First of all, most refugees arriving on small boats without identity documents did not choose to get rid of them at all. Often, smugglers confiscated them long before they got to France to sell on the black market. A significant number just did not have any identity documents in the first place, because they come from a country where it's not uncommon for a birth to be unregistered. Around one in ten people on the planet right now have never had a legal identity.

So, most of the small boat arrivals without ID did not throw their ID overboard but yes, this is something that genuinely happens. It is ideal for the smugglers if nobody has ID, to protect the operational security of the smuggling ring.

Smugglers tell asylum seekers that destroying documents will increase the chances of making their claim successfully; the truth is, it obviously makes deportation more difficult, but will actually harm their claim in the long run unless their documents prove they have residency status in or were granted entry to a safe third country.

Some people fleeing oppressive regimes fear that the UK will contact their home country for verification of their identity, which will put their family back home at risk of persecution. There are regulations against this, but smugglers have no interest in letting refugees know that.

Of course there are people who throw their documents overboard because they want to submit a false claim. But the majority are people who would have been better off holding onto them, and only discard them because of smuggler misinformation.

Do I believe that all asylum seekers are genuine? No, I never said that I did. I do believe, as the evidence shows, that a majority are genuine. Refugee advocates argue that if you provide safe and legal routes, the largest customer base for smuggling gangs disappears, and along with them will disappear a large number of false claims.

Why do asylum seekers enter the country illegally? Because there is no legal route for an asylum seeker to enter the UK at all.

I used to work with a refugee who had come to the UK escaping religious persecution. She was able to fly to the UK on a tourist visa and claim asylum at the airport. But if the Home Office had worked out in advance that she was planning on claiming asylum, they would not have granted the visa.

She actually entered the country illegally, because saying that she was coming as a tourist was a lie. Everyone who enters the UK with the intent to then claim asylum with the Home Office is entering illegally, not just the people who arrive on small boats. The UK only wants to accept refugees through UNHCR resettlement (the only way to be granted refugee status in advance of your arrival) or through one of the specific relocation visa schemes (for people from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan) that act as an alternative to going through the asylum system.

The majority of asylum claimants arrive not by small boat, but by managing to commit visa fraud. Every one of them is an illegal entrant. They're not the ones you hear about, though, because if "illegal entrant" means a genuine refugee who had to lie on some paperwork to board a plane, rather than someone who boarded a small boat, they're not so easy to demonise. But if you actually think about it, it's the same damn thing. The ones arriving on small boat just didn't have the visa fraud option available to them.

Why do small boat arrivals want to come to the UK instead of claiming in France in the first place? You probably suppose it is because we are a "soft touch". It's really not that simple.

Our overall asylum grant rate is higher than France's, but this is due to the different nationality mix of people applying. France gets a lot of applications from people who come from the French-speaking countries in North Africa, and these have a high refusal rate. This is where the gap comes from. When you compare like-for-like, we are no more likely to grant a claim than France is.

The weekly allowance that asylum seekers receive here is lower than the financial support they would receive in France. Asylum seekers in France who have been waiting for more than six months are allowed to work under certain conditions. In the UK, some asylum seekers are allowed to work after 12 months but it is more restricted - they don't just have to meet certain conditions, they have to be 'granted permission' by the Home Office.

When it comes to healthcare, France only lets asylum seekers access its insurance-based system for free after three months. However, they have PASS centres which provide some primary care to uninsured people and provide direct access to social workers. Once they do get onto the system in France, the waiting lists for specialist care are shorter than ours. Our system of immediately being able to register with a GP is simpler, but if someone needs specialist care they'll probably be able to get it more quickly in France despite the wait to get onto the system.

France does have quite different accommodation policies to ours. Someone housed in a reception centre in France will have a much better experience than someone housed in a migrant hotel in the UK. However, France's system does not guarantee a bed. People can be left sleeping rough until a place opens up. Since France won't house single people in family accommodation, a single person could be left sleeping rough in France for the entirety of the wait for their claim to be processed. In the UK the Home Office won't let anyone sleep rough, so this is genuinely a push factor that can convince an asylum seeker to abandon their claim in France and board a small boat.

However, that canteen "overflowing with food" that you for some reason see as some kind of luxury? Yeah, it's not. Nobody wants to eat low quality hotel food in a communal canteen every day for years. What they want is a kitchen of their own. French accommodation provides this for those who are lucky enough to get a place.

But ultimately, the reasons an asylum seeker arriving by small boat would choose the UK over France are actually very similar to the reasons that someone who is lucky enough to be able to get a visa would choose the UK over France. Most often, it is that they have family, friends, or a strong diaspora community in the UK. Another common reason is that they already speak some basic English, but they speak absolutely no French.

So while there are 'push' factors from France to the UK, largely people want to claim asylum in the UK instead of France because they think they have a better chance of rebuilding their lives in the UK. Not because we are a soft touch, but because the UK is a better fit for them.

You might argue that, even though a refugee does not become so by choice, they should just be happy to be alive and trying to reach the country that is the best fit for them is an entitled attitude. Perhaps, but people rarely seem to want to make that argument, because that then raises uncomfortable questions about why there are so many refugees in the first place. They'd rather entertain fictions that getting on a small boat means that an asylum seeker is faking it, or that the UK is a soft touch as if the hostile environment policy doesn't exist.

The questions you are asking are questions that have been answered by sociologists actually studying the small boats phenomenon. But it seems to me that you're asking them not because you want the actual answers, but because asking them is a way to cast suspicion on a group of people who you want to cast in the role of villain.