UK and France extend talks over new small boats deal

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Brian Wheeler,Political reporterand

Joe Pike,Political correspondent

PA Media

French police patrol beaches as part of efforts to disrupt smuggling gangs

The UK is to pay France £16.2m to patrol beaches for the next two months, as the two sides continue to hammer out a new deal to intercept small boats attempting to cross the English Channel.

Under a three-year agreement signed in 2023, the UK has paid £476m to France for extra patrols to disrupt migrant smuggling gangs.

That agreement had been due to expire at midnight - but talks to renew it have been extended by two months, as the UK pushes for more enforcement officers to be deployed by the French authorities.

UK sources claimed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was “driving a hard bargain to deliver a better deal for the British people,” adding: “We need more bang for our buck”.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Labour were paying France for “continued failure”.

He added: “We shouldn’t pay the French a penny until they agree to substantially increase their prevention rate and start intercepting at sea by force - as they promised last summer.”

Liberal Democrats immigration and asylum spokesperson Will Forster MP said “blowing up our international partnerships is never going to fix the problems in our immigration and asylum system”.

“The only way to properly deter people from making these dangerous crossings and to break the criminal gangs’ business model for good is to agree a large-scale returns agreement with France,” he said.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform leader Nigel Farage have both said UK needs to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to stop small boat crossings.

Speaking on Tuesday, Reform UK Treasury Spokesperson Robert Jenrick said: “You can’t spend hundreds of millions of pounds begging the French to take action” as he called such a move a “complete farce”.

“The UK needs a sovereign deterrent,” he added as he called for the government to “detain and deport every single illegal migrant who comes into our country”.

The French authorities are reported by The Guardian to be concerned that UK demands could put the lives of asylum seekers at greater risk.

Under the current deal, nearly 700 law enforcement officers are on the ground patrolling beaches, using drones and buggies to stop people getting on boats.

The UK government claims the deal has prevented 42,000 illegal migrants getting on boats, although the overall number making the journey across the Channel has continued to increase.

The two month extension to the patrol deal is being backed by £16.2m in UK funding, according to the Home Office.

In a statement, Mahmood said: "Our work with France has stopped 42,000 attempts by illegal migrants to make the journey across the Channel.

"While we finalise a new and improved UK-France deal, French law enforcement operations to stop illegal migrants in France will continue.

“I will do whatever it takes to restore order and control at our borders.”

When it was announced in 2023, the previous Conservative government said the £476m package would fund a new detention centre in France and hundreds of extra law enforcement officers on France’s northern shores.

France agreed to make an unspecified “substantial and continuing” contribution.

Crossings in the Channel have increased over the past three years, with 41,472 people arriving in the UK by small boat in 2025 and Mahmood is under pressure to bring numbers down.

The home secretary is understood to be pushing for the new arrangement to include performance-related clauses that would link funding to the proportion of boats intercepted by the French, as first reported by the Times.

In August 2025, the Labour government signed a separate “one-in-one-out” deal with France, which allows the UK to return some small boat arrivals to France while admitting an equivalent number of migrants from France who have not attempted to come to the UK.

As of February this year, 305 people had been returned to France and 367 people had arrived in the UK under the scheme.

On pulling out of the ECHR, the Tory leader said: “The government came in with a promise to smash the gangs and that has not happened”.

Badenoch added that the Conservatives had a borders plan which supports leaving the ECHR “including working with our European partners, a removals force and returns backed up by visa sanctions.”

Speaking to reporters earlier at a news conference, the Reform leader said a renewed deal “wouldn’t make any difference”.

“Even if the French do stop boats from crossing, the same people come back the next time there is a calm day,” Farage added.

He said a Reform UK government would order the Royal Navy to tow small boats back to northern France, which he claimed would be possible if the UK pulled out of the ECHR.

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