UK and France strike new £662m small boats deal

Riot-trained police will be sent to beaches in France as part of a new £662m deal with the UK to stop illegal migrants from crossing the English Channel.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to sign the three-year agreement with France on Thursday, which will see at least 50 police officers, each trained in "riot and crowd control tactics", drafted in to tackle violence and "hostile crowds".

The deal will also involve France deploying millions of pounds worth of drones, two new helicopters, and a new camera system to track down and intercept people smugglers and illegal migrants.

For the first time, ministers have said around £100m of UK funding could be redirected or withdrawn after a year, if French authorities do not stop enough people making the journey.

Speaking ahead of the new deal being signed, Mahmood said: "Our work with the French has stopped tens of thousands of illegal migrants boarding boats headed to Britain.

"But we must do more. This landmark deal will stop illegal migrants making the perilous journey and put people smugglers behind bars."

The Conservatives accused the government of handing over "half a billion pounds of our money with no conditions at all".

Reform UK accused the government of giving France more money "for a system that has already failed".

Crossings in the Channel have increased over the past three years, with 41,472 people arriving in the UK by small boat in 2025. This has prompted criticism that enforcement by French authorities has got worse.

While some UK politicians argue France should be doing more, its government has said police are intercepting boats at sea, aiming to stop them before migrants get onboard.

On Saturday, 602 migrants arrived in Dover on nine boats, bringing the total number of arrivals so far in 2026 to more than 6,000.

Under the previous deal, which was signed in 2023, the UK paid £476m to France for extra patrols to disrupt migrant smuggling gangs.

The arrangement, which saw around 700 law enforcement officers patrolling beaches in France, was expected to expire next month.

The Home Office has said the number of officers sent to curb attempted journeys from northern France to Britain will rise by about 42% when the new agreement comes into force in the summer.

It will involve nearly 1,100 law enforcement, intelligence and military officers in northern France, tasked with tracking down illegal migrants and stopping them boarding boats.

France will also supply a new vessel and more than 20 additional maritime officers to target so-called taxi boats.

Some £501m will be spent on boosting enforcement action on beaches - with additional funding of £160m if the new tactics to curb crossings succeed.

It is the latter amount that could be reduced after a year if there are not significant cuts to small boat crossings.

In the last two months, French authorities are said to have stopped six migrant boats. They returned all migrants to France and sentenced five smugglers to prison and deportation.

But the Conservatives and Reform have both said the UK needs to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to stop the crossings.

In response to the new deal, Chris Philp, Conservative MP and shadow home secretary, said: "The government's deal hands over half a billion pounds of our money with no conditions at all.

"France only prevented a third of embarkations last year and even let those illegal immigrants go to try again. France shouldn't get a single penny unless they stop the vast majority of the boats."

Reform UK Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf called the deal "astonishing".

"It is an abhorrent misuse of taxpayers' hard-earned money - funding that could instead deliver thousands of new nurses or police officers here in the UK," he said.

The Liberal Democrats have said the only way to properly deter people from making the crossings is to permanently break the criminal gangs business model and agree a large-scale returns agreement with France.

The Refugee Council argued the focus should not be on policing the Channel but on vulnerable people looking for safety.

Imran Hussain, the council's director of external affairs, said: "Policing alone will not prevent desperate people from turning to dangerous small boats in the first place.

"Without safe routes to reach the UK, these men, women and children will be forced into dangerous and potentially deadly small boat crossings."

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.

The government said nearly 60,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals had been removed or deported from the UK since the government took office.