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The UK’s Home Office said on Wednesday that its year-old deal with France to return migrants crossing the Channel on small boats had ended.
“The government’s pilot with France to remove asylum seekers in exchange for an equal number of legal migrants is no longer processing new cases,” the Home Office said, confirming the end of the so-called “one in, one out” deal, which was launched in August last year and was due to expire on Thursday.
The scheme, known as Operation Hillmore, was part of efforts by London and Paris to tackle illegal migration across the English Channel.
Under the arrangement, Britain could return to France some migrants who arrived illegally by small boat and were judged to have no right to remain in the UK. In exchange, Britain accepted an equal number of asylum seekers from France considered likely to qualify for protection, with priority given to vulnerable nationalities and people with family or other links to the UK.
The two countries agreed in June to extend the pilot until 1 October. The most recent Home Office figures show that 1,087 people were returned to France between 4 August 2025 and 30 June 2026, while 1,117 were transferred to the UK under the scheme. Over the same period, 27,920 migrants arrived in the UK on small boats, meaning only about 4% of arrivals were sent back.
That was one of the clearest signs of the programme’s limited impact, despite government claims that it would deter people-smuggling gangs.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told MPs on 15 September that it cost the UK taxpayer an average of about £56,000 (€65,500) per migrant to return them.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who succeeded Keir Starmer in July, said that Brexit had made stopping small boats harder because the UK no longer had the same level of cooperation with the EU. He declined to set a date for ending the crossings, but told the BBC he and Mahmood would not stop until they had cracked down on “every element of this criminal, illegal activity”.
Burnham has said his government is “changing the whole approach” to small boats, pairing tougher enforcement with safe legal routes for asylum seekers, which he argues would take away the smuggling gangs’ main selling point.
France’s interior minister Laurent Nuñez told lawmakers in June that France wanted a more European approach to illegal migration. He also argued that France should not have to bear sole responsibility for policing an EU external border, blaming weak controls in countries of first entry and onward movement within the Schengen area.
Migrants trying to reach Britain pay smugglers thousands of euros for places on overcrowded inflatable boats to cross one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Research has also shown a sharp rise this year in small boats setting off from Belgium, as smuggling networks look for new launch points.
Overall, some 197,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats since the route emerged as a major migration pathway.
Additional sources • AFP