‘One-In, One-Out’ Is Dead in the Water

Did anyone, even for a moment, really believe that the UK’s ‘one-in, one-out’ migrant deal with France would work? The news broke this week that an illegal small-boat migrant who was deported to France under the new scheme has managed to come back to the UK across the English Channel. 

The Iranian asylum seeker arrived in the UK on August 6th, the first day the deal came into force, and was returned to France on September 19th. He then proceeded to abscond from the migrant centre where he was being housed in Paris and boarded a dinghy in northern France, bound for the English coast. As of last Saturday, he is being held in a British asylum centre, less than a month after he was originally deported. Bizarrely, he has tried to claim that he couldn’t possibly have stayed in France because he “was afraid for my life.” He purports to have fallen “into the trap of a human trafficking network in the forests of France before I crossed to the UK from France the first time.” As a result, the UK authorities will be unlikely to send him back across the Channel.

Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron’s long-awaited ‘one-in, one-out’ deal was supposed to deter exactly this kind of illegal crossing. Under the scheme, the UK planned to detain some of those Channel migrants and send them back to France. In return, the UK would take in an equal number of asylum seekers from France who were deemed to have a legitimate claim to asylum in Britain—prioritising those who had existing family connections in the country. The aim would be to demonstrate that anyone who sailed across the Channel would be sent packing and deter others from making the same journey. The idea, one government source told The Times, was “to prove the point that if you pay for your passage on a boat then you could quite quickly find yourself back in France.” 

How this worked in reality was much different. During the negotiation process, Macron apparently managed to get Starmer to agree to a “17 in, one out” deal, with only about 50 returns planned each week—that’s 17 times the number of illegals landing on the south coast. Before the arrangement even kicked off, it was expected to be “largely symbolic.” 

We were also promised that the asylum seekers being taken into the UK from France would need legitimate reasons for claiming sanctuary here. But what does that mean, exactly? As it is, we are currently refusing to deport criminals or failed asylum seekers for such absurd reasons as disliking the taste of foreign chicken nuggets, for staying in the UK illegally for too long, and for being a convicted paedophile. Now, apparently, ‘being in France’ is perfectly good grounds to claim asylum. The UK’s fealty to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) makes it practically impossible to deport anyone for any reason, regardless of whether they arrived here illegally, had a failed asylum claim, or committed heinous crimes while in the country. Why would the authorities suddenly now develop the ability to tell worthy cases from chancers? 

As the number of Channel crossings this year looks set to top last year’s, something sorely needs to be done to stem the tide of new illegal arrivals. So far this year, more than 36,816 people have come to the UK in dinghies—that number was also the total for the entirety of 2024. In 2022, small-boat crossings soared to a record high of 45,755 that year. To contrast that, the new ‘one-in, one-out’ policy has returned just 42 of the 11,000 migrants that came to Britain since early August. And the UK has accepted 23 in return. It’s not much of a deterrent if the message remains that you can come to the UK illegally, and probably nothing will happen to you. Gavin Mortimer puts it well in the Spectator today when he points out that “illegal immigration is an industry, a lucrative business for smuggling gangs and human rights lawyers.” And, crucially, “there is no will from either the British or the French governments to take on these powerful bodies.” 

France’s government, currently led by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, is being held hostage by the Socialists, who are once again threatening to oust him. As such, France has very little interest in doing anything to meaningfully stop the flow of illegal migration. Now, it even looks like France will back out of a pledge it made to increase efforts to stop dinghies from crossing into the Channel. It had previously been promised that French patrol boats would try to intercept small boats and bring them back to shore—something that is rarely done due to the risk this apparently poses to both officers and the migrants. But sources have told the BBC that French officers are unlikely to take more action and that any commitments made were “just a political stunt.” 

It’s not as if Starmer is particularly enthusiastic about stopping the boats, either. For all his talk of “smashing the gangs” and securing the borders, it’s just not in his nature to take a tough stance on migration. As a human rights lawyer, Starmer’s loyalty lies with the rules and systems that continue to facilitate unsustainable levels of human exchange in the name of protecting ‘human rights’ and ‘international law.’ Whatever claims he makes about wanting to crack down on illegal immigration can safely be assumed to be the result of fear, as he keeps one eye on Reform UK’s steady ascent in the polls. Whether or not any of this is in the national interest hardly seems to cross his mind. 

So now what? ‘One-in, one-out’ was bound to fail from the beginning. Unfortunately, Macron of all people made a very reasonable point when he blamed the UK for its own illegal migration problem. Yes, France could and should do more to stop the small-boat crossings. But the uncomfortable truth is that the pull factors drawing in illegal migrants are simply too great. There is a clear reason why a third of those who enter the Schengen area illegally want to make the journey across the Channel. For many, the UK is a land of milk and honey, all at the expense of someone else. Under-the-table work, perhaps as a food-delivery driver, is abundant. Social housing and welfare payments are relatively easy to come by, through legal channels or otherwise. And the government has made it clear that it is in no great rush to deport these people. All that considered, why on Earth wouldn’t these people want to make a beeline for Britain? 

If we’re serious about ending the small-boat crisis, we need to make Britain a less rewarding destination for those arriving illegally. As it stands, we are too promising a cash cow to resist. The empty threats made by the ‘one-in, one-out’ scheme will do nothing to deter those determined to game the system and cash in on our leniency. Until we change the incentives, the boats will keep coming.