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Pregnant women and three children were among the 27 people who drowned trying to cross the Channel in an inflatable boat. The tragedy occurred on Wednesday and is the deadliest incident since the migration crisis began.
Diane Taylor has been reporting on the crisis from both sides of the Channel for years as people-smugglers have switched their focus away from lorries to the much more dangerous route across the 21-mile stretch of water in small boats. She tells Hannah Moore that at the heart of the problem is a political failure of both the UK and France to provide enough safe and legal routes to asylum.
We also hear from Ali, a 28-year-old man from Iran who has fled religious persecution in his home country and reached the UK after a previous terrifying attempt that ended with the passengers in his dinghy being rescued by a passing vessel and returning him to France.
On Thursday morning, despite the tragedy that had unfolded just hours before, more people had clambered into barely seaworthy small boats to attempt the same crossing.
Archive: Sky News; BBC; Parliament Live
Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
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