An aerial photograph shows inflatable dinghies and outboard engines believed to have been used by migrants to cross the channel and stored in a Port Authority yard in Dover, south-east England, on August 17, 2025.
Ben Stansall / AFP
Critics say ministers must now push for a “mass dismantling of government-supported agencies and charities.”
Two months after the Labour government struck a migration deal with France, laughably titled a ‘one in, one out’ scheme, a single migrant was removed on a commercial flight on Thursday morning. A step forward, certainly, though it does little to make up for all the deportation failures that were on show earlier this week.
We reported on Tuesday that some ‘deportation flights’ have taken off with no migrants on board because of last-minute legal challenges and protests from charities. It has since emerged that at least one of these charities is backed by the government itself—and, by extension, the taxpayer.
The Telegraphreports that a charity tasked by the Home Office with producing notebooks for migrants held in removal centres provides these with what the paper described as “a detailed method” for avoiding deportation, including a “template” letter and suggestions for how to use legal and human rights arguments.
The charity, Bail for Immigration Detainees (BiD), has received more than £400,000 in donations from Comic Relief—one of Britain’s most well-known charities—which benefits from charitable tax relief. It has advertised a guide “for people detained under the UK–France deal” on social media, asking users to “please share widely.”
🚨Important, please share widely🚨
We have created a new legal guide for people detained under the UK–France deal
Includes: What to do if you get a Notice of Intent, key deadlines, template letters, bail info & more.https://t.co/P6LHwqz7g1
Retired Royal Navy officer Chris Parry described this revelation as “peak insanity under Labour.” Labour’s standard brag that the Tories were doing the same thing doesn’t exactly make up for their wrongdoing.
TCW editor Kathy Gyngell added that it shows “we need a mass dismantling of government-supported agencies and charities”—as well as, of course, to withdraw from the favourite tool of the open border lobby, the Strasbourg-based European Convention on Human Rights.
A spokesman for Comic Relief told the Telegraph it “does not currently” fund BiD. A Home Office official also said the department “does not provide any leaflets relating to this charity to individuals in Immigration Removal Centres.”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
