UK-France ‘one in one out’ deal to expire on Thursday, say sources

Deal aimed at deterring small boat arrivals set to end as talks stall over French demand for EU-wide scheme

The UK government’s “one in one out” deal with France, which was supposed to help deter small boat arrivals, is expected to expire on Thursday, government sources have said.

Negotiations to extend the deal have stalled over French demands for a Europe-wide deal instead, and a reluctance to scale up the numbers of people exchanged between the two countries.

Flights that remove people who have been already detained under the scheme will continue, but they are expected to end within weeks.

A UK government source confirmed that the expectation was that the deal would be formally drawn to a close on Thursday.

“We would like to see the deal continue. But it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t because it never got to the scale where it would have been a proper deterrent to people coming to the UK in small boats,” the source said.

The French interior ministry told French media on Wednesday: “We are discussing with the British the terms of exiting the agreement.”

Negotiations in Paris over how best to tie up the deal are continuing between Home Office staff and their French counterparts.

More than 1,400 people who have arrived in the UK via small boats have been sent back to France under the deal. As of the end of June 2026, 1,117 people with links to the UK had been sent to the UK from France.

The deal had been set to expire in April but was extended to 1 October to help counter the anticipated increase in attempted crossings during the summer.

The scheme was announced by Keir Starmer and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in July 2025 and the first flights took off in September that year.

At the time, Starmer described the deal as “groundbreaking” because it would help to deter the number of people crossing the Channel illegally.

“There is no silver bullet here, but with a united effort, new tactics and a new level of intent, we can finally turn the tables,” he said.

Many of the detainees deported to France under the deal have become homeless in the French capital.

Others have returned to the camps around Calais and Dunkirk, and some have made the Channel crossing back to the UK.

In June, France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, lauded the scheme as a potential deterrent but said France was not prepared to go it alone with Britain.

“According to information from the UN high commissioner for refugees, word of the scheme is beginning to spread, which is prompting a number of migrants to abandon their plans to make the crossing,” Nuñez told a parliamentary commission.

“The value of this scheme is therefore clear. Nevertheless, we consider that France should not bear the burden alone and that it would be better to incorporate it into an agreement between the EU and the UK.

“I have therefore already made it clear to my counterpart that this pilot agreement, which we signed in August 2025, was not intended to be extended beyond 1 October 2026.”

An EU-wide returns deal known as the Dublin agreement existed before the UK left the EU. Attempts to continue the returns deal post-Brexit have been rejected by EU leaders.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, disclosed to MPs this month that the deal cost about £56,000 for every person sent back to France.

She dismissed suggestions that an EU-wide system would be a “silver bullet” for the Channel crisis. She said: “It is a real mistake to think that that pact is the future. And if we were in that, this problem would go away, because I promise you it would not.”

She added that the government’s scheme had struggled to scale up to larger numbers of returns and it had been “operationally difficult” to increase removals because of constraints such as detention space.

“It’s not been without its challenges. Obviously, the numbers are still relatively small,” she said.

Between January and 27 September, 19,135 people crossed the Channel by small boat from France. This was down by 42% on the same period the previous year.