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Britain’s Home Office said Wednesday that a year-old deal with France to return migrants crossing the Channel on small boats had ended.
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“The government’s pilot project with France to deport asylum seekers in exchange for an equal number of legal migrants is no longer processing new cases,” the Interior Ministry 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 project, known as Operation Hillmore, was part of efforts by London and Paris to combat illegal immigration across the Channel.
Under the deal, Britain could send back to France some migrants who arrived illegally by small boat and are deemed to have no right to stay in the UK. In return, Britain accepted an equal number of asylum seekers from France considered eligible 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 project until October 1. The most recent Home Office figures show that 1,087 people were returned to France between August 4, 2025 and June 30, 2026, while 1,117 were transferred to the UK under the scheme. During the same period, 27,920 migrants arrived in the UK on small boats, meaning only around 4% of arrivals were returned.
It’s one of the clearest signs of the program’s limited impact, despite government claims that it would deter smuggling gangs.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told MPs on September 15 that returning migrants cost the British taxpayer around £56,000 (€65,500) on average per migrant.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took over from Keir Starmer in July, said Brexit had made it harder to stop small boats because the UK no longer had the same level of cooperation with the EU. He refused to set a date for the end of the raids, but told the BBC that he and Mahmood would not stop until they had cracked down on “every element of this criminal and illegal activity”.
Burnham said his government was “changing its whole approach” to small boats, combining tougher control measures with safe legal routes for asylum seekers, which he said would remove the main selling point for smuggling gangs.
French 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 take sole responsibility for policing the EU’s external borders, blaming weak controls in countries of first entry and subsequent movement within the Schengen area.
Migrants trying to reach Britain pay smugglers thousands of euros for a place on overcrowded inflatable boats to cross one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Research also showed a sharp increase this year in the number of small boats leaving Belgium, as smuggling networks look for new departure points.
In total, some 197,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats since the route became a major migration route.
Additional sources • AFP
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