That verdict was less a rejection of cross-Channel diplomacy than of its price and exchange rate. The platform’s voters saw a scheme intended to make migration manageable, but heard instead an expensive mechanism whose visible movements did not amount to control.
The floor’s most-respected No case called it “very poor value”, arguing that the answer lay in changing the incentives that draw people here rather than paying for returns. Another No voice reduced the objection to “play musical chairs across the Channel”, while others demanded detention, third-country processing and tougher exclusion rules.
The Yes case was cautious rather than evangelical. One of its strongest voices said that “we presumably save a lot in accommodation fees” if crossings fall, while another insisted: “People hate to admit it but the policy is working.” Those arguments treated reduced arrivals as the relevant saving; the opposing case treated the cost of each return and each legally admitted person as the real ledger. They were often answering different questions about what counts as success.
The debate was not wholly isolationist. A more measured No argument called such arrangements “bad, expensive, temporary solutions” but also said that cooperation with neighbours had worked better under shared European frameworks; a Yes voter likewise described international cooperation as “a start”. The wider argument was therefore about whether the UK can secure its border alone, or must accept costly compromises to make returns possible at all.
The verdict was unusually settled: the deal’s supporters could point to movement, but its opponents owned the room’s language of value. The scheme was judged not by whether it did something, but whether what it did was worth paying for.
26 Opinions
Total waste of time and money. We have real problems to solve and this is just a silly distraction.
We sent one illegal back to france we got a family of six sent to us by the french! A family of six is not one person, so this deal is not good and never was. We are exchanging illegals for frances unwanted migrants... That doesn't lower the amount we are paying in welfare to non Union born people. It also means that once the french give the returned limited right to remain they will be part of the exchange program, so they'll end up in the Union anyway. End the deal ASAP!
It's very poor value. To fix this the UK has to change the pull factors, add some push factors, and these people won't come. Detention then 3rd country processing, criminal record and lifetime ban form returning. No money to France required.
This is really hard to call. The value for money is questionable. BUT if it reduces 40% of crossings we presumably save a lot in accommodation fees and therefore we do incur an overall cost reduction. Is this the best possible plan? Please say no! Please say a better alternative deal could be made.
It's more like 100 in 1 out based on the number of returns. We are just throwing good money after bad and they know it. All part of the con job they are trying to pull.
It is absurd. The gov't chooses not enforce the law on illegal entry. It should not pick amd chose which laws to enforce. Plus the £56k per return may look like a saving compared to the annual cost of an asylum seeker who may be here for years, but ignores the costs of the one in that matches the one out. And if they are in France they can not seriously be seeking asylum in thr UK.
The whole invasion can be solved if France permits it to be solved. Give RNLI and Border Farce the right to land the undocumented illegal rescued migrants back in France. Boats would stop immediately. But instead we pay France a fortune for nothing whilst they laugh and keep sending the parasites our way.
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.
Even if we scrapped every human rights law and tried to deport everyone we could, the core question is still where do we deport them to without an agreement with our neighbors? Deals like "one in, one out" are bad, expensive, temporary solutions. When the UK was an EU member, migration frameworks and returns were under better control because we worked in partnership with our neighbours.
Why would we allow a foreign bureaucracy to decide who is safe to be here? Just get them removed.