PEOPLE smugglers failed to give lifejackets to migrants who later drowned in the Channel — then just hours later tried to lure more into making the deadly crossing.
Six men died when their rickety dinghy — on the way to England — took on water off the French coast.
Some 59 others had to be rescued.
And within hours of Saturday’s deaths, an undercover reporter was assured the crossing was safe and offered passage costing thousands.
The callousness of the people smugglers yesterday sparked calls for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to keep up the pressure on delivering the Rwanda deportation and barge deterrents, to dissuade would-be migrants from putting their lives at risk.
On the same day the six Afghan men died, some 509 migrants made the crossing — with some treated by paramedics and taken to hospital.
French officials explained how the gangs were “saturating” the coastline with boats in order to stretch police resources in an attempt to slip through.
Hervé Berville, France’s minister for the sea, said people smugglers try to “trigger simultaneous crossings in Dunkirk and Boulogne, to occupy the police”.
Laying bare the risk to life, Mr Berville said: “Put 60 people on a boat in a force three or four wind, and it’s deadly.”
Régis Holy, skipper of the Notre-Dame du Brisban lifeboat, which recovered some of the bodies, confirmed none were wearing life jackets.
He said: “You don’t get used to it. Handling a body is difficult. It is heavy, the clothes are wet.”
Coastguards stood down their search and rescue operation yesterday afternoon, saying those who were missing had been accounted for.
Despite the horror of the Channel deaths, traffickers continued to sell places on their deathtrap boats, insisting they were safe.
A reporter posing as a migrant, who made contact with a smuggler, was offered two spaces on a dinghy from France for £6,500.
The crook said there would be just 27 others on board, adding: “We do not overcrowd the boat with 60 people like others do.”
When the reporter mentioned the Channel deaths, they brushed it off with assurances their boats were safe.
Ministers yesterday vowed to do everything possible to halt the smuggling gangs by removing the pull factors which attract migrants to Britain.
Welsh Secretary David Davies insisted the Rwanda deportation scheme would “take away the incentive to jump into rickety boats”.
He told Times Radio: “There’s really no reason for people to risk their lives in this fashion. And we should be doing everything possible to just stop people from doing so and to stop people smugglers from putting people’s lives at risk in this way.
“It’s a tragedy. But that sadly, is going to continue happening as long as people are put to sea in small, unstable, leaking rafts across the English Channel.”
Suella Braverman’s Home Office has also come in for criticism for its handling of the illegal immigration crisis.
Despairing at the mammoth backlog of asylum cases, Tory MP Tim Loughton said: “There is a problem with the way the Home Office works, and I think it needs an absolutely systemic analysis of where it is going wrong. It’s got to be much more flexible.
“It’s got to be much faster in the way it responds in processing the claims.”
An ex-Cabinet minister yesterday said Saturday had marked “the worst moment for the Home Office since John Reid declared it not fit for purpose”.
And Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said smuggling gangs were “running rings” around the government.
But both Rwanda deportation flights and the barge plan — primary deterrents for small boat crossings — have been challenged by left-wing lawyers.
A Supreme Court battle in the autumn against campaigners opposing the Rwanda plan will decide whether ministers can finally implement their scheme and deport illegal migrants to the country’s capital, Kigali.
Tory MPs are further urging Mr Sunak to consider quitting the European Court of Human Rights — which has previously blocked flights — if that is what it takes to get deportations off the ground.
Meanwhile, it emerged a group of asylum seekers had been refusing to move out of hotels and on to the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset.
Before the vessel was emptied two days ago due to a Legionella scare, charities had successfully stopped around 20 migrants from going aboard.
They used various claims, even alleging one was scared of water.
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith told The Sun it was important to move people out of hotels and on to barges to remove a significant pull factor to Britain.
He said: “There are two critical things. They’ve got to go into barges, not hotels, and there’s got to be a series of flights to Rwanda.
“The moment that happens, then suddenly the migrants will be deterred.
“They’ll say to themselves ‘If I go over there, I’ll be into one of these barges and then I’ll be headed for Rwanda’.”
To wrestle down the £6million-a-day cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels, ministers want to hire even more barges.
They are also looking at hiring office blocks and former student accommodation as potential sites.
Last night, it emerged that Dorset Council failed to officially tell the Home Office for three days that it had found Legionella on board the Bibby Stockholm.
The authority — which had challenged the plan for a barge in Portland — received the water tests last Monday, but only officially told the government on Wednesday.
The council said it told the barge contractor — and “verbally” told the Home Office — on Tuesday.
