Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has claimed that the prime minister “clearly doesn’t care” about serious crimes committed by small boat migrants.

He told GB News: “This mega dinghy is absolutely shocking. 165 illegal immigrants, I think either entirely or at least mostly young men, is terrible. They are all, as we speak, going to be getting ushered into hotels by the government, paid for at taxpayers’ expense.

“I’ve been in those camps in northern France. I went there last summer, and I saw the people, the kind of people who are crossing, mostly young men, mostly can’t speak English. We know that many of these young men who enter the country go on to commit very serious criminal offences.

“I’ve met Siobhan Whyte, the mother of Rhiannon, who was murdered by an illegal small boat immigrant. There was the case just last week of three of them who were convicted and sentenced for raping a woman on Brighton Beach.

“This is incredibly serious, and it is disgraceful, frankly, that Andy Burnham, the new prime minister, has not said a single word about this question during his election campaign, or indeed since becoming prime minister, in his various speeches.

“He clearly doesn’t care about this issue. But I certainly do. I think Shabana Mahmood needs to urgently get a grip of this.”

He added: “Since the general election, I think, 76,000 have crossed. That is more than under any other prime minister. There is a solution to this.

“We’ve got a new position on this issue under new leadership, and that is we need to leave the ECHR, the European Convention on Human Rights, and that would enable us to deport all illegal arrivals within a week back to their country of origin, if possible, or a safe third country, if not, critically, with no asylum claim and no court proceedings whatsoever.

“So those 165 people should be on a bus to Gatwick Airport and being flown out of the country immediately. But instead, they’re going to be on a bus to a hotel.”