The UK and France have signed a groundbreaking deal to tackle illegal migration, with the UK Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, describing the new “one in, one out” migrant scheme as “robust” enough to withstand potential legal challenges. The pilot scheme, announced by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, proposes that for each migrant the UK returns to France, Britain will accept another who has made a legal claim in France.
Cooper emphasized that the government had done “a lot of work to make sure that the system is robust to legal challenges”, which had previously hindered efforts to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda under the former Conservative government. “We will want to extend it as far as we’re able to,” Cooper added, highlighting the government’s commitment to making the scheme a success. The pilot is expected to involve around 50 people a week, with the UK returning migrants who arrive in small boats back to France.
The deal aims to disrupt the operations of people smugglers and deter Channel crossings. Macron said the scheme would have a “deterrent effect” beyond the numbers returned, and suggested Brexit had made it harder for the UK to tackle illegal migration. “They will be paying thousands of pounds to people smugglers to no avail,” Cooper said, highlighting the impact of the scheme on migrants who attempt to return to the UK after being sent back to France.
However, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp dismissed the plan as a “gimmick” that will allow the majority of illegal migrants to remain in the UK. “The Rwanda scheme originally proposed by Boris Johnson would have seen 100% of illegal arrivals being removed,” Philp said, describing Sir Keir’s decision to axe the plan as a “catastrophic” mistake. Cooper countered that only four migrants had ever been sent to Rwanda and on a voluntary basis, and described the previous government’s approach to migration as “chaos”.
The pilot scheme will be accompanied by a plan to target those working illegally in the UK, which Cooper said was a pull factor driving small boat crossings. Migrants who attempt to come back a second time, having already been sent back to France, will be “immediately returned again” and “banned from entering the UK asylum system,” Cooper stated.
Lucy Moreton of the Immigration Services Union warned that legal challenges linked to the scheme “could take a year”. She also raised concerns about the selection process for return to France, asking whether a criteria would be set or whether it would just be the first 50 people who arrive, and said there could be a “legal challenge that flows from that”.
Since 2018, when figures began to be gathered, more than 170,000 people have arrived in the UK in small boats. Numbers this year have reached record levels with nearly 20,000 arriving in the first six months of 2025. The UK government expects legal challenges, but remains confident that France’s status as a safe country and signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights will bolster the legal standing of the deal.