Labour’s flagship one in, one out deal with France that saw small boat migrants returned to Paris in exchange for asylum seekers will end.
The deal, signed in July 2025, is set to expire on Thursday and efforts to extend the arrangement have fallen flat.
France wants to end the scheme to replace it with a EU-wide arrangement that would share the intake of small boat migrants returned to Europe.
Many migrants who are deported back to France under the deal have been sleeping homeless in the French capital, others have returned to the camps around Calais and Dunkirk, and some have made the Channel crossing back to Britain.
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood said this month that around 1,400 people have been deported to France under the scheme so far, at a cost of £56,000 per person on average. As of the end of June, there were 1,117 people brought to the UK under the deal.
A French interior ministry source confirmed to The Independent that “discussions with the British authorities are underway to define the terms of withdrawal from the agreement”.
The Home Office then said on Wednesday afternoon that the one in, one out deal was no longer processing new cases, but that flights would continue over the coming weeks to remove those already detained to France.
A spokesperson said: “We will use lessons learned from the pilot to accelerate efforts to return small boat migrants with no right to remain in the UK.”
Ms Mahmood told MPs this month that the scheme has been “difficult” to scale up and the numbers involved were still “relatively small”.
She said: “What has been more operationally difficult is to scale up very large numbers of removals every week into the French system”.
She said that some migrants were not making the journey across the Channel because they thought there was a chance they could go to the UK through the transfer scheme for asylum seekers.
Small boat crossings to the UK are down around 42 per cent on last year. The National Crime Agency has said that increased law enforcement activity has been a key factor in bringing down the numbers of crossings.
They said that in the year to April 2026 arrests linked to organised immigration crime increased by more than 55 per cent.
The number of irregular border crossings into the European Union are also down, with detections down by 35 per cent compared to last year.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We continue to work with France to relentlessly tackle small boat crossings, and we’ve made real progress. Numbers are significantly down on last year and crossings this summer were the lowest in six years.”
Read MoreFrance and Spain urge Britain to rejoin the EU
Mapped: The UK areas to be hardest hit by scrapping pensions triple lock
Does Britain want to rejoin the EU? Here’s what the polls say
Three teenagers dead and boy arrested after car plunges into River Wear
British pilot ‘helped rescue plane after pilot stabbed by colleague in cockpit’
Grenfell fire investigators pass files on 20 firms and 54 people to prosecutors
