According to a BBC investigation, French vessels are showing migrants which way to go if they stray off course whilst crossing the English Channel.
The revelations emerged during a BBC investigation into the alleged people smuggler, when migrants stated that the French had been very helpful, providing fuel when the boat was running low, and when they were heading in the wrong direction, the French vessels “gave us a way to go.” The French police and coastguard are subjected to harsh criticism for their tactic of “escorting” boats carrying migrants rather than forcibly intercepting them at sea.
The migrants’ fresh testimony highlights a new wave of criticism of Labour’s new £660 million deal with France. “This is jaw-dropping. Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has just agreed to pay the French over half a billion pounds of our money, mostly unconditionally,” Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Daily Express.
On 23 April 2026, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood agreed to provide Paris with £500 million to increase police patrols and purchase equipment to strengthen controls over the Channel. In addition, the Home Office will provide France with a further £160 million to test new methods of preventing unauthorised crossings of the English Channel by migrants.
The Home Office has stated that, as a result of the deal, around 1,100 police, intelligence and military personnel will be deployed in northern France to track migrants and apprehend smugglers. According to sources, this will represent a 40% increase compared to the nearly 700 officers deployed under Rishi Sunak’s agreement with Emmanuel Macron.
Paris has promised to deploy a new patrol vessel, as well as 20 officers, to intercept more migrant taxi boats in the waters. The French have stated that they have managed to stop six such vessels over the past two months. France will receive £220 million this year as part of a desperate attempt to prevent a summer surge in tourist arrivals.
A new unit of 50 riot control specialists will also be deployed to the beaches, despite the fact that French companies specialising in crowd control and maintaining public order are regularly sent to the beaches and stand by when migrants rush into the water.
In spite of this, the shocking revelations will also raise fears that this is still not a deterrent for those hoping to cross the border, as a staggering 96,002 migrants arrived in small boats between 2018 and 2025 – from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Eritrea. In the meantime, since official records began in 2018, the number of irregular migrants arriving in the UK on small boats via the English Channel has exceeded 200,000.
But in seven years, only 495 people – 0.5% – have been returned to these countries. More migrants who arrived on small boats were returned to Ireland (57 people) than to Syria (55 people) and Afghanistan (16 people). The same number of people were sent to Somalia and Tunisia as to the United States of America – three in each case.
