The UK Government wants to see police removing hundreds of migrants from French beaches every year under the latest multimillion-pound Channel crossings deal.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood signed a three-year £662 million agreement with France in Dunkirk on Thursday.
Ministers stopped short of setting specific targets to measure the success of the deal but the Home Office said the arrangement will see officers “targeting and detaining” migrants on the French coast “with an aim to remove hundreds of small boat migrants from French beaches every year.”
Ms Mahmood told reporters she did not want to set targets because she thought the “British public would be fed up and pretty cynical about that” but insisted she was “absolutely committed” to reducing the numbers and that she believed the deal would make a difference.
Riot police will be sent on to beaches to stop migrants entering the Channel as part of a raft of measures agreed as Britain hands over more money to France in a bid to curb crossings.
The 50-strong squad of police officers trained in “riot and crowd control tactics” will be drafted in to tackle violence and “hostile crowds” at the water’s edge and used alongside a series of other fresh strategies being tested out amid efforts to stop migrants boarding boats.
The Home Office said the number of officers sent to curb attempted journeys from northern France to Britain will also rise by about 42% when the agreement comes into force in the summer – typically the busiest time for crossings.
Part of the funding will be conditional on cutting the number of arrivals for the first time since the start of the migrant crisis.
Ms Mahmood said it was “critical” for both countries to work together as she hailed the “landmark” deal, which will be in place until March 2029, adding: “We will be assessing and judging it every day it is in operation.”
It means the UK will hand over £501 million to cover five police units and enforcement activity on French beaches – with an extra £160 million only paid if new tactics to curb Channel crossings succeed.
If efforts fail, the additional funding will stop after a year, the Home Office said.
Releasing more details of the deal, the department said 200 officers are also set to be drafted into a new detention centre in Dunkirk to deport migrants which is set to open by the end of the year.
They will focus on removing people from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam and Yemen – the top 10 nationalities of migrants who made the journey last year.
The agreement will also see:
– Drone and camera surveillance, as well as helicopter patrols, stepped up.
– The number of police, intelligence and military officers deployed rising from 750 to nearly 1,100.
– French police double down on fresh tactics to tackle so-called taxi boats – where people smugglers try to avoid detection by sending one person sailing a dinghy along the coast alone to beaches where migrants scramble aboard in the water.
London and Paris previously failed to agree a new beach patrol deal and instead Ms Mahmood signed a £2 million-a-week extension to the existing arrangement while a longer-term was thrashed out.
Ms Mahmood said she did not sign a deal earlier and decided to continue negotiations to make sure she “got the best possible deal for British taxpayers”.
Earlier this month, a Sudanese man was charged over the deaths of four migrants who drowned after being swept away by strong currents while trying to cross the Channel.
So far this year, more than 6,000 migrants have arrived in the UK after making the journey, down 36% on the number this time last year, Press Association analysis of government figures shows.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said France “shouldn’t get a single penny unless they stop the vast majority of the boats”.
Charity the Refugee Council warned policing the Channel was treating the “symptom not the cause” and will not prevent “desperate people” from turning to dangerous crossings in the first place, while Care4Calais said Anglo-French beach deals lead to more migrant deaths while attempting the journey.
