Is the UK-France "one in, one out" migrant deal value for taxpayers money?
The UK-France one in, one out plan, formalised in August 2025, allows the UK to return small boat migrants to France in exchange for accepting an equal number of vetted asylum seekers from France via legal routes. As of mid-2026 around 1,400 migrants have been returned at an average cost of £56,000 each while over 1,100 have arrived legally; Channel crossings have fallen by about 40% this year. The pilot is set to expire on 1 October 2026 with France pushing for an EU-wide replacement and questions raised over repeat returns, disappearances and overall value.
4 Opinions
Too expensive
We should not be giving Asylum to refugees from France.
If the alternative is keeping unvetted people for the same annual cost, then it's preferable. But we should be forcing France to take more than 1.1k people back as part of that deal.
Spending £56,000 per head just to play musical chairs across the Channel is an insult to taxpayers. It’s an expensive bureaucratic circus that is burning £78 million to return a measly 4% of arrivals, only to take another 1,100 people right back through the front door. Net numbers barely budge. We need massive reform in the area of illegal immigration, I'm not sure what the answer is, but it certainly isn't this.