BBC paid smuggling gangs £1,200 of taxpayers funded money

BBC reporters paid over £1,200 as part of an investigation into a people-smuggling gang deemed responsible for the deaths of a dozen Channel migrants, it has been reported. The corporation's Paris correspondent, Andrew Harding, spent a year investigating the gang, which operated small boat crossings to the UK from northern France.

Undercover reporters secretly filmed members of the gang as well as its encampment hide out in a French forest near Dunkirk. A reporter arranged for a colleague to pay hundreds of pounds for a place on a boat to cross the Channel to a gang member at Birmingham New Street.

The gang member can be seen receiving £900 in cash from the undercover colleague at the station. A further payment of £348 was handed over to another gang member in France.

In the report, which appeared across the BBC on Tuesday (August 5), Mr Harding says in a voiceover: "That's it. He's taken the money and left the station.

"You may well be asking why we would pay money to criminals. We believe it is the only way we can gain access to the gang and expose its network - not least its network here in the UK."

The BBC has been contacted for comment.

Its investigation laid bare the tactics used by smuggling gangs and was prompted when French police tried to stop the gang from launching a dinghy in the Channel in April last year. A seven-year-old girl was one of five people who were trampled to death in the chaos.

Some 25,436 people have made the journey across the Channel so far this year, according to analysis of Home Office figures. This is 49% higher than at the same point in 2024.

Meanwhile, a war of words has erupted over Labour Government claims the party inherited a broken asylum system from the previous Conservative administration.

Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, said her party bore no responsibility for the asylum backlog. Mrs Badenoch said the Government needs to make that when people come to the UK they are deported.

She said: "The reason why they've failed to stop the boats is because they have scrapped the only deterrent that this country had, which was the Rwanda plan."

Her comments came as a "one in, one out" deal to return migrants to France in a bid to tackle Channel crossings began.

The treaty was laid in Parliament on Tuesday, and will take effect from Wednesday with detentions expected in the coming days.

The UK-France deal, which will also bring approved asylum seekers under a safe route to Britain, was agreed last month on the last day of French President Emmanuel Macron's state visit to the UK.

Since Labour came to power last July, the party has vowed to "smash the gangs". Ministers are seeking to ramp up enforcement action against smugglers with new legislation to hand counter terror-style powers to police, and new criminal offences aiming to crack down on the illegal trade.

The Government is also seeking to reset the UK's relationship with Europe over the crossings, and France has agreed to change its rules to allow police to intervene when boats are in shallow water, rather than requiring them to still be on land.

Meanwhile ministers are hoping to deter new arrivals promised jobs when they come to the UK by cracking down on illegal working and deportations of ineligible asylum seekers.