UK and France extend talks over new small boats deal

The UK is to pay France £16.2m to patrol beaches for the next two months, as the two sides continue to hammer out a new deal to intercept small boats attempting to cross the English Channel.

Under a three-year agreement signed in 2023, the UK has paid £476m to France for extra patrols to disrupt migrant smuggling gangs.

That agreement had been due to expire at midnight - but talks to renew it have been extended by two months, as the UK pushes for more enforcement officers to be deployed by the French authorities.

UK sources claimed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was "driving a hard bargain to deliver a better deal for the British people," adding: "We need more bang for our buck".

But Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: "Labour don't have the backbone to get a deal over the line.

"They are now going to pay £2m 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."

The French authorities are reported by The Guardian to be concerned that UK demands could put the lives of asylum seekers at greater risk.

Under the current deal, nearly 700 law enforcement officers are on the ground patrolling beaches, using drones and buggies to stop people getting on boats.

The UK government claims the deal has prevented 42,000 illegal migrants getting on boats, although the overall number making the journey across the Channel has continued to increase.

The two month extension to the patrol deal is being backed by £16.2m in UK funding, according to the Home Office.

In a statement, Mahmood 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."

When it was announced in 2023, the previous Conservative government said the £476m package would fund a new detention centre in France and hundreds of extra law enforcement officers on France's northern shores.

France agreed to make an unspecified "substantial and continuing" contribution.

Crossings in the Channel have increased over the past three years, with 41,472 people arriving in the UK by small boat in 2025 and Mahmood is under pressure to bring numbers down.

The home secretary is 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.

In August 2025, the Labour government signed a separate "one-in-one-out" deal with France, which allows the UK to return some small boat arrivals to France while admitting an equivalent number of migrants from France who have not attempted to come to the UK.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the UK needed to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to stop small boat crossings.

Speaking to reporters earlier at a news conference at Heathrow Airport, he said a renewed deal "wouldn't make any difference".

"Even if the French do stop boats from crossing, the same people come back the next time there is a calm day," he added.

He said a Reform UK government would order the Royal Navy to tow small boats back to northern France, which he claimed would be possible if the UK pulled out of the ECHR.