More than 40,000 migrants could cross the Channel this year, a refugee charity has predicted.

The next Government was last night warned it is “highly likely” they will face a surge in small boat arrivals in the coming weeks.

The summer months are typically the busiest for Channel crossings amid better weather conditions.

And the Refugee Council, predicting the total for 2024 using the patterns of previous years, suggested 40,300 migrants could cross this year.

More than 13,000 people have already made the crossing this year, meaning almost 30,000 are set to arrive in just six months.

The charity’s analysts also revealed the migrant hotel bill has fallen to £5.3 million per day. Ministers had been under intense pressure to slash the amount taxpayers were shelling out, as it had at one-point hit £8m per-day.

Iranians, Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Eritreans and Sudanese migrants made up the top six nationalities in hotels, the Refugee Council said.

Predictions of an annual rise in migrant crossings will frustrate the Home Office after Channel crossings fell by 36 per cent to 29,437 in 2023.

It had fallen from a record of 45,774 in 2022.

Just over a third (36%) of crossings in 2022 took place in August and September. In 2023, those two months also accounted for a third (34%) of crossings.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has repeatedly insisted his plan to curb migrant crossings is working.

But more than 50,000 people have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel since he became Prime Minister in October 2022, including some 13,000 so far this year.

Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon told reporters there is “no evidence” that the Government’s bid to send asylum seekers to Rwanda will act as a deterrent.

The charity has consistently argued that ministers need to establish ways for asylum seekers to legally travel to the UK to submit claims in order to end the dangerous crossings.

In a report published on Friday, it set out a list of proposals for the incoming government to grip the backlog of asylum claims and how to approach Channel crossings.

Home Office figures show 150 people made the journey in four boats on Wednesday, taking the provisional total for 2024 to date to 13,195.

This is already a record for the first six months of a calendar year.

It is also 17% higher than the number recorded by this time last year (11,278) and up 8% on the same period in 2022 (12,206), according to an analysis of Government figures.

Some 28% of Channel crossings recorded in 2022 took place between January and June, while 39% of arrivals in 2023 were logged during the same period, PA analysis also shows.

Research indicates that asylum seekers flee to the UK because of family, historical connections and links to language, among other reasons, he added.

“What Labour should do if they were to come into power, absolutely we would say, is repeal the Illegal Migration Act and the Safety of Rwanda Act as soon as possible”, he said, as well as the Nationality and Borders Act, which the charity also opposed.

Asked whether immigration pledges in Labour’s manifesto go far enough, Mr Solomon said this is a “complex issue” with “no single magic bullet” and that the party’s vow to tackle smuggling gangs is “important but needs to be part of a wider strategy” which addresses the reasons and “so-called push factors” as to why people flee and seek asylum and to consider establishing “safe routes so people don’t have to take dangerous journeys”.

“It needs sensible policy-making and it needs a recognition that it’s the hard yards of policy-making and delivery over time that can have an impact,” he added.