A small boat loaded with migrants heading for UK shores from France capsized in the freezing waters of the English Channel early on Wednesday, resulting in four deaths, the British government has confirmed.

Lifeboats, helicopters and rescue teams working with the French and British navies responded to the incident, which took place as immigration to Britain organized by people-trafficking criminal gangs has become a priority issue for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government.

"At 0305 (GMT) today, authorities were alerted to an incident in the Channel concerning a migrant small boat in distress," a government spokesperson said in a statement.

"After a coordinated search and rescue operation led by HM Coastguard, it is with regret that there have been four confirmed deaths as a result of this incident."

An investigation was underway, the spokesperson said.

LBC radio station reported that 43 people had been rescued. One body bag was photographed being removed from a vessel at the lifeboat station in the port of Dover.

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The incident occurred just over a year after 27 people died while attempting to cross the sea in an inflatable dinghy in November 2021, in the worst recorded accident of its kind in the Channel.

Temperatures have plunged across Britain in the last week, bringing snow to parts of the country.

Despite the freezing cold, more than 500 migrants have made the perilous journey in small boats since the weekend, with the people traffickers who organize the crossings taking advantage of low winds and calm seas.

They have followed the more than 40,000 - a record number - who have arrived from France this year, many having made the journey from Afghanistan or Iran or other countries suffering war and repression to travel across Europe and on to Britain to seek asylum.

Political controversy

Speaking in parliament, Sunak expressed sorrow over the tragedy.

"I'm sure the whole House will share my sorrow at the capsizing of a small boat in the Channel in the early hours of this morning and the tragic loss of human life," Sunak said.

Interior minister Suella Braverman, whose ministry oversees migration policy, put the blame firmly on the trafficking gangs.

"Crossing the channel in unseaworthy vessels is a lethally dangerous endeavour," she told parliament.

Braverman had recently called the wave of arrivals an "invasion."

The refugee charity Care4Calais accused the government of doing nothing to prevent migrant deaths, which it said were "wholly unnecessary and preventable."

Data compiled by the Missing Migrants Project showed 205 migrants had been recorded dead or missing in the English Channel since 2014.