Danegeld: UK to Pay France Half a Billion to Police Own Beaches, Build Them a Migrant Detention Centre

TOPSHOT - Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (L) and France's President Emmanuel Macron
KIN CHEUNG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The British government has agreed to pay Emmanuel Macron’s France nearly half a billion pounds over the next three years to tackle the boat migrant crisis, despite the fact all previous payments have failed to reduce numbers and no deal being struck on turning the boats back.

At the first Anglo-French summit in years, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who hailed an “entente renewed” with France, has agreed to send £478 million (€541 million) in British taxpayers’ money over the next three years to Paris to fund more patrols of French beaches and other migrant set-off points.

The British are also paying for a new migrant detention centre in France, The Telegraph reports.

Yet while the British government has long sought a deal with France on the return of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel — being too weak-willed to simply turn them back unilaterally — Macron apparently held firm in refusing to strike such an agreement, with a Conservative (Tory) government once again allowing itself to be forced into sending cash to the French instead of sending back boats.

The half-a-billion pound payout follows previous payments adding up to over £300 million over the past decade —  during which time illegal boat migration has increased at an exponential rate, climbing from 28,000 in 2021 to a record 45,000 last year.

The British government has admitted that they are expecting this number to be even higher this year, with internal projections predicting that some 65,000 could be brought ashore in Dover — raising questions as to what exactly the French are being paid for.

The latest deal announced at the Elysee Palace in Paris comes on top of another £63 million deal signed by Sunak as recently as November, supposedly to increase patrols of French beaches by 40 per cent and open up cooperation between law enforcement agencies in the two nations.

Announcing the deal, Prime Minister Sunak asserted that he had “made it one of my five priorities to stop the boats” and that his government was “delivering on that priority to stop people coming to the UK illegally” — although in fact he has not done so, but merely promised he will.

“Last year I agreed the largest ever small boats deal with France to increase UK-funded patrols by 40 per cent. This week I announced measures to ensure nobody who enters the UK illegally can remain here,” he boasted.

“We don’t need to manage this problem, we need to break it. And today, we have gone further than ever before to put an end to this disgusting trade in human life. Working together, the UK and France will ensure that nobody can exploit our systems with impunity.”

As previously mentioned, however, attempts to solve the Channel migrant crisis with handouts to France have been a consistent policy of Conservative governments dating back to the days of former Prime Minister David Cameron, who sent millions to France to construct ‘state-of-the-art fencing’ around the port of Calais to attempt to stem the flow of illegals trying to break into the country on the backs of lorries.

The deal announced on Friday was quickly ridiculed by Brexiteers, including Nigel Farage, who said: “Macron makes it clear there is no deal on the return of illegal migrants, and the Brits will pay yet more money for nothing.”

In response to the half-a-billion-pound deal, the leader of Reform UK — formerly the Brexit Party — Richard Tice told Breitbart London: “This announcement is almost farcical. It’s more money, more migrants. We are paying France to police their own country and to build their own detention centre when they won’t even countenance taking back illegal migrants they should have deported.

“It should be the other way round, with the French paying us to help mop up their failings. These are migrants that France is not properly controlling, being able to illegally cross the Channel into the UK because French police are failing to stop them.

“Even when boats are intercepted, the migrants on board are simply released by French police, enabling them to keep trying. Unless Channel migrants, many of whom have already had asylum denied in France, are returned to France, traffickers have nothing to worry about and the numbers will continue to grow.”

Mr Tice went on to say that the “UK is carrying the can for Continental mismanagement” on the part of the European Union and its open borders agenda, adding that the government of Rishi Sunak is demonstrating “weak will when we should be standing up for what is in our best interests.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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