Cross-Channel migrants to be detained as France treaty comes into force
The Prime Minister said the ratification of the treaty will 'send a clear message – if you come here illegally on a small boat you will face being sent back to France'.
But opposition parties have criticised the deal amid reports that the pilot scheme will see only 50 people a week returned to France while this year has seen a weekly average of more than 800 people make the crossing.
More than 25,000 people have already crossed the Channel in small boats in 2025, a record figure for this point in the year (Gareth Fuller/PA)
The deal has also been criticised by refugee charities, which have urged the Government to provide more safe, legal routes for asylum seekers instead.
Ministers have so far declined to say how many people could be returned under the deal, and insist that if the pilot is successful the figure will increase.
Under the terms of the agreement, announced during French President Emmanuel Macron's state visit last month, adults arriving on small boats will face being returned to France if their asylum claim is inadmissible.
In exchange, the same number of people will be able to come to the UK on a new legal route, provided they have not attempted a crossing before and subject to documentation and security checks.
The Home Office said it had also learned from the 'lengthy legal challenges' over the previous government's Rwanda scheme and would 'robustly defend' any attempts to block removal through the courts.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the agreement would help undermine the business model of people smugglers (Jacob King/PA)
It is the first such deal with France, with the pilot scheme set to run until June 2026, pending a longer-term agreement.
Sir Keir said the deal was 'The product of months of grown-up diplomacy delivering real results for British people'.
He added: 'The days of gimmicks and broken promises are over – we will restore order to our borders with the seriousness and competence the British people deserve.'
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said it was 'an important step towards undermining the business model of the organised crime gangs that are behind these crossings – undermining their claims that those who travel to the UK illegally can't be returned to France'.
Ratification of the deal comes as both Britain and France battle to bring the small boats problem under control, with 2025 on course to be a record year for crossings.
Some 25,436 people have already made the journey this year, according to PA news agency analysis of Home Office figures – 49% higher than at the same point in 2024.
This summer has already seen a series of protests staged outside hotels housing asylum seekers (Lucy North/PA)
The issue has also sparked concern that a series of protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers could lead to public disorder similar to last year's riots.
On Monday, the Home Office announced it was providing another £100 million to tackle people smuggling and would introduce new powers to seize devices from people suspected of facilitating crossings.
Ministers have also launched a crackdown on illegal working in an effort to reduce the 'pull factors' said to be encouraging people to make the journey, while French authorities have changed their guidance to allow police officers to intercept boats while they are in shallow waters.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp attacked the plans, saying they would return 'just 6% of illegal arrivals' and 'make no difference whatsoever'.
He added: 'The Rwanda removals deterrent, under which 100% of illegal arrivals would be removed, was ready to go last summer but Labour cancelled it just days before it was due to start with no proper replacement plan. As a result, this year so far has been the worst ever for illegal immigrants crossing the Channel.
'Only removing all illegal immigrants upon arrival will provide the necessary deterrent to stop the crossings. This is the Conservative plan, but Labour is too weak to implement it and as a result they have lost control of our borders.'
While the Conservatives' Rwanda plan was in theory uncapped, it was expected to take only around 1,000 asylum seekers in its first five years of operation thanks to limited capacity in the East African nation.
The plan, which Sir Keir had previously dismissed as a 'gimmick', was scrapped as one of the first acts of the incoming Labour Government last year.
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The Guardian
9 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Why did Ghislaine Maxwell do what she did?
