New £63m Channel deal provokes backlash as migrants will not be returned to France

Ministers' new £63 million Channel deal with France provoked a backlash on Monday after it emerged it will not enable migrants to be deported back to France.

The agreement - signed by Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, and her French counterpart Gerald Darmanin in Paris - will involve the UK paying for a 40 per cent rise in French officers deployed on its beaches, British officers stationed in French control rooms, and extra drones, night-vision goggles and other surveillance equipment.

Rishi Sunak hailed it as a critical agreement in "getting a grip of illegal migration in small boats", and said he was "confident" the number of illegal migrants would come down. However, he declined to guarantee that numbers would fall next year.

Mrs Braverman, who was due to make a statement on the deal to the Commons on Monday afternoon, said the deal represented "real wins", although she admitted there was no "silver bullet" and "no quick fixes".

However, Downing Street declined on Monday to say whether the Government had pursued a returns agreement with France to tackle migrant crossings as part of the deal.

A No 10 spokesman said: "I wouldn't comment on conversations in the development of policy. This is a significant deal which will build on the already significant cooperation that we have with the French.

"The Prime Minister recognises the scale of the challenge and that internationally we need to work together to tackle what is a global challenge."

Just 21 migrants out of a total 16,000 considered for removal from January 2021 to June 30 this year had been returned to "safe" countries through which they had travelled and where they should have claimed asylum. 

Experts have blamed the collapse of the Dublin returns agreement following Brexit.

Downing Street also admitted there were no targets for outcomes in the deal, raising questions over how the success and value for money of the deal will be measured. 

Asked if there were targets for outcomes, the Prime Minister's spokesman said: "There is the deal as set out but no, there is not."

Mrs Braverman has said she wants the proportion of migrants stopped from leaving French shores to double from around 40 per cent to 70-80 per cent in order to break the economic model of people smugglers.

The French interior ministry on Monday insisted it had increased the proportion to 56 per cent from 42 per cent, with more than 30,000 stopped so far this year. 

However, a total of 41,738 people have reached the UK this year, including 1,825 on Saturday. That is 40 per cent more than the figure of 28,500 for the whole of last year.

Speaking in Bali where he is meeting world leaders at a G20 summit, Mr Sunak said: "I want to be honest with people that it isn't a single thing that will magically solve this. We can't do it overnight.

"But people should be absolutely reassured that this is a top priority for me. I'm gripping it and, as I've said, in the time that I've been Prime Minister, you're already starting to see some progress with this deal with the French but that's just a start. There’s lots more we need to do."

However, Tory MPs and Border Force officers warned that the agreement did not go far enough and would not stop the surge in migrants.

Natalie Elphicke, the Tory MP for Dover, said the agreement "falls far short of what is needed" and amounted to "more of the same" rather than a radical new approach.

She said there needed to be a "joint security zone" in France with patrols by British and French officers on the beaches rather than UK officials having "observer" status, sharing live intelligence on deployments and migrant movements.

"Where the boats are found in the Channel or beaches, the joint patrols would mean the boats and migrants would be taken back to France," she said.

"There needs to be an urgent meeting between President Emmanuel Macron and Rishi Sunak to enter into a new treaty to finally tackle this issue."

Sir Roger Gale, Tory MP for North Thanet, said it was a "very modest but significant step in the right direction". 

He agreed there needed to be British officers on the beaches even if it caused a "frisson of resistance" from the French over its sovereignty.

However, he added there needed to be a pan-European agreement towards tougher border controls within and around Europe to prevent migrants exploiting free movement and international discussions to "determine who we take, what numbers, from where and in what circumstances".

Lucy Moreton, professional officer for the ISU union representing Border Force officers, told Times Radio that interrupting migrants to "just let them go to try again" would not have the required impact and nothing in the deal suggested that "the French are going to move away from that position".

"The sticking points just simply have not been addressed," she said. 

She added that intercepting migrants so they do not try to get to the UK again was not something the French "have ever wanted to do", as from the French perspective "they are going the right way and it's entirely understandable that they are not very keen to interrupt that".

It is hoped that increasing the number of gendarmes and reservists on patrol from 240 to 340 by the middle of next year will boost the proportion of migrants stopped before they leave French shores.

Some 30 per cent - or 12,000 - of the 40,000 Channel migrants are Albanian, of which 80 per cent are men. 

Under part of the agreement a new taskforce will be created, focussing on reversing the surge in Albanians and organised crime groups exploiting illegal migration routes into Western Europe and the UK.

Mrs Braverman and Mr Darmanin also agreed to step up cooperation with European partners. This will be cemented with an urgent meeting of the "Calais Group" of neighbouring countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands.

Joint UK-France analysis teams are to be set up to build on existing channels of information-sharing and increase operational cooperation as part of the French-command HQ.

There will be additional investment in reception and removal centres in France for migrants whose journeys to the UK are prevented in order to deter crossings and provide them with alternative safe options for asylum.

There will also be upgraded security measures to prevent people smuggling gangs switching to lorries, with extra investment in more surveillance, CCTV and detection dog teams at the northern French ports.

The Telegraph revealed last week that Albanian people smugglers were using social media to promote £18,000 journeys posing as a second driver on lorries bringing Christmas goods into the UK.

Ministers hope the stationing of British officers in French control rooms and French officers in their UK equivalent will be the first step in a new era of closer cooperation on tackling illegal Channel migration.

It will mean British officers will receive live intelligence on people-smuggling activity and migrant movements in northern France for the first time, rather than relying on information being passed on under the existing limited intelligence-sharing deal.

Britain has consistently pressed to go further by allowing British officers to join patrols on French beaches, but this has been resisted by the French as a breach of their sovereignty.

Stemming the flow of migrants is seen as critical by ministers amid a growing crisis over the £2.1 billion cost of the asylum backlog of more than 120,000 claimants, a four-fold increase in five years, and increasing pressures on accommodation with £5.6 million a day being spent on housing migrants in hotels.

The Government is planning to tighten laws on asylum and modern slavery in an effort to deter migrants with its Rwanda scheme, stalled as a result of High Court challenges over its legality.