Dozens of police officers are powerless on French beaches as people smugglers exploit loopholes to pack dinghy
So here’s a story of a morning at the beach. There’s no ice cream, no sandcastles and no sense of fun in this tale – but there are criminal gangs, dune buggies and desperate people.
This beach in Calais is an illustration of the lengths people will go to, the risks they will take, just to try to get to Britain. And things start early.
We arrive at the beach at about 4am. There is a beautiful orange sunset on the way and barely a whisper of wind. But down on the shore, things are happening.
A group of people are getting on to a dinghy and slowly heading out into the Channel.
As we arrive, the boat is making its way toward Britain, while the people smugglers are heading back toward their hiding places in the dunes.
More will follow. A little later, we see another boat come around the headland, chugging slowly along.
As we’re watching, a crowd of people – men, women and children – start hurrying down the beach.
We can see them as they head towards the shore, splashing through the water to try to get on to the boat.
As we catch up and film the scene, three of the Kurdish smugglers start shouting at us. They may not speak English but, safe to say, they know a few swear words.
By now, the sun has risen. Smugglers used to only send people out under the cover of darkness, but now they are more bold.
Boat launches happen quickly these days. Smugglers have worked out that it’s much more efficient to launch the boat elsewhere and bring it round to the beach, allowing your passengers to run into the water and clamber aboard.
And, under maritime law, there’s not much the French police can do to get involved.
They’re not allowed to enter the water to stop a boat that hasn’t asked for help and, well, it’s not illegal for migrants to run into the water.
Basically, there are loopholes that smugglers have learned to exploit, and which hinder and frustrate the police. And we’re about to see that play out.
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Police monitor from the beach – but under French law, cannot intervene
A large, black dinghy comes into sight, heading in our direction. This time, though, there is a reaction.
On the beach, the police are gathering, ready to puncture the vessel if it comes on land.
Two teams of officers have arrived on the dune buggies they drive across the beaches; others have walked down. I count 25 officers at one point.
On the water, a police boat – its blue lights flashing – is circling the dinghy, building up waves and trying to knock it off course, to stop it from reaching the waters near the beach, where a group of people are now slowly gathering, a little way from both the water and the police.
The police boat continues to zig-zag, but the dinghy, with five men on board, is resolute.
A police boat near the dinghy
It perseveres and, as it nears the water, the men offer up a signal, and there is a sudden surge from the beach.
The group who had been waiting quietly now rush forward, past the police and into the sea. They wade into the water and set out towards the boat.
And we follow them, striding into water that rapidly rises to the top of our legs. Two men stride past, each cradling a child. I can see people scrambling to get on to the boat.
A minute ago, the atmosphere of these people had been deliberate and calm. Now, it feels chaotic.
A woman’s cry, desperate and imploring, rings out. She has drifted away from the boat and, despite wearing a life jacket, she is struggling in the water.
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One of the smugglers comes over and brings her back to the boat, helping her on.
Some children are crying; others simply seem bewildered.
The last two people to get on are men, who pull themselves up and out of the water with a huge effort.
Everyone on board is drenched; many have lost or dropped the bags they’d brought with them. But they are on a dinghy, and now, with a jolt, the engine is pulled into action and they start their journey towards British waters.
We stride back through the water and reach the shore. The police have been watching, filming the boat on their phones, powerless to stop anything happening.
And beyond them is another crowd of migrants, now walking away from the beach. The ones who couldn’t get on to this boat, or who decided it was simply too dangerous.
Those that couldn’t make it to the dinghy headed back
Among them is Rebaz, from Iraq, who’s trying to get to Britain with his wife and his two small children, one of them just five months old.
In his home country, he insists, his whole family would be at risk. Rebaz says the family, including their baby, has been sleeping out in the cold.
He dreams of getting across the Channel.
“We have tried four times to get across,” he tells me.
“Will you try again?” I ask.
A shrug.
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“Yes, of course because I don’t have any solution. I know it will be very dangerous for me and for my children. But when you don’t have any solution… I will try,” he said.
“I don’t want to take money from anyone. I just want to live a life, be safe and make a life for my children.”
His daughter clings on to his neck as he talks, Rebaz holding her close. He has a desperation to get to Britain, a belief that crossing the Channel will right the wrongs of his life.
And, as long as people have that belief, the smugglers will have customers.
Watch special programme on migration crisis with Yalda Hakim on Sky News from 9pm tonight
The US has agreed to spare the UK from threatened trade tariffs on pharmaceutical products.
The announcement was made following months of uncertainty over whether exports from the UK, and elsewhere across Europe, would be subject to steep charges.
Via the policy update, the UK has become the only country in the world to secure a zero per cent tariff on pharmaceuticals exported to the US. Tariffs are taxes imposed on imports into a country.
In return, the UK has agreed to increase the baseline threshold used to assess if medicines can be used by the NHS.
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The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) will increase the base threshold by 25%: from £20,000-£30,000 to £25,000-£35,000.
It means NICE will be able to approve medicines that deliver significant health improvements but might have been declined purely on cost-effectiveness grounds, the government said.
This could include breakthrough cancer treatments, therapies for rare diseases, and innovative approaches to conditions that have long been difficult to treat, it added.
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Many items require rare earth materials for manufacture and China has an abundance.
