Britain has taken in the blameless baby recklessly hauled on to a small boat this week. So how much will our compassion cost us in the decades to come?

By DAVID BARRETT, HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR Published: 00:11, 15 August 2026 | Updated: 00:19, 15 August 2026 The tiny baby is manhandled aboard a Channel small boat, roughly held aloft by its right arm. Expressionless, defenceless, dressed in a white romper and wearing a bib, the child is surrounded by men clad in lifejackets and dirty clothing. But there is no life preserver to protect this little infant photographed last Sunday at a beach in northern France on a people traffickers' dinghy bound for Britain. Aged around six months, give or take. An innocent life. It is not clear whether it's a boy or a girl, but let's call the child Dylan, a name which means 'son of the sea' – although in modern times it has become unisex. As Dylan is dragged aboard the inflatable, someone standing in the water – the child's father or mother, perhaps – throws a baby bottle full of milk up into the vessel. Is this the baby's first trip to the seaside, I wonder as I look at the pictures. A trip where its life is put in peril aboard a deathtrap dinghy? A boat over-laden with strange men and no doubt with petrol and filth sloshing around in the hull? Only the coldest of hearts could have failed to have been moved by Dylan's tragic plight. But another understandable reaction is anger that this blameless child was being put in such danger for no reason – France, after all, is a safe country where Dylan's parents could have claimed asylum. An infant in a babygrow was held up by their right hand on a boat in France amongst men bound for Britain A woman in a life jacket prepared to board a boat to cross the Channel at Ecault, France, with two children A Border Command boat brought migrants rescued from the Channel into Dover last weekend Some, 34 children have died trying to reach Britain from continental Europe since the Channel crisis began in 2018, according to the International Organisation for Migration. The total includes six youngsters who perished in a single capsize incident off Cape Gris-Nez, near Boulogne, in September 2024. And in October 2020 a Kurdish-Iranian family – Rasoul Iran-Nejad, wife Shiva Mohammed Panahi, both 35, daughter Anita, nine, and sons Armin, six, and Artin, just 15 months – all drowned when their dinghy went down. It is too awful to think of the terror those poor children must have endured in their final moments. Baby Dylan, thankfully, appears to have survived the journey. But what happens to him or her now is also a concern, given that British taxpayers are still footing a multi-billion pound annual bill as the small-boats crisis continues into its ninth year with no sign of a solution. There is no proper data on how much Dylan's life here in the UK may cost the public purse. Nor can we begin to prejudge the path it will follow. Dylan could become an academic and economic success story, for all we know, and contribute greatly to society. It is to be hoped that does indeed come to pass. But the odds appear stacked against it happening. The available data indicates that those who arrive as asylum seekers make a significantly lower contribution to the economy, when compared with the rest of the population. Last December, a report from the government's official advisers on immigration policy, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), said people entering the UK through asylum and refugee routes make an 'unambiguously negative' contribution to public funds. Your browser does not support iframes. Your browser does not support iframes. The committee cited research in the Netherlands which put the 'lifetime net fiscal impact' of each asylum seeker at minus £390,000, and a similar study in Australia which estimated a figure of minus £198,000. MAC chairman Professor Brian Bell said at the time: 'I would be very surprised if Australia and the Netherlands were not good comparators for us in terms of general labour markets [and] in terms of the types of people who are coming on asylum. 'I don't want to put a figure on it, but I think those sort of headline numbers that come from those countries, it wouldn't surprise me if a similar order of magnitude was true in the UK.' The MAC report said: 'We expect the lifetime net fiscal impact of those entering through asylum and refugee routes to be unambiguously negative. 'This is largely due to their low employment rates and wages, high rates of economic inactivity and their exemption from the "no recourse to public funds" rule. For example, analysis by [Oxford University's] Migration Observatory suggested that 56 per cent of those who reported initially arriving in the UK to claim asylum and were of working age were in employment, compared to 75 per cent of the UK-born population. 