A new detention centre to prevent migrants leaving France on small boats is to be funded by Britain as part of a £500 million three-year Anglo-French deal announced by Rishi Sunak.
Migrants detained in the centre can be held for up to 90 days before being sent back to their home country if safe to do so, or to the last country through which they travelled if not.
The Prime Minister said the new deal would take Anglo-French cooperation in combating the surge in migrants to “an unprecedented level” with the number of officers patrolling the beaches also more than doubled to 800 and the creation of a new joint command centre.
The agreement - backed by £478 million from Britain over three years - came at the end of a one-day bilateral summit between Mr Sunak and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in which they declared an “entente renewed”.
What Mr Sunak described as a “new chapter” in Anglo-French relations was sealed in a one-to-one meeting without officials lasting more than an hour at the Elysee Palace, an impromptu decision taken just hours before they met.
The French will be spending five times the UK’s funds - bringing the total to £3 billion over three years - but Mr Macron said he still remained opposed to a bilateral deal to take back Channel migrants who arrive illegally in the UK from France, arguing instead that it would have to be negotiated with the EU as a whole.
The Prime Minister also indicated that Friday’s announcement was not the “end of the story” but was an extension of last November’s £63 million deal which increased officers by 40 per cent to 300 and allowed British Border Force officers to join beach patrols and work in French control rooms.
“The more that I’ve spent looking at this problem, the more time and energy I’ve devoted to it, the more convinced I am that we can grip the problem and I’m going to throw absolutely everything we can at doing so,” he said.
“The new [Illegal Migration Bill] this week was a big part of that but I’ve always said that increasing cooperation with our French allies is a part of it as well. And it won’t finish today either.
“November was a start, hopefully we can go and build on that today and I’m sure that won’t be the end of the story either. This will be a continued partnership.”
It comes amid fears that as many as 80,000 migrants could cross the Channel following the record 45,500 last year. More than 3,000 have already reached the UK this year on small boats, although the French have prevented 3,000 leaving the beaches.
The French border force, gendarmes and police are currently stopping more than half but officials believe it needs to be increased to 80 to 90 per cent if the business model of the people smuggling gangs is to be broken.
The new detention centre in Dunkirk, costing Britain 30 million euros (£27 million) over three years, will be the first funded by the UK and will have capacity for about 140 migrants.
There are 25 such “Centres de Rétention Administratives (CRA)” in France including one near the Eurotunnel in Coquelles. They are similar to UK immigration removal centres where illegal migrants with no right to remain are detained while awaiting deportation. They can be held for 90 days which can be extended by a judge.
British officials believe it will help deter migrants, many of whom are freed to make further crossing attempts because police fail to arrest them. It is not an offence in France to attempt to cross the Channel.
Britain and France hope to have half the extra 500 officers in place by the end of the year. They will be backed by a new permanent French mobile policing unit dedicated to tackling small boats. The extra funding will also pay for more drones, aircraft and other surveillance technology.
The French efforts will be overseen by a new 24/7 “zonal coordination centre”, which will have permanent UK liaison officers enabling intelligence to be shared between the two countries in real time.
Britain has given France more than £250 million in successive deals since 2015 but Mr Sunak said: “We don’t need to manage this problem, we need to break it. And today, we have gone further than ever before to put an end to this disgusting trade in human life”.
Mr Sunak said the £478 million was a “sensible investment” that would not have been made “unless we thought it was going to go on things that will make a difference”.
“Everyone knows that we are spending five and a half million pounds a day plus on hotels. We would rather not do that, and the best way to stop that is to stop people coming in the first place,” he said.
He warned, however, there was “no one silver bullet to solve” the problem, citing the new Bill that will give the Government powers to detain migrants, remove them to a safe country and ban them for life from returning, and the need for returns agreements with other countries.
Britain has been pressing Mr Macron to help the UK secure a new EU-wide deal to replace the previous pre-Brexit Dublin agreement so that Channel migrants can be returned to the EU. Since Brexit, just 21 migrants have been returned to EU countries and none to France.
However, Mr Macron said: “First we need to focus on what we have to do in the short term - to prevent illegal migration, to try to dismantle all these boat networks. I think the level of ambition of the new plan is exactly what we need.
“Second, [returns] is not an agreement between the UK and France but an agreement between the UK and EU, because the Dublin agreements are no longer in a situation to be implemented, so this is something that now needs to be negotiated.”
The “entente renewed” also saw an agreement to combat the threat to energy supplies from Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine which will include France examining the development of energy interconnectors to share electricity when one or another country’s supply comes under threat during the winter.
There will also be a new deal on civil nuclear cooperation to prevent dependency on fossil fuels from countries like Russia.
The two leaders also committed to easing post-Brexit barriers to school trips between Britain and France. A new, simple ID form will be developed so children can go to each country if they do not have passports.
