Reform UK vows Navy Channel patrols to return migrants to France

Reform UK is promising to use the Royal Navy to intercept small boats in the English Channel and return migrants to France or Belgium, calling it the “largest military operation in the English Channel since World War Two.” The party’s home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, says France would have to take migrants if the Navy picked them up, but the idea runs straight into the legal and diplomatic machinery already governing Channel crossings.

UK officials cannot simply push people back to France without an agreement, and the current returns system is a separate government-to-government deal. Under that pilot, some people arriving in small boats are detained and returned to France, while the UK accepts an equivalent number of asylum seekers who have not tried to enter illegally, subject to security and eligibility checks. The pilot was due to run for 11 months, and Sir Keir Starmer said it was the product of months of diplomacy.

Shabana Mahmood signed a separate three-year UK-France agreement worth £662 million, under which at least 50 riot-trained police officers will be deployed on French beaches, backed by drones, two helicopters and a camera system aimed at smugglers and crossings. France will also deploy riot-trained police to beaches in northern France.

UK-France cooperation on immigration controls has a long history, formalised in arrangements including the Sangatte Protocol in 1991. Home Office figures put small boat crossings at about 46,000 arrivals in 2022, before they fell in 2023 and rose again. BBC figures put 2025 crossings at 41,472, almost 5,000 more than in 2024 and the highest annual total since 2022. Home Office figures put small boat arrivals at 39,000 in the year ending March 2026, around 90% of all unauthorised arrivals detected in the UK.

The current pilot has already produced returns to France, including cases involving an Eritrean man and an Iranian man after legal challenges.