Two die in Channel crossing attempt hours after new beach patrol talks fail
Two migrants have died crossing the English Channel from France, hours after the Home Secretary failed to agree a new beach patrol deal aimed at reducing the number of departures.
Six other migrants were rescued, with one of them rushed to hospital for further care.
In a separate incident, two women and a man were burned when their small boat caught fire off the coast at Le Portel, local media reported.
On Tuesday, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood signed a £2 million a week extension to the current arrangement as the UK and France thrash out a longer-term agreement.
The French maritime prefecture said the small boat headed towards the beach at Gravelines, near Calais, at around 9.30am on Wednesday, where a group of about 30 migrants was waiting for it.
Responders pulled eight people onto a rescue boat when they got into difficulty, and a medical team was taken out to meet them – but two of the migrants could not be saved.
Migrants, including children, were seen struggling to board the small boat, while at least 12 French police officers were present in the beach area at the time.
A French navy helicopter later carried out a search of the area to make sure nobody was left in the water, the French authority said.
Ms Mahmood signed a two-month extension just before the near £500 million deal aimed at reducing the number of departures was due to end at midnight on Tuesday.
It means operational contracts will continue to be funded by £16.2 million of UK Government money.
When the deal was announced in 2023, the then-Tory government said the £478 million package would fund a new detention centre in France and hundreds of extra law enforcement officers on French shores.
The number of crossings has risen in the following years, with some 41,472 people arriving in the UK by small boat in 2025, and Ms Mahmood is under pressure to bring numbers down.
The Home Secretary has previously been understood to be pushing for a new deal to include performance-related clauses that would link funding to the proportion of boats intercepted by the French.
Some 4,441 migrants arrived in the first three months of 2026, according to the latest Home Office data.
This is 33% lower than the number who had reached the UK by this point in 2025, which was 6,642.
While the number of arrivals has fallen so far this year, the number of migrants arriving per boat has climbed to a new high, averaging 63 per craft over January to March.
The average across the whole of last year was 62 migrants per craft, while the figure for January-March 2025 was 56.
Steve Smith, chief executive of refugee charity Care4Calais, said: “It is a tragedy that another two lives have been lost to our deadly border.
“That this latest tragedy comes hours after the Home Secretary agreed an extension to their brutal border deal with France, is telling.
“Our border is a silent killer through political choice.
“The UK-French agreements on border security do not work as a deterrent, but they do kill. If the UK Government wanted to save lives, and end Channel crossings, they would immediately introduce safe routes for refugees to claim asylum in the UK.”