AMANDA PLATELL: People traffickers appear to be using a sinister new ploy in their villainous trade... and Burnham can't even begin to understand. His reaction shows how he's lost the plot already

Seeing a toddler in a babygrow being hauled aboard a massive migrant dinghy by burly men and a young woman in a hijab waiting with two toddlers in the sea off northern France left me wondering whether people-trafficking villains are now using mothers and babies as human shields and bargaining chips.Could it be that traffickers are cynically exploiting them to blackmail their way into getting their massive boats with hundreds aboard into the UK illegally?Shockingly, there were more than 50 women – as well as an unknown number of babies and toddlers – among the record 260 migrants aboard a 49ft inflatable super-dinghy that landed on UK shores yesterday.The boat was carrying more than a Boeing 737’s passenger load. That crossing alone will have netted the traffickers a staggering £450,000 in profit – and will cost us taxpayers an estimated £25million in accommodation, legal and other costs now the migrants are here.Surely the traffickers will have worked out that mums and kids will have eased their passage.After all, who would prevent a mother and her child being helped from rough waters into the safety of a dinghy? And who is going to turn back a boat with mothers and children aboard in the middle of the Channel?It looks to me like a new sinister ploy by the cruel people-trafficking gangs that Andy Burnham has vowed to ‘smash’ – gangs that are now sending people in bigger boats than ever.No, they’re not looking very ‘smashed’ now, are they Andy?As Nigel Farage pointed out on Sky yesterday, you just need to do the maths.With four super boats arriving each day, that would be 1,000 young illegals pitching up on our shores every 24 hours. And, with calm August weather ahead, many more are expected to come. The huge dinghy carrying 230 migrants which left France on Sunday night and arrived in the UK in the early hours of yesterday We can't rely on the French border police, writes Amanda Platell. They just stand on the beaches watching the boats departWe clearly can’t rely on the French border police. They just stand on the beaches watching the boats depart, despite the fact that earlier this year the UK agreed to pay the French £662million over three years to help tackle the problem – a new funding package on top of the £476million we’ve already handed over.The French are pocketing our millions and laughing in our faces.Meanwhile the PM is touring the UK, visiting pubs and care homes and steel works in a ‘listening’ exercise, talking to ordinary folk about the cost of living and how he can put more money in their pockets.You’d have thought that, having plotted his political assassination of Keir Starmer and having been in politics as a mayor, an MP and a member of the Cabinet for decades before becoming PM, Andy would be a bit further ahead with ideas on how to deal with one of the most pressing problems of our time: illegal migrationYou’d have thought he might be aware that the people traffickers will do anything they can to barge their way into the UK, even if it means using mums, babies and toddlers.Andy would do well to remember that illegal migration was one of the issues that sank his former boss Gordon Brown’s government in 2010, with pictures daily on front pages of healthy young men arriving on our shores, just like today, then being fast-tracked into accommodation paid for by you and me.Accommodation where they received three meals a day, could use gyms and were even offered pocket money at a time when around 21 per cent of the total UK population lived in relative poverty, the same percentage as now.Why hasn’t listening Andy included on his schedule a visit to the market town of Thetford, Norfolk, where last week around 100 people protested – sadly, some violently – against plans for a former military base to take 1,250 male illegals fresh off the boat?Thetford ranks within the top 10 per cent most deprived neighbourhoods in England, with a population of just 25,000. As Andy Burnham embarks on his UK tour today, he would do well to remember that illegal migration was one of the issues that sank his former boss Gordon Brown’s government in 2010Is Andy listening to the outrage felt over the sight of seven illegal migrants among 800 housed and fed in nearby Braintree in a former RAF base – where there are plans to increase numbers to more than 1,200 – all of them allegedly dressed in designer gear, disembarking from a people carrier?Paid for by us, they can reportedly take part in art therapy, museum trips, cricket and chess and dance classes, as the town simmers with indignation and fury over their kid-gloves treatment.Andy has lost the plot if he thinks downing a pint in the local or hugging a granny in a care home or talking tough on vape shops is going to secure his tenure in No10 when the cost of illegal migration into this country is between £3billion and £4billion and rising.Around 10,000 readers have already commented in despair on the Mail about the infant and the mother and toddler pictures and the people traffickers’ new super dinghies.I couldn’t read all the comments, but one summed up the general view: ‘All [the illegal migrants are] by now settling in to their air-conditioned hotels, and texting their friends .......... IT’S TRUE...... EVERYTHING REALLY IS TOTALLY FREE.’There is a storm brewing Andy, and there will be many more dirty tricks from the people traffickers as they protect their very lucrative trade.None of which you look as if you even begin to understand.