Riot police will be sent on to French beaches to stop migrants crossing the Channel under a fresh multimillion-pound deal with the UK.<\/p>\n
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to sign a three-year \u00a3662 million agreement with France on Thursday which could see a 50-strong squad of police officers, trained in \u201criot and crowd control tactics\u201d, drafted in to tackle violence and \u201chostile crowds\u201d at the water\u2019s edge among a series of measures to stop migrants boarding boats.<\/p>\n
The Home Office said the number of officers sent to curb attempted journeys from northern France to Britain will also rise by about 42% when the agreement comes into force in the summer.<\/p>\n
Part of the funding will be conditional on cutting the numbers of arrivals for the first time since the start of the migrant crisis, the UK Government said.<\/p>\n
Click here<\/a> to get the biggest stories straight to your inbox in our Daily Newsletter<\/p>\n The news comes after London and Paris previously failed to agree a new beach patrol deal in a bid to cut crossings. Instead Ms Mahmood signed a \u00a32 million-a-week extension to the existing arrangement while a longer-term was thrashed out.<\/p>\n Under the deal, which will be in place until March 2029, the UK will hand over \u00a3501 million to cover five police units and enforcement activity on French beaches \u2013 with an extra \u00a3160 million only paid if new tactics to curb Channel crossings succeed.<\/p>\n If efforts fail, the additional funding will stop after a year, the Home Office said.<\/p>\n Drone and camera surveillance, as well as helicopter patrols, will be stepped up \u2013 with the number of police, intelligence and military officers deployed rising from 750 to nearly 1,100 as part of the deal due to come into force in the summer, typically the busiest time for Channel crossings.<\/p>\n The French will also double down on fresh tactics to tackle so-called taxi boats \u2013 where people smugglers try to avoid detection by sending one person sailing a dinghy along the coast alone to beaches where migrants scramble aboard in the water.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said work between the UK and France had \u201calready stopped tens of thousands of crossings\u201d and \u201cthis historic agreement means we can go further: ramping up intelligence, surveillance and boots on the ground to protect Britain\u2019s borders\u201d.<\/p>\n Get MEN Premium now for just \u00a31 HERE<\/a> \u2013 or get involved in our WhatsApp group by clicking HERE<\/a><\/p>\n Ms Mahmood added: \u201cThis landmark deal will stop illegal migrants making the perilous journey and put people smugglers behind bars.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this month, a Sudanese man was charged over the deaths of four migrants who drowned after being swept away by strong currents while trying to cross the Channel.<\/p>\n So far this year, more than 6,000 migrants have arrived in the UK after making the journey, down 36% on the number this time last year, Press Association analysis of government figures shows.<\/p>\n Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: \u201cThe Government\u2019s deal hands over half a billion pounds of our money with no conditions at all.<\/p>\n \u201cFrance only prevented a third of embarkations last year and even let those illegal immigrants go to try again. France shouldn\u2019t get a single penny unless they stop the vast majority of the boats.\u201d<\/p>\n Imran Hussain, from the Refugee Council, said: \u201cBy focusing on policing the Channel, the Government is treating the symptom not the cause. Policing alone will not prevent desperate people from turning to dangerous small boats in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n Refugee charity Care4Calais said Anglo-French beach deals make crossings more dangerous and lead to more deaths in the Channel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riot police will be sent on to French beaches to stop migrants crossing the Channel under a fresh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1042,1044,5,1182,5348,1134,6722,1041,955],"class_list":{"0":"post-8367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-channel-crossings","9":"tag-crossing-the-channel","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-french-beaches","12":"tag-home-office","13":"tag-illegal-migrants","14":"tag-riot-police","15":"tag-shabana-mahmood","16":"tag-uk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}