Days after Ghislaine Maxwell met with the deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, the convicted child sex trafficker and longtime Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend and procurer was moved from a women's federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a so-called 'prison camp' in Texas, a dramatically more comfortable minimum-security environment with dormitory-style housing and fewer guards, sometimes called 'Club Fed'. Maxwell's new camp primarily houses nonviolent offenders, and the inmates there are reportedly livid, and probably not a little bit frightened, to be imprisoned with one of the world's most notorious sex traffickers and alleged rapists. Maxwell, too, was not initially eligible for such a transfer, due to her sex offender status; connections at the Department of Justice had to waive a procedural requirement in order for the move to go through. The transfer appears to be a reward. As Donald Trump struggles to extract himself from the continuing fallout of the Epstein scandal, Maxwell finds herself, now, in the best position that she has been in since her one-time partner Epstein died in a jail cell in 2019. Suddenly, she has something that the president wants: the ability to say, truthfully or no, that Trump had nothing to do with Epstein's sex trafficking. The president, too, has something that Maxwell wants: the ability to issue a pardon. Maxwell has always formed the dark center of the Epstein saga, a woman who appears to have been exceptionally dedicated to arranging Epstein's life, facilitating his travel, luring new victims to his homes, and coordinating his sexual abuse over the course of decades. Alleged victims of Epstein recall being recruited by Maxwell in public places – including at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach – and through friends. They say that she inspected their bodies, brought them to Epstein's homes, talked incessantly about sex, and instructed them in Epstein's sexual preferences. They also say that Epstein and Maxwell sometimes made them available for sexual abuse by their friends. She is widely presumed to know more than she has yet been willing to tell about the extent to which Epstein's large network of powerful businessmen, politicians, and financiers knew about or participated in his rapes and trafficking of children. What is less clear, at least at first, is what motivated her to facilitate the abuse, and what kept her so loyal to Epstein over so many years. Maybe this kind of life – one spent attending to men's lesser desires – was always what Maxwell was destined for. The ninth and youngest child of a British media magnate, Maxwell was doted on by her father, the Hungarian-born Robert Maxwell, and raised in Oxford in a family as obscenely wealthy as it was darkly tragic: one of her older brothers was in a hideous car accident just days after Ghislaine's birth, and the boy lingered in a coma for years before dying before her 10th birthday. Her father financed her life as a high-class party girl – first in London, and then in New York – where she spent much of her time accompanying famous and wealthy men to the kind of rich people's social functions that have a pretext of raising money for charity. She does not seem to have had aims beyond that: despite her ample resources and encouragement, Ghislaine never showed much sign of intellectual ambition, or political interest, or business acumen, or general curiosity. (A short-lived 'ocean protection' charity that she founded accomplished little, and shut down after her arrest on sex trafficking charges.) It was not merely that Ghislaine was a product of an elite unburdened by principle, who often reduce their daughters to mere ornaments. It is that an ornament, it seems, is all that Ghislaine Maxwell ever aspired to be. It was not her charity, or her father's publishing, that were Maxwell's great passions. Her great passion appears to have been for the romantic attention of men – and specifically, her life's greatest animating goal seems to have been to achieve, and keep, the attention of Jeffrey Epstein. From those accounts we have of their relationship – and admittedly, these are not always reliable, given how intense, widespread, and prurient the attention on their activities has been – it appears that Maxwell's devotion to Epstein was intense. At her trial in 2021, prosecutors entered into evidence a photo of a cleavage-bearing Maxwell with Epstein, massaging his foot. This seems to have been her posture toward Epstein for the entire time she knew him: slavish, nearly worshipful. The pair met sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Maxwell's father, Robert, died in an apparent suicide in the ocean off the coast of the Canary Islands – aboard his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine – in late 1991. Soon thereafter, it was discovered that millions of dollars were missing from pension funds that he managed; two of Maxwell's brothers were charged for their alleged role in the fraud. (They were later acquitted.) It was during this moment of rupture and imperiled status that Maxwell was romantically involved with Epstein. Her boyfriend would have served as a meal ticket as well as a source of validation: Maxwell is alleged to have received payments from Epstein totaling more than $30m; she told one of her victims that he bought her her New York City townhouse, just a few blocks from his own. By 1994, she was recruiting and grooming teenagers for his sexual abuse. Maybe Maxwell justified what she did for Epstein as kink – a kind of sexual libertinism that shrugged off the regressive, prurient mores of the lower classes. The 90s were the peak of a kind of reductive heterosexual sex-positivity: lots of women were telling themselves, and being told, that sexual submission was a mark of sophistication – that the more liberated they were, the more of men's desires they would grant. But this is all speculation: trying to provide a rationalization for Ghislaine Maxwell's actions evades the true terror of her, which is her seemingly profound and horrifying vacancy. To such a person, obedience does not require a justification. Unequal desire in love – particularly when the suffering lover is a woman – tends to elicit a kind of pity. Feminists, too, often depict women's outsized desire for men as a form of gendered victimization. Generally, it is not seen as serious – women's limerence, romantic obsession, and striving for men's attention is broadly relegated to the realm of the adolescent and the vulgar, the embarrassing and the silly. But Maxwell's case suggests such desire can breed not just frustrated vanity but also a kind of monstrousness. Untempered by principle or self-respect, it can contain in it the seed of the grotesque. In her efforts to please Epstein, and to make herself useful to him, Maxwell became something hideous and unforgivable. In her deficient, warped soul, it seems she lacked something that every woman must have: a morality that she valued more than male approval. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
