UK strikes revised deal with France on Channel migrantson November 14, 2022 at 9:12 am

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has travelled to Paris to sign an expanded deal to try to stop people crossing the English Channel in small boats.

The amount the UK pays France to cover the cost of increased patrols at their end will go up from about £55m a year to £63m, under the revised agreement.

The number of officers patrolling the French coast to try to stop people setting off will rise from 200 to 300.

But PM Rishi Sunak said the government “can’t fix” the issue “overnight”.

Speaking while travelling to the G20 summit in Bali, the prime minister said “there’s no a single thing to do” to tackle the issue, with the deal being part of a larger package of measures.

On the visit to France, Ms Braverman told UK broadcasters that “there will be a 40% uplift in the number of French gendarmes controlling the French beaches”.

In recent weeks, she has come under growing pressure over the crossings.

So far this year, more than 40,000 people have made the perilous crossing, the highest number on record.

BBC News home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said that while the expanded deal would further disrupt the people smugglers operating in France it was unlikely to end their trade.

The British government has always stressed that there is no single solution to the problem of thousands of migrants risking their lives crossing the Channel in small boats.

But one approach tried in recent years has been to try to stop migrants leaving French shores. There are thousands of people in coastal towns there, who have travelled from other countries and are waiting for their opportunity to cross the Channel to claim asylum in the UK.

As well as extra officers and patrols, the British money will allow more use of drones and night vision equipment, and will also be spent on boosting reception and removal centres in France.

French ports will receive investment to increase the use of CCTV and detection dog teams to prevent illegal entry to the UK via lorries. UK observers will be embedded in French control rooms, and French observers embedded in UK control rooms – to help inform each other’s deployments.

The deal had been close for several months but the French government were reluctant to finalise it until there was a stable government in the UK, our correspondent says.

Lucy Moreton, the spokesperson for the ISU, the union for border and immigration officials, told the BBC’s Today programme the government’s deal was “a very early stepping stone” in the right direction.

The revised deal comes after weeks of criticism aimed at the government for severe overcrowding at the migrant processing site in Manston, Kent, and for its spending on housing for those waiting for their asylum applications to be completed.

Last month, the Home Affairs Committee heard that the UK is spending almost £7m a day on hotels for asylum seekers.

MPs also heard that only 4% of asylum claims by migrants who crossed the English Channel in 2021 had been processed.

The latest government figures for the year to the end of June 2022 showed that 103,000 asylum applications were awaiting a decision.

Ms Braverman has previously admitted the system was “broken” and Mr Sunak has said not enough asylum claims were being processed.

The home secretary will hope a new agreement with the French can ease pressure on the process.

More than 40,000 people applying for asylum have waited between one and three years for a decision on their claim, according to a Refugee Council Freedom of Information request, reported in The Guardian.

It also reported that a further 725 migrants have been waiting for more than five years to have their claim processed.

Once people who cross the English Channel in small boats reach UK shores, those who are detained are sent to Manston Airport in Kent where they undergo security and identity checks.

They are only meant to be held there for a short period before moving into the Home Office’s asylum accommodation system while their claims are processed.

However, last month it emerged there was severe overcrowding at Manston, with 4,000 people staying there rather than the 1,600 for which the site was intended.

Numbers have since been reduced to less than 1,600, according to immigration minister Robert Jenrick.

On Saturday it emerged people at Manston centre are to be vaccinated against highly contagious and sometimes fatal diphtheria after an outbreak.

The higher numbers of migrants making the crossing this year has been partly blamed on a big rise in the number of Albanian nationals making the journey.

So far this year 12,000 Albanians have arrived in the UK using small boats, compared to just 50 in 2020.