More than 50,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats since Sir Keir Starmer took office, official figures are expected to confirm on Tuesday.
The most recent Home Office figures showed that 49,797 people had arrived by small boat since Labour won the general election in July last year.
That total is expected to rise after a further 430 migrants made the journey from France on Monday.
Starmer came into power pledging to “smash the gangs” behind the Channel crossings. However, analysis shows that the number of people who arrived in the UK via small boats in the first half of this year was 48 per cent higher than in the same period last year.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, suggested that migrants housed in hotels could instead be held in “camps” to take them out of local communities.
Badenoch said people “don’t feel safe” as she visited Epping in Essex, where protesters have gathered in recent weeks near a hotel housing asylum seekers.
“We’ve got to turn things around very quickly,” she said. “We cannot use rules from 1995, or 2005, or even 2015 for 2025. Our world is changing very quickly, and we need to adapt to it.
“Is it possible for us to set up camps and police that, rather than bringing all of this hassle into communities?”
Kemi Badenoch talking to locals in Epping, Essex
LUCY NORTH/PA
Asked what she meant by the suggestion, Badenoch said: “We need to make sure that communities like Epping are safe. What a lot of the parents — the mothers and even some of the children — have said to me is that they don’t feel safe.
“It is unfair to impose this burden on communities.”
• Reform’s women praise men protecting wives from ‘abusive migrants’
She added: “Not everyone here is a genuine asylum seeker. People are arriving in our country illegally and that is why we have a plan to make sure that people who arrive here illegally are deported immediately.
“We need to close down that pathway to citizenship that means that lots of people get here not making any contributions, claiming welfare, claiming benefits. And we also need a deterrent.”
The government has set out its intention to close asylum hotels by the end of the parliament.