The significant shift in policy - welcomed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper - comes after increasing pressure to tackle people-smuggling gangs operating along the northern French coastline.

But do the UK and France now have a chance of consigning the small boats to history ... home secretary in five years to go to the French coast to see for herself how £540m of British taxpayers ...

One person has died and 15 people rescued while trying to cross the English Channel overnight in an overloaded small boat – marking the second such fatality as many days. French authorities said ...