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Anon at 1:48pm, for the UK to be “…a compassionate country that offers asylum to those genuinely in need” means giving claimants, however they get here, a fair hearing to establish whether or not they are genuinely in need.

You can’t know whether someone entering the UK by small boat or by any other irregular means is abusing the system, entering illegally, or genuinely in need of asylum, until you’ve investigated them. They aren’t “illegal” until they’ve had their case heard and been found to have no entitlement to asylum, no different to anyone else accused of a criminal act in this country. You haven’t committed an offence until a fair process of justice has proved it. That’s a 'British value' one might have expected those noisily crying patriotism to have been keen to protect.