UK Scraps 'One In, One Out' Migrant Return Deal With France After Just 1,500 Removals

The British government has confirmed that its pilot agreement with France to return small boat arrivals to the continent while accepting an equivalent number of legal migrants has been abandoned. The arrangement, widely referred to as "one in, one out," had been running for slightly more than a year but succeeded in removing only about 1,500 people to France. Officials in London indicated that while they would have preferred to keep the programme alive, it never grew to the scale ministers had hoped for, and continuing it was no longer considered worthwhile.

Under the terms of the scheme, the UK could send back a limited number of people who had crossed the English Channel in small boats, provided France took them in. In exchange, Britain agreed to admit a matching number of individuals from France who were judged to have a legitimate right to enter the country, such as through family ties or valid asylum claims. The idea was to create a controlled, reciprocal mechanism that would deter irregular crossings while offering a legal route to a comparable group of migrants. In practice, however, the volumes remained modest from the outset.

A Home Office spokesperson said the pilot was no longer processing new cases, though return flights would keep operating in the coming weeks to remove small boat migrants who have no right to remain in the UK. The spokesperson added that the government would apply the lessons drawn from the pilot to speed up removals more broadly. Ministers also stressed that cooperation with Paris on tackling Channel crossings would continue, arguing that "real progress" had been achieved and that arrival numbers were significantly lower than a year earlier.

The French Interior Ministry confirmed that discussions were under way with the British side about the terms of exiting the agreement, signalling that both governments are now working through the practical and legal details of winding the scheme down. The pilot had been closely watched by other countries considering similar reciprocal arrangements, and its termination may prompt questions about whether such small-scale deals can ever deliver the deterrent effect their architects intended.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood had earlier acknowledged that the scheme was "not without its challenges." She told MPs the numbers involved remained relatively small, and she noted that scaling up to very large weekly removals into the French system had proved operationally difficult. At the same time, she pointed to reports from the United Nations and other agencies suggesting that some migrants had been discouraged from boarding small boats because they believed they might be accepted under the one-in, one-out arrangement — a sign, she suggested, that the policy had at least some deterrent value.

One notable criticism of the programme was its cost. The home secretary previously disclosed that the scheme worked out at roughly £56,000 for each person returned to France, a figure that fuelled scepticism among critics who questioned whether the expense could be justified given the low overall numbers involved. Supporters countered that the value of any deterrent should not be measured purely in removals, but the price tag nonetheless became a political liability.

The decision to scrap the pilot comes against a backdrop of shifting migration figures. Between January 1 and September 27 this year, 19,135 people crossed the Channel by small boat, a fall of 42% compared with the same period in 2025, when 32,188 made the journey. The government has highlighted that decline as evidence its wider strategy is working, although the crossings remain the most common method by which people are detected entering the UK illegally since 2020.

Nearly everyone who arrives by small boat claims asylum, which under international law allows them to remain in the country while their application is assessed. Small boat arrivals accounted for 40% of asylum applications between July 2025 and June 2026. Boats arriving between late September 2025 and late September 2026 carried an average of 67 people, more than double the figure recorded in 2021. Experts have warned that overcrowding makes the crossings increasingly dangerous, and the United Nations has said at least 84 people died attempting to cross the Channel in 2024.

Those arriving by small boat come from a range of countries, with Eritrea accounting for 18% of all arrivals between July 2025 and June 2026. The other leading nations of origin were Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iran, according to the available data. Between January and December 2025, at least 2,335 people who arrived by small boat were identified as potential victims of human trafficking or other forms of modern slavery, the Home Office has said.

Small boat crossings are not the only route by which people enter the UK without permission. Another 4,712 people were detected arriving through other means — including hiding in vehicles, travelling on ferries or passing through airports — between July 2025 and June 2026, a fall of 17% on the previous year. There are also people who come legally on work or study visas and then overstay their permission, though the total number of people living in the UK illegally after arriving legally is not known.

The government has repeatedly pledged to "smash the gangs" responsible for organising the crossings, arguing that disrupting criminal networks is the most effective way to reduce the numbers. The end of the France pilot shifts attention back to that enforcement agenda, alongside broader efforts to detain and remove people with no right to remain. How quickly those removals can be scaled up — and at what cost — is likely to remain a central political battleground in the months ahead.