Britain won’t turn migrant boats back to France, says immigration minister

Britain will not adopt the Italian-style tactic of intercepting migrants’ boats in the Channel and turning them back to France, an immigration minister has said.

Dame Angela Eagle, the minister for border security, said the UK could not turn back boats without the agreement of France, whose policy is not to intercept them unless migrants ask to be rescued.

It has led to controversial videos of French navy and border force vessels shadowing migrant boats to the mid-way point in the Channel, where they are rescued by the British Border Force and taken to Dover.

France argues that any interception without the permission of those on board breaches maritime law because to do so would put their safety at risk. They will only intervene if the migrants request help.

By contrast, Italy has struck a £90 million deal with Tunisia, under which its border force and coastguard vessels turn the boats around and return them to the Tunisian coast.

Asked why Britain’s £490 million agreement with France could not allow the same tactic, Dame Angela told LBC: “The French don’t accept that migrants should always be returned to them.

“If incidents happen in French territorial waters, they go back to France. If they happen in British territorial waters, we bring them in to safety in the UK.”

She added that the Government was “looking” to see if the UK could prosecute some of the boats’ pilots or facilitators.

“There are increasing signs of violence on the beach, as in France, often police are attacked in France, and so we’re seeing what we can do to cooperate from a law enforcement point of view to ensure that anyone who behaves violently towards a French officer can be brought to justice,” she said.

Dame Angela’s comments follow a meeting in Rome between Sir Keir Starmer and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, on Monday to discuss how Italy has reduced the number of people crossing the Mediterranean by more than 60 per cent.

It came after the deaths of eight people on Sunday when their boat, with 60 aboard, hit rocks and sank off the French coast. This brought the number of migrant deaths this year to at least 45, nearly four times the 12 who died last year.

Some 23,533 people have arrived in 448 boats across the Channel this year, with an average of 52 people per vessel. It is the same number that had crossed by this time last year, but 6,000 fewer than in the record crossings year of 2022.

Dame Angela said the UK would examine whether Italian plans to process asylum seekers in Albania works before deciding whether to pursue a similar policy.

She told Times Radio: “Firstly, we don’t know whether it will work yet because it hasn’t started. Much of this has been portrayed currently as if it’s already a success, but the fact is that it hasn’t started.

“We will see how it works. But what we have said is that any scheme that we deal with for offshore processing or anything else has to be workable, it has to be cost effective, and it also has to be in line with international law.”

Dame Angela said Sir Keir’s meeting with the Italian prime minister s”doesn’t mean we endorse absolutely everything every single Italian member of the government says or does”.

She added: “But we are meeting a G7 country and a fellow Nato member to see how we can cooperate across borders to deal with some of these vile people-smuggling gangs.

“That is the announcement I’m making about the £75 million extra to beef up the border security command and that means that we can send people into Europol, extra investigators, more intelligence, we can work with our partners across Europe and in other places to try and put a stop to this vile trade.”