'When in employment, their median annual salary was £20,000 for men and £18,000 for women, compared to £31,000 and £22,000 respectively for the UK-born.' It added: 'Note that many of those who enter through the asylum route will also have incurred substantial additional costs [to the public purse] from being housed in asylum accommodation.' Further similar evidence comes from the government's own data on 'refugee integration outcomes'. Home Office analysis, published last September, said: 'Compared with the working-age population of England and Wales – where in 2021, 57 per cent was in employment and 3 per cent were unemployed – we see much smaller percentages of... refugees in employment, and larger percentages being unemployed.' Just over 37 per cent of refugees who arrived by the asylum route were in work. And 12.6 per cent were unemployed, it said. All of which suggests Baby Dylan will at the very least cost taxpayers something between that Dutch research figure of £390,000 and the Australian one of £198,000. Some 230 migrants were on board one boat this week, a record for the largest number in a single vessel But the true figure could be significantly more. It starts with the cost of processing an asylum application. Dylan's parents, assuming they are here too, are likely to make a joint claim on the baby's behalf. Each application hits the taxpayer with an average bill of £18,700, the Home Office disclosed last month, including the price of providing accommodation and living costs, as well as sums spent on processing and legal appeals. But the bill for an asylum-seeking family whose claim is rejected – yet cannot be deported – is far above average, and the Home Office has said that costs an average of £158,000 annually. Once here, only five per cent of small-boat migrants are removed, so Dylan and family are most likely here for good. After the cost of supporting them while an asylum claim is processed there will be further taxpayer expenditure. The average NHS cost per capita in England is £3,492 a year, and although infants require less care in some respects there will be neonatal follow-up costs. Then there is the cost of education. Average funding is £6,771 per pupil annually according to the Department for Education. So, assuming 12 years of full-time education, that's a total of just over £81,000 at current rates, not including any extra sums for English language support, for example. If the worst case scenario came to pass – and, again, let us hope this does not happen – Dylan would be dependent on the welfare state for the rest of his or her life. At current rates the annual benefits cap is £14,753 for a single person living outside London and £16,967 in the capital. In a rudimentary calculation, 50 years on benefits from 18 to retirement age would amount to between £737,650 and £848,350. It would be followed by additional pension costs – perhaps running for 11 years for a male and 15 for a female, according to average life expectancy. At £9,614 a year for the basic state pension that's between £105,754 and £144,210, at current rates. All in all, the State's total outlay – in the worst case scenario – could be well over £1million on Baby Dylan, at a very crude estimate. Importantly, if the child makes a success of themselves a large chunk of that outlay would be unnecessary. And if as an adult Dylan were to generate significant tax revenue for the Treasury, at least part of the earlier costs would be recouped. The as-yet-unknown direction of Dylan's life makes it impossible to calculate any meaningful figure for how much the taxpayer will shell out. But as we have seen there is a high probability, according to official data, that Dylan's eventual earnings will be below average, if he or she secures a job at all. A boat carried migrants on the Channel off Ecault beach in France last weekend As the Channel crisis continues to rage – a record 230 crossed on a single 'mega dinghy' a few days ago – last Sunday's scenes on Ecault Beach will be repeated and more children forced to board boats. If a parent took a youngster on a dangerous inflatable in this country, knowing there was a significant risk of death, they would be prosecuted for neglect and would find social workers knocking at the door. Perhaps the child would even be taken away and placed in care. Successive home secretaries have been unable to explain to me why the same standards are not applied to migrant parents who risk the lives of babies like Dylan in order to illegally cross the Channel. If these reckless parents were sent to jail that could prove to be a deterrent. And I believe that reasonable, decent taxpayers, aghast at children's lives being put in danger, would gladly see their money spent on any fostering costs that arose, particularly if it led to a fall in Channel crossings. As things stand, the bleakest truth is that the boats will continue and more babies will die entirely needless deaths.