PROVIDE a safe path to asylum rather than forcing people fleeing wars into more dangerous journeys, campaigners warned Prime Minister Andy Burnham today after an overcrowded boat arrived carrying refugees across the Channel.

Care4Calais and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) told the PM that a “heavily securitised and violent” border system will do nothing to address the issue.

An inflatable boat crossed the Channel today carrying a record 230 people aboard it on Monday, prompting the Home Office to blame “reckless and dangerous tactics of the criminal gangs.”

It follows the capsizing of a dinghy carrying 173 people in the Channel when its engine caught fire earlier this month.

Mr Burnham’s official spokesperson pointed to “ruthless” people-smugglers as the main reason people are embarking on dangerous crossings.

But JCWI spokesperson Griff Ferris explained it is actually the “violent border” which “leads to harm and deaths, as we’ve seen yet again in the last few weeks.”

He told the Morning Star: “People fleeing war, persecution and climate destruction are forced to take these incredibly dangerous routes to get to the UK because there is no other way.

“The government must allow everyone to use the same accessible and safe routes that already exist for many people, such as the multiple ferry routes that already go between Calais and Dover every day.”

Care4Calais chief operating officer Sydney Sopher told the Star: “Without safe routes, desperate people are left with smugglers as their only option.

“If the government genuinely wants to stop these dangerous journeys, it has to give people a safe way to claim asylum.

“Go after the smugglers, seize their boats, disrupt their operations, but none of that changes the simple fact that people still need a safe way to claim asylum.”