe that that’s not the case.”

He told MPs on the Commons’ home affairs select committee that a new “maritime doctrine” is being developed by the French but is still going through “legal processes”.

It was confirmed in June that the French were planning to allow its officers to block small boat departures within 300 metres of the shoreline.

Mr Hewitt said: “We are awaiting that to be deployed.

“They are having to work through various legal processes to ensure that officers are properly covered.”