Reform UK: Why Britain can’t just return migrants to France

There is no such agreement between the UK and France.

The two countries agreed a joint action plan in 2019, external, which does provide for cooperation, but it does not allow one country to bring people rescued in the English Channel to the other country’s ports.

Richard Tice has repeatedly claimed that he had been advised it would be legal, but we have had no response to requests to see that advice.

We asked both the Home Office and the French authorities whether the UK would be legally entitled to pick people up and return them to France, but they would not comment.

There was one occasion in July when a British Border Force vessel was called to assist a French search and rescue operation off the coast of Gravelines in northern France.

The British vessel, together with the French ship involved, both took the people they had rescued Calais.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer stressed that had been an operational decision taken at the time and was not a change of policy.

In 2021, the UK government considered turning back small boats intercepted in the English Channel but the plan never went ahead.