Dozens more migrants have arrived in the UK than have been deported under Sir Keir Starmer’s one in, one out returns deal with France.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, revealed that the UK had accepted a total of 350 migrants under the scheme since the prime minister agreed the deal with President Macron in August, while 281 have been removed to France.
The scheme is designed to be reciprocal, meaning Britain should take one asylum seeker for each migrant who arrives on a small boat it returns to France.
The 281 migrants deported to France represent 1.6 per cent of the 16,969 migrants who have arrived in small boats since the deal was signed six months ago. A total of 933 migrants have arrived on small boats so far this year.
Mahmood told LBC on Tuesday that there are “very normal discrepancies in these numbers” of those coming in compared to those being deported. She admitted the scheme was deporting “relatively small numbers” of migrants arriving on small boats but said the figure was “already growing” and insisted the pilot was “designed to try to prove that this new model of working with the French could work”.
Mahmood added: “There are practical issues around how quickly you can detain people and then get them on a plane and move them out to France.”
She said the deterrent impact of the scheme would take time to take effect, adding: “You’ve got to compete with organised immigration crime to get your messages out. We’ve managed to put some of those issues right.”
Sir Keir Starmer and President Macron agreed the deal last summer
LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES
Starmer’s spokesman said the discrepancy between the numbers coming in and going out of the UK would fluctuate. “I think at the beginning of the agreement, the numbers were higher in terms of us sending people to France than receiving people under the safe returns route,” he said. “But those numbers will fluctuate.”
The spokesman said there was “no silver bullet” to solving the problem of Channel crossings but the scheme was “another tool in our armoury” to tackle the smuggling gangs’ business model at source.
A total of 41,472 migrants arrived in the UK in 2025 after crossing the English Channel — the second-highest annual figure on record. The total for last year was 13 per cent higher than the figure for 2024, when 36,816 migrants made the journey, and 41 per cent higher than 2023’s total of 29,437.
Migrants try to board a smuggler’s boat off the beach of Gravelines, France, in August last year
SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
It was 9 per cent below the all-time high of 45,774 in 2022. The one in, one out migrant returns deal stalled because strict conditions limited the number of asylum seekers who were eligible to come to the UK under the scheme.
The Conservatives said that the figures revealed by the home secretary were a “lamentable admission of failure” of the scheme. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “The government scheme has resulted in a net inflow of 70 immigrants. And worse than that, they have only removed 281 illegal immigrants when 41,000 arrived last year.
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“The chances of an illegal Channel migrant being removed under this scheme is virtually zero. It’s no surprise that illegal immigrants continue to flood across the Channel on this home secretary’s watch. She has no control of illegal immigrants crossing the channel whatsoever. The only way to stop this is to exit the [European Convention on Human Rights] and deport all illegal immigrants within a week of arrival. But the home secretary is too weak to do that.”
Philp has said that the increase in the number of migrants arriving under the Labour government shows that it was a mistake to scrap the Rwanda deportation scheme. The government is now being sued for £50 million by the Rwandan government over claims it is owed the money after Labour failed to terminate the agreement formally when it announced on entering power in July 2024 that it would scrap the deal.
Rwanda has lodged a claim for the outstanding money in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Netherlands. The government in Kigali claims the UK owes the money because Britain had asked to “quietly forgo” the remaining payment based on “trust and good faith”, pending its formal termination of the treaty. Yolande Makolo, Rwanda’s government spokesman, said the UK never followed through with the formal termination of the deal “as agreed”, however.