30 March 2026 , 22:41
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Negotiations to secure a new £650 million agreement with France to help prevent small-boat crossings in the Channel have hit a standstill.
British and French officials were continuing talks on Monday to reach an agreement before the current £475 million deal, which was signed in 2023, expires at midnight on Tuesday.
According to sources involved in the negotiations, discussions stalled over how a funding package of around £650 million will be released from the UK to France over the course of the next three years.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has reportedly demanded stricter conditions that would mean the money would be released after the French reached a certain interception rate.
Currently, the French intercept 33 percent of crossings, with Home Office figures showing rates have fallen to intercepting just 2,064 of 6,233 crossings.
France’s general secretary for the sea, Xavier Ducept, said linking funding to interception rates would endanger lives.
“They must not make this funding conditional on a type of efficiency that could be extremely dangerous for migrants,” he told a French parliamentary committee on Friday.
The separate one-in, one-out migrant returns deal, made between Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron last summer, has resulted in 377 migrants being returned to France, while 380 asylum seekers have been transferred to Britain.
British negotiators also rejected requests to pay the salaries of staff at a new migrant detention centre in northern France, The Times reports.
The detention centre in Dunkirk was agreed under the last deal in 2023 but has been repeatedly delayed due to planning permission. But British negotiators want to see this centre completed this year as a condition of a new deal.
Funding from the UK is critical to combating migrants crossing the channel in small boats due to the high costs of French illegal migration patrols in northern France.
Border forces said if a deal is not made there will be an increase in the number of migrants that evade capture.
A French interior ministry source told the French newspaper Le Monde that “negotiations have failed.” It added that “everything has gone up to the ministerial level.”
But the British Home Office has denied this and insisted talks between officials were continuing and said ministers were not yet involved in the talks.
The Independent has contacted the Home Office for comment.
Technology & Business Editor