UK to pay France extra cash to stop small boat crossings – but only if it works

Britain will pay France extra money to stop migrants leaving its shores and crossing the Channel in small boats – but only if it works.

The move, part of a £662 million deal over the next three years, is another attempt to reduce the growing number of people making the perilous journey to the UK.

The Home Office said around £160m of this money would be spent on new tactics such as stopping “taxi boats” picking up migrants offshore, and that this depended on the success of the French operation.

France will be measured by the number of boats stopped, the number of people smugglers arrested and the number of migrants stopped from boarding boats, among other things.

Britain will pay around £501 million for more police officers and more surveillance technology along the coast of northern France, despite a previous funding increase failing to reduce the number of Channel crossings.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs said there would be a 40 percent increase in the number of boats operating in northern France, increasing the number of law enforcement officers from 700 to around 1,100.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood promised the deal would stop migrants’ perilous journey to the UK, but the charity Refugee Council said ministers were “treating the symptom, not the cause”.

Under the previous Conservative government, then prime minister Rishi Sunak agreed to give France around £500 million over three years to tackle small boat crossings. Despite the increase in funding and policing, crossings across the Channel have increased rapidly, with around 41,472 people reaching the UK on small boats in 2025.

This number was 36,816 in 2024 and 29,437 in 2023. The highest number of crossings was in 2022, when around 46,000 people traveled to the UK.

According to the latest data for 2025, 41 per cent of asylum seekers arrived in a small boat, 11 per cent by other irregular means of entry such as a lorry, and 39 per cent had previously entered the UK on a valid visa before claiming asylum.

Ms Mahmood, who is under pressure to reduce the figures, welcomed the new deal with France and promised it would “stop illegal immigrants making the perilous journey and put people smugglers behind bars”.

Under the deal, the French will also deploy a new unit of 50 police officers specially trained in riot and crowd control tactics to enable them to better deal with dozens of migrants trying to board the flimsy boats.

The number of experts in the intelligence police unit, which focuses on tracking human traffickers, will also be increased from 18 to 30.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the “historic deal” would include “increasing intelligence, surveillance and troops on the ground to protect Britain’s borders”.

But Imran Hussain, director of external affairs at the Refugee Council, said: “By focusing on policing the Canal, the government is treating the symptom, not the cause. “Police alone will not stop desperate people turning to dangerous small boats in the first place.

“Without safe routes to reach the UK, men, women and children will be forced into potentially fatal small boat crossings.”

Independent Last month it reported that the number of migrants dying trying to cross the border had risen after Mr Sunak signed the UK-France deal.

17 people have died or gone missing in six deadly incidents in the last four months of 2023, shortly after Mr Sunak signed a £460 million deal with French President Emmanuel Macron to halt small boat migration.

The following year, 83 people were recorded dead or missing in 22 incidents; This was the deadliest year in history. Figures compiled by Sociodigital Futures Center University of Bristol and Swiss research agency Frontier Forensic Sciences at the show. Another 29 people have died or gone missing in 20 deadly incidents in 2025, researchers say.

Charities working in northern France have reported a cultural shift in French policing, with police becoming more aggressive and being forced to act more decisively to justify UK funding.

The boats became even more crowded, with more than 100 people crammed into the boats in some cases, according to a report by the University of Bristol and Border Forensics. As the number of officers increased, traffickers resorted to dangerous tactics such as picking people up from the water and departing from further points along the coast.

Figures from 2019 to 2025 show that more people traveling in small boats across the Channel does not lead to more deaths.