UK on brink of deal to return migrants to France for first time since Brexit

The UK is on the brink of a deal that would initially see around 50 small boat arrivals returned to France each week, according to reports.

Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron are hammering out a "one-in-one-out" agreement that would see Britain send migrants back for the first time since Brexit. Under plans being discussed, the UK would remove failed asylum seekers and in exchange accept people with legitimate asylum claims.

No10 insiders are hopeful that following a trial period - which would see around 2,600 returns per year - the numbers will be ramped up. Mr Macron is in the UK on a three-day state visit, with the PM hopeful of reaching an agreement he believes will hamper smuggling gangs behind thousands of crossings each month.

The two leaders agreed that "shared solutions" are needed to tackle small boat crossing during crunch talks, Downing Street said.

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A French diplomatic souce told Le Monde that a return scheme would be launched as an "experiment". They said: “We would experiment with returning to France a person who arrived by ‘small boat’ and had their asylum application in England rejected, and, in return, a person with family ties in England would be admitted."

The UK has been desperate to reach a return agreement with Europe, having lost access to the Dublin Agreement system after Brexit. This allows countries to transfer unauthorised arrivals to other EU nations based on a range of factors including which country they first set foot in.

As France still has this legal right, five southern European countries - Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Malta and Spain - have voiced concerns over whether they will be impacted. Mr Starmer has said reaching an agreement on migration is among the top priorities from Mr Macron's three day state visit to the UK, which started on Tuesday.

Following a meeting between the PM and the French President, a No10 spokesperson said: “The leaders agreed tackling the threat of irregular migration and small boat crossings is a shared priority that requires shared solutions.

“The Prime Minister spoke of his government’s toughening of the system in the past year to ensure rules are respected and enforced, including a massive surge in illegal working arrests to end the false promise of jobs that are used to sell spaces on boats.

“The two leaders agreed on the need to go further and make progress on new and innovative solutions, including a new deterrent to break the business model of these gangs.

“Finally, they looked ahead to the 37th UK-France Summit taking place tomorrow and agreed to aim for concrete progress on these areas.”

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