In 2024, 43,630 asylum-seekers and others arrived illegally in the UK, and 36,649 of these came via small boats across the Channel. As of 6 June this year almost 15,000 people had arrived in the UK in small boats, up 42% on the same period last year.
In a recent poll of readers of the Labour-leaning Daily Mirror, 56% said that the government’s priority this summer should be “tackling the small boats crisis”. Labour’s success or failure at the next general election could depend on how well it rises to this challenge.
A returns agreement proposal
This article examines a scheme that could deter small-boat crossings and reduce the number of new illegal entrants, while ensuring the safe and legal transit of a capped number of refugees processed by the UK in France. The core of the scheme would be a UK/France returns agreement whereby France allowed the UK to return one illegal arrival for each refugee granted a safe and legal route across the Channel. The safe route would be accessed via a UK-staffed centre in France which would process claims of asylum-seekers.
France and the UK are already discussing a returns agreement
France and the UK are currently discussing a returns agreement under which the UK would return one illegal cross-Channel arrival to France in exchange for receiving from France one asylum-seeker having family links with the UK. This deal could be expanded to cover a one-to-one link between returns and visas issued under a safe-route scheme such as the one outlined below.
There would be no guarantee that France would agree to such a returns agreement, but the reason it might agree would be the same reason that is driving current negotiations on returns between the UK and France – the desire on both sides to deter asylum-seekers from seeking to enter the UK illegally from France.
A spokesperson for France’s interior ministry has said this in so many words: “France’s interest is to discourage migrants (and smuggling networks) from attempting to reach the UK from France.”
France might also be sympathetic to a UK asylum office in France. In the wake of a tragedy in which 12 people lost their lives in a cross-Channel crossing last year, France’s interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, called for migrants to be able to claim UK asylum from within the EU.
A returns agreement would provide visas for a new, legal safe route
The UK Government could offer combined asylum/work visas, alongside priority asylum visas. Most visas would be work visas because most of the asylum seekers aiming to cross the Channel are male adults of working age. Applications for visas would be made at a UK-staffed centre in France, which would provide advice and assistance, and a venue for interviews. Appeals would be online and the French centre could provide a venue for remote attendance at UK-based hearings.
Working refugees would contribute to the UK economy. They would also save the taxpayer the cost of accommodation and support payments during periods they might otherwise have spent workless while waiting for decisions on their asylum applications.
The work visa element of the combined visa could be loosely modelled on the current “skilled worker” visa, with the key condition being an offer of employment from a licensed sponsor. But some requirements could be relaxed to facilitate the employment of refugees and their integration into UK society; unskilled work could qualify, there would be no minimum salary requirement, the English language standard could be less stringent and the government could encourage sponsorship from sympathetic employers who might contribute to resettlement costs.
Those unable to qualify for an asylum/work visa with a good claim for priority, such as unaccompanied children, could apply for a priority asylum visa. Adult holders of these visas would also be entitled to work when they reached the UK, but sponsorship by an employer would not be required for these visas.
A safe route could put a stop to the small boat crossings
A safe route across the Channel linked to a one-for-one returns agreement could be a game changer which would save lives and stop the small boats.
The UK and French authorities could cooperate in promoting an information campaign online and in France to warn those contemplating small boat crossings: those who succeeded in reaching British shores or British waters would be promptly returned to France.
The deal would relieve the UK of some accommodation pressures and the logistics of returning failed asylum applicants to their countries of origin. The attraction to both sides of tying a returns agreement to a new safe and lawful route would be the likely reduction of small boat arrivals to close to zero in a matter of months.
Burden-sharing to avoid a return of the small boats
That is not to say that the UK would expect to close down its safe route in a matter of months. If it did, the returns agreement would collapse, and the small boats would be back in business.
The UK and France could agree to the UK continuing to offer a safe and lawful route across the Channel to some thousands of refugees each year, and to France continuing to accept returns of any cross-Channel unlawful arrivals, even if the small boats problem had receded.
France and the UK might both see this as fair and reasonable form of burden-sharing between the partners, and a safeguard against a return of the small-boats crossings.
It would be for the UK and France to agree the appropriate level of burden-sharing. If the UK ended up processing asylum-seekers in France rather than the UK, and the number admitted to the UK via a French asylum centre amounted to a fraction of those which formerly reached the UK in small boats, this might seem like a policy win for both countries.
The politics of such a policy
A poll in July 2024 by Focaldata found that 50% of people, and almost two-thirds of Labour voters, would back a scheme in which humanitarian visas could be granted to up to 40,000 people a year with strong asylum claims or links to the UK. Only 16% were opposed to such a scheme.
I would argue that far fewer visas per year than 40,000 would amount to a humanitarian breakthrough, stop the small boats, and win general public support.
This is an edited version of an article first published on the author’s blog.
