Yvette Cooper has said the deal struck with France to return Channel migrants will not stop the crossings on their own, as she refused to confirm how many migrants would be returned under the scheme.
The Home Secretary said the agreement, which begins on Tuesday, was about the principle rather than the number itself. Ms Cooper pointed to a similar accord between Greece and Turkey in 2016 which she said brought down numbers of migrants to Greece.
Migrants for the swap will begin to be detained from Wednesday, she told broadcasters. It is hoped the first migrants will be returned by the end of August. In exchange Britain will receive asylum seekers who have ties to the country through a legal route.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Ms Cooper said: “We never claimed that there is a single silver bullet on this. So this goes alongside the 28% increase in returns of failed asylum seekers that we have brought in.
“It goes alongside the change to those French maritime rules that I referred to which means France taking action in French waters to prevent boat crossings in the first place, and the much stronger law enforcement that we announced earlier this week with the additional National Crime Agency investigators and police to be able to go after the criminal gangs. We have to do all of these things.”
Ms Cooper said the Government does not want to put a number on the amount of Channel migrants that will be returned to France, as she believed it could aid criminal gangs.
It has been reported that about 50 a week could be sent to France. This would be a stark contrast to the more than 800 people every week who on average have arrived in the UK via small boat this year.
She told BBC Radio 4: “We are not putting an overall figure on this programme.
“Of course, it will start with lower numbers and then build, but we want to be able to expand it. We want to be able to increase the number of people returned through this programme.”
She added: “We will provide regular updates, people will be able to see how many people are being detained, how many people are being returned, and it is right that we should be transparent around that.
“But we’re not setting the numbers in advance, firstly because there is no fixed number in terms of the overall number of people to come through this system, and secondly because we’re not going to provide (gangs) with that operational information.”
The initial agreement will be in place until June 2026. Ms Cooper told Nick Ferrari on LBC that the UK will do security checks in France on the asylum seekers who are brought to the UK in exchange for returned Channel migrants. They will have their biometric data taken.
She also said any family members of successful asylum seekers brought to the UK would be included in the quota, so would have an equivalent number sent back to France.
Some 25,436 people have already made the journey this year, according to PA news agency analysis of Home Office figures – 49% higher than at the same point in 2024.
She continued: “I think this is the right principle that we should be pursuing, that people who are arriving on small boats should, frankly, be returned to France. They’re coming on illegal boats, they’re paying thousands of pounds to people smugglers. That money should be lost, and they should be returned.
“And also the principle that where we take people from other countries, we should do so through a legal process, where people have gone through security checks. Those are the right principles to establish.”
On Monday, shadow home secretary Chris Philp attacked the plans, saying they would return “just 6% of illegal arrivals” and “make no difference whatsoever”.
Ms Cooper also told broadcasters that the Government was still aiming to close asylum hotels by the end of the Parliament. She said just over 200 were still operating.
She told BBC Radio 4: “The big blockage now is in the appeals system, again, a broken system that we’ve inherited. We’re going to have to do some major reforms to the appeals system, setting those out later this year.
“I think it’s just unacceptable that if you’ve got somebody who has been turned down in the asylum system, on a fair basis, they can end up then still being stuck in the system even for years, as a result of delays in the asylum system.”
