Home Secretary signs last-minute France migrant deal as negotiations continue

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has signed a two-month extension to the current beach patrol deal with France hours before the illegal migration agreement was due to expire.

The existing near £500 million arrangement was due to end at midnight on Wednesday morning and the extension has been signed while the UK and France continue to thrash out a deal.

Operational contracts will be funded by £16.2 million in UK funding which will be covered as part of the new deal, the Home Office said.

A Home Office spokesperson told the Press Association: “The Home Secretary is driving a hard bargain with the French to deliver the best deal for the British people to prevent illegal migrants crossing the channel. Essentially getting more bang for our buck.”

When it was announced in 2023, the previous 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 have 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.

She has previously been understood to be pushing for the new arrangement to include performance-related clauses that would link funding to the proportion of boats intercepted by the French, as first reported by the Times.

The Home Secretary said: “Our work with France has stopped 42,000 attempts by illegal migrants to make the journey across the Channel.

“While we finalise a new and improved UK-France deal, French law enforcement operations to stop illegal migrants in France will continue.

“I will do whatever it takes to restore order and control at our borders.”

Xavier Ducept, France’s junior minister for the sea, has criticised the UK for making demands that risk the lives of asylum seekers.

According to Le Monde, he told a French parliamentary commission of inquiry last week: “What we want is for … the British to contribute to funding interception systems, which are very expensive. But they must not make this funding conditional on a type of efficiency that could be extremely dangerous for migrants, for the (security) services, and for France … rescue comes first. And the law.”

Responding to the announcement, shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “France is stopping fewer small boat illegal immigrants than ever. The bottom line is there should not be any illegal immigrants attempting to seek asylum in the UK having left France in the first place – because France is a safe country.

“Labour don’t have the backbone to get a deal over the line. They are now going to pay £2 million a week for continued failure. We shouldn’t pay the French a penny until they agree to substantially increase their prevention rate and start intercepting at sea by force – as they promised last summer.

“Starmer has now presided over the most Channel crossings of any Prime Minister – up 45% since the election. His absurd claim to ‘smash the gangs’ lies in tatters.

“Ending illegal immigration requires real deterrence and only the Conservative Party has a comprehensive plan to rapidly remove every illegal arrival by leaving the ECHR.”

Nigel Farage said the UK needs to come out of the European Convention on Human Rights to stop small boat crossings.

Speaking at Heathrow Airport, the Reform UK leader said: “Tomorrow will be a very busy day in the English Channel and it wouldn’t make any difference whether we agreed to a further £365 million or not, even if the French do stop boats from crossing, the same people come back the next time there is a calm day, and it’s all about pull factors, it’s all about the fact you’ve got a 97.5% chance, whoever you are, of staying in the United Kingdom if you illegally cross the Channel in a small boat.”

Mr Farage added he had spoken to French politician Jordan Bardella about the issue. The Reform leader told him that under his plans, the Royal Navy will tow boats back to northern France.

Mr Farage said: “None of this will happen all the while we stay part of the outdated European Convention on Human Rights.”

So far this year, some 4,441 people have arrived in the UK on small boats.