* Hundreds cross Channel in small boats to reach UK
* Minister seeks to put pressure on France to stop them
* France says already intercepting lots of migrants
* UK government accused of exaggerating scale of problem
(Recasts with UK Border Force asking for military help)
By Estelle Shirbon
LONDON, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Britain's armed forces have been
asked to help deal with boats carrying migrants across the
Channel from France, the Defence Ministry said on Saturday after
a spate of arrivals on the southern English coast.
Taking advantage of a spell of hot weather and calm sea
conditions, hundreds of people including children and pregnant
women have made the dangerous 33-km crossing in recent days,
many in overloaded rubber dinghies and other small vessels.
The Defence Ministry said it had received a formal request
from the Home Office, or interior ministry, to assist the UK
Border Force with its operations in the Dover Straits.
"We are assessing the requirements... and are working hard
to identify how we can most effectively assist," the defence
ministry said in a statement.
A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment.
More than 200 people arrived on the English coast on
Thursday, followed by some 130 on Friday, and media reported
more arrivals on Saturday as the hot weather persisted.
A junior Home Office minister in charge of immigration
compliance, Chris Philp, called the rise in arrivals "shameful"
and sought to put pressure on France ahead of a meeting with his
French counterpart in Paris next week.
"The French need to stop these illegal migrants from getting
in the water in the first place," he said in an opinion column
published in Saturday's Daily Telegraph newspaper, adding that
Britain would seek to return to France those who made it across.
France's interior ministry said surveillance teams on the
northern coast were intercepting migrants daily and it had
mobilised extra resources. It said five times as many migrant
boats had been caught between January and July compared with the
same period in 2019.
"This is a joint problem...which needs a joint operational
response," a spokesman said.
"NOT A CRISIS"
Uncontrolled arrivals of asylum seekers and migrants from
Africa, the Middle East and Asia have long been a source of
tension between European countries struggling to find an
effective joint response.
Britain left the European Union in January and a transition
period during which most EU rules and accords are still in force
will come to an end on Dec. 31, which could further complicate
cooperation with EU member France.
Immigration has been an especially polarising issue in
Britain since the Brexit referendum in 2016 because "taking back
control" of immigration and border policy was presented as one
of the key advantages by pro-Brexit campaigners.
Home Secretary Priti Patel, an enthusiastic Brexiteer, made
the link in a tweet on Friday about the Channel crossings: "I
know that when the British people say they want to take back
control of our borders, this is exactly what they mean."
Critics such as groups campaigning for the rights of
immigrants and refugees accuse the government of stoking some
voters' xenophobic fears by magnifying the issue.
"Britain is better than this. The arrival of small numbers
of people by boat is not a crisis," said Stephen Hale, chief
executive of Refugee Action, urging the government to focus on
the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis.
The numbers crossing the Channel are tiny compared with the
flows of people who try and reach EU countries such as Malta,
Greece, Italy and Spain every year by crossing the Mediterranean
from north Africa or Turkey, thousands of them dying on the way.
(Additional reporting by Richard Lough in Paris, Bhargav
Acharya and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru)