Yesterday, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the French Republic announced a first-of-its-kind agreement, which will be operationalised in the coming weeks, between the UK and France to return people who have arrived on small boats as part of a new one-for-one pilot agreement to prevent small boat crossings.
The initiative will help undermine the organised criminal gangs business model. This pilot will enable the readmission of small boat arrivals from the UK to France and, in return, an equal number of people will be able to come to the UK from France through a new legal route. These will need to be fully documented, subject to strict security checks and only those who have not attempted illegal entry to the UK will be eligible.
This controlled and managed pilot will be reviewed and refined over the course of the pilot.
This groundbreaking initiative is a pivotal moment in a new phase of UK-France co-operation and comes alongside the French maritime review on operations in French waters.
The UK and France recognise there is no single silver bullet to tackle illegal migration and dangerous boat crossings and this pilot forms part of a multi-step strategy—starting with our upstream co-operation, our two countries are working together through the new joint upstream working group, chaired by the Border Security Commander and the Minister of Interior’s special representative on migration. We will scale up operations, enhance intelligence sharing, and explore how we can strengthen our returns procedures. We are targeting from source to transit countries to deter people from making these perilous journeys. We are strengthening our law enforcement partnership to disrupt the criminal gangs and enhancing our joint maritime effort.
Law enforcement will be bolstered to be at the heart of our activities in France, this includes a new specialist unit—Compagnie de Marche; a new specialist judicial and police unit in Dunkirk and Lille—the Groupe d’Appui Operationnel to speed up arrests and prosecutions; and increased capacity in Police Nationale.
As part of this transformed approach, we have also been working closely with France on enhancing maritime co-operation and supporting their review through resources, equipment and expertise. The ongoing maritime review is a big step, and this shift will make it increasingly difficult for smugglers to launch boats and put lives at risk.
No one should be making these dangerous boat crossings which undermine our border security and put lives at risk.
This new co-operation with France goes to show how this Government are taking action to secure our borders and deliver our plan for change.
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