Migrants arriving in the UK by “small boat” will be returned imminently to France under a one-in-one-out scheme, says a Home Office minister.
Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said the pilot programme agreed last month at an Anglo-French summit between Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron would start soon.
She outlined the timeline after official data showed more than 25,000 asylum seekers and economic migrants have arrived in Britain by crossing the Channel already this year.
“It’s incredibly frustrating to see those figures,” Dame Diana told Sky News.
“But I would say that we have in place now a whole range of measures to start to tackle the small boat problem including developing that relationship with the French, our piloting of this returns policy, that will start imminently.”
She added: “We have also got the French authorities reviewing their way of tackling the small boats on the north French coast where up until now they refused to engage once someone was in a boat in shallow water, they would not intervene, they are now looking at that.”
The Home Office confirmed that 898 people in 13 boats were brought ashore in Dover on Wednesday, bringing the annual total to 25,436.
This 25,000 mark was passed significantly faster than in previous years, even the record year of 2022 for crossings when it was reached on August 27.
The number of crossings tends to rise sharply in the summer months when the sea conditions are calmer.
Around two thirds of arrivals are granted asylum or leave to remain in the UK.
A series of protests have recently taken place outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Epping, Essex, and other towns.
Under the one-in-one-out scheme, Britain will return migrants who arrive by small boats to France and will accept a refugee who has a genuine right to come to the UK, for example through a family reunification route.
The pilot project is expected to initially only return a small number of migrants to France, possibly as few as 50.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “Their 17 in one out deal with France will not even make a dent – it would take ten years for Yvette Cooper to deport the illegal immigrants that have arrived since the start of this year alone under her so-called deal which still hasn’t started.
“The Conservative Party’s Deportation Bill would bring this circus to an end. We would detain illegal arrivals on the spot, deport them without delay. If the ECHR stands in our way, we will leave it.”
However, the Tories failed to get their “Rwanda” deportation scheme off the ground.
Sir Keir’s “smash the gangs” tactics to target the human traffickers behind the crossings also appears to have had little impact.
But Dame Diana sought to argue: “You can’t say that the Government plan to deal with the gangs behind this awful trade in human misery is failing because at the moment we ‘ve got the first ever deal that we have been able to do with France in terms of a returns policy.”
Pressed though that the numbers in the pilot scheme is dwarfed by the daily arrivals on UK shores, she added: “It’s a start.”