The National
15 minutes ago
- The National
UK Homelessness Minister 'evicted tenants and hiked rent to £4k a month'
Homelessness Minister Rushanara Ali kicked out four tenants from her townhouse near the Olympic Park before re-advertising the same four-bedroom property at an increased price, according to an investigation by the i newspaper. The MP for Bethnal Green and Stepney has previously been vocal on renters' rights and has spoken out against 'private renters being exploited". READ MORE: As Ian Blackford considers a return, it's time to look at political comebacks Under Labour's Renters' Rights Bill, the Government plans to bring the private rented sector within the minimum standard set for social housing, and would ban landlords who end a tenancy to sell a property from re-listing it for six months. According to the i, a source close to Ali said the tenants had been informed their tenancy would not be renewed by email and were instead offered a rolling contract. They were reportedly told the rolling contract was necessary as the property was put up for sale. Tenant Laura Jackson, a self-employed restaurant owner and one of four people who rented the property, told the paper: 'It's an absolute joke. Trying to get that much money from renters is extortion'. At the time of ending the tenants' contract, the firms which managed the property also attempted to charge Ali's tenants nearly £2000 for the house to be repainted and £395 for professional cleaning. Under the Tenant Fees Act 2019, landlords are prohibited from charging their tenants for professional cleaning, and are prohibited from charging tenants to repaint a home unless serious damage has occurred. Jackson said: 'It was really stressful. It was so much money – nearly £500 each! The property was not clean when we moved in; it was ridiculous and unfair.' The fees were dropped once Jackson told the agencies they knew their landlord was a Labour MP, she said. 'If we hadn't known the charges were unlawful, we would have had to pay them. It's exploitative.' Jackson added: 'I just think it's morally wrong that MPs can be landlords, especially in their own area. It's a conflict of interest.' READ MORE: Yvette Cooper under pressure to grant UK visas for 80 Palestinian students After failing to find a buyer, the house was re-listed for rent at £700 a month more, the paper reports. A spokesperson said: 'Rushanara takes her responsibilities seriously and complied with all relevant legal requirements.' Momentum, the network of activists that grew out of Jeremy Corbyn's first Labour leadership election campaign, reacted to the news: "This Government has got its priorities wrong. "It was quick to suspend four MPs for standing up for disabled people. But when the Cabinet minister for homelessness evicted her tenants to increase rents, it stays silent." Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty said: "Rushanara Ali's position surely cannot be tenable. She must resign."
Leader Live
26 minutes ago
- Leader Live
Homelessness minister faces criticism over hiking rent after removing tenants
Four tenants who rented a house in east London from Rushanara Ali were sent an email last November saying their lease would not be renewed, which also gave them four months' notice to leave, the i newspaper reported. Ms Ali's property was then re-listed with a £700 rent increase within weeks, the newspaper said. A spokesperson for the minister said: 'Rushanara takes her responsibilities seriously and complied with all relevant legal requirements.' The house, rented on a fixed-term contract, was put up for sale while the tenants were living there, and it was only re-listed as a rental because it had not sold, according to the i. But the minister's actions are now facing scrutiny from rental rights campaigners, as the Government seeks to clamp down on what it sees as unfair rental practices. The Renters' Rights Bill includes measures to ban landlords who end a tenancy to sell a property from re-listing it for six months. The Bill, which is nearing its end stages of scrutiny in Parliament, will also abolish fixed-term tenancies and ensure landlords give four months' notice if they want to sell their property. Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent, described the allegations as 'shocking and a wake-up call to Government on the need to push ahead as quickly as possible to improve protections for renters'. He added: 'It is bad enough when any landlord turfs out their tenant to hike up the rent, or tries their luck with unfair claims on the deposit, but the minister responsible for homelessness knows only too well about the harm caused by this behaviour. 'These allegations highlight common practices that the Government can eradicate. 'The Renters' Rights Bill would ban landlords who evict tenants to sell the property from re-letting it within 12 months, to deter this kind of abuse – but unfortunately members of the House of Lords have voted to reduce this to six months. 'The Government can also use its review of the deposit protection system to penalise landlords who make exaggerated claims at the end of the tenancy.' Tom Darling, director at the Renters' Reform Coalition, said: 'It's mind-boggling that we have a homelessness minister who has just evicted four people in order to rake in more rent – something that will soon be illegal under the Renters' Rights Bill her own department is bringing through Parliament. 'The Government are currently considering an amendment to the legislation from the House of Lords which reduces the ban on re-letting after eviction from 12 months to six months. 'The Government must remove this amendment, and at the very least minister Ali must recuse herself from any discussions on this within Government.' Speaking to broadcasters, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper insisted Ms Ali had not breached any rules. 'I don't know any of the details of this, but I understand that she has followed all of the rules in this case,' Ms Cooper said. Shadow housing secretary James Cleverly told the i that Ms Ali should consider her position as a minister, as the allegations 'would be an example of the most extreme hypocrisy'.