This will give NICE the opportunity to approve more new medicines and allow a greater number of patients to benefit from them, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) said.
It pointed out that NICE’s baseline cost-effectiveness threshold has not been increased for over 20 years.
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A US government statement said the UK will “reverse the decade-long trend of declining National Health Service (NHS) expenditures on innovative, life-saving medicines, and increase the net price it pays for new medicines by 25%”.
US trade representative Jamieson Greer said the US “will work to ensure that UK citizens have access to latest pharmaceutical breakthroughs”.
The background
US President Donald Trump has long complained that Europe does not pay enough for US drugs.
America and the UK agreed in May to seek a deal on the proviso that firms secured a better operating environment in Britain.
Criticism includes the concern that firms lose out on revenue due to a pricing regime which prioritises low costs for the NHS over incentives to invest.
In October, the science minister Patrick Vallance told MPs, as talks with the US continued, that many drugs available in the UK would see an “inevitable” price increase.
The family of a father-of-four who died on holiday in Benidorm say new evidence has further convinced them that foul play was involved in his death.
Nathan Osman, 30, from Pontypridd in South Wales, was on a long weekend break with friends in Benidorm in September 2024.
Less than 24 hours after he arrived, his body was found by an off-duty police officer at the bottom of a remote 650ft (200m) cliff on the outskirts of the resort.
He died from head and abdominal injuries after falling from height, a post-mortem found.
Local police said it was “a tragic accident” that occurred after Nathan left his friends in Benidorm to walk back to his hotel room alone.
But his family believe the investigation into his death has not been adequate, and that the local authorities have never considered the possibility of a homicide.
Their suspicions of foul play were first provoked by the fact that the remote location where Nathan was found was in the opposite direction to the hotel, and some distance away on foot.
They began doing their own investigating, building a timeline of events drawn from sources including CCTV, witness statements and Nathan’s bank records, which they say showed attempts were made to use his bank cards the day after he died.
After presenting their findings to Spanish prosecutors as evidence that others may have been involved, the case was reopened earlier this year.
Now, the family have told Sarah-Jane Mee on The UK Tonight that new phone data they have uncovered suggests he couldn’t have reached the spot he was found on foot.
Nathan’s brother Lee, mother Elizabeth and father Jonathan speak to Sarah-Jane Mee
After getting the phone back a couple of months ago, they say they tracked Nathan’s last movements through a health app.
“There’s a breakdown inside the app of every 10 minutes – the distance, pace, measurement of pace… every detail you can think of,” Nathan’s brother, Lee Evans, tells Mee.
“His pace wasn’t consistent with a fast walk or even a sprint.”
He said it was a faster journey, despite being uphill for 40 minutes, which has convinced the family that he was in a vehicle.
Pic: Family handout
The family also went to visit the area where Nathan was found.
“We were a bit upset, but we were very pleased we went up there”, his mother, Elizabeth, says. “We could see… there’s no way he would have looked at that area and thought, ‘I’m going up here.’
“You can see straight off, there’s no clubs, there’s no hotels up there, there’s just the odd house dotted around. It was just out in the wild, there was nothing up there.”
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The family says the phone data has helped them determine that he died around half an hour after he was seen on CCTV walking towards his hotel in the early hours of the morning.
“It was really ridiculous to think that my son would’ve walked up there [the remote location where he died] at 4am in the pitch dark.”
After the family were interviewed by Mee in May, South Wales Police opened its own investigation into Nathan’s death.
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Nathan’s family speaking to Mee in May
Lee says the Welsh force has been “appalled” by the lack of evidence turned over from the local police’s investigation.
His and Nathan’s father, Jonathan, says: “No procedures were followed. Nothing was cordoned off, it wasn’t a crime scene. There’s loads of things that could’ve been taken. Tyre tracks, foot tracks, nothing. No DNA taken.”
Lee says: “All that we’ve done over the last year, this could’ve been squashed within the first week, two weeks [by local investigators].
“We’ve had to find out and keep delving into every possible outcome and overturn every stone possible. We started off with… a needle in a haystack, we had no direction or any support on which way to go.”
Nathan Osman. Pic: Family handout
What does Nathan’s family hope for now?
Nathan’s family say they have located 27 CCTV cameras which could have picked Nathan up in the area, after local investigators didn’t find any.
Elizabeth says that after alerting Spanish police to the locations, they were told that the CCTV “wouldn’t be working” or that footage would’ve already been erased.
“They just surmised everything,” she adds.
But the family, who found the last known CCTV footage of Nathan earlier this year, are convinced there is still hope.
Lee says: “There’s a number of CCTV footage in that area. We know there’s a way of finding a vehicle of some sort.”
But the family admit they may never find whoever could be responsible for Nathan’s death because so much time has been lost.
Elizabeth concludes: “Nathan walks with us every day. We all believe that,” adding that “all we want” is to find the ones responsible for his death and for him to “have the respect of a decent investigation”.
Sky News contacted Spanish police, which declined to comment, adding the case is under judicial review and it doesn’t want to hinder the course of the investigation.
South Wales Police told Sky News: “South Wales Police is carrying out enquiries on behalf of HM Coroner and a family liaison officer has been appointed to provide support.”
Watch the full interview with Sarah-Jane Mee on The UK Tonight from 8pm this evening on Sky News.
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