The British government will hand the French government tens of millions to stop boat migrants yet again, but has attached no target for a reduction in crossings and is refusing to say whether it thinks the policy will even work.
A succession of Conservative (Tory) Party prime ministers have already made several transfers to the French government totalling hundreds of millions of pounds since 2015, in the vain hope that this might persuade them to stop illegal aliens from using their beaches as a launchpad to Britain. However, the annual influx has carried on increasing year on year — and increased exponentially, at that.
The latest £63 million tranche of money to France comes with a commitment to bolster patrols by 40 per cent and reinforce them with British personnel — but no arrangements for boat migrants who reach Britain to be transferred back to France, which would be by far the most obvious way of discouraging them.
Indeed, the British government has pointedly refused to say whether it believes the deal with the French will reduce the number of migrants crossing the Channel at all, and Downing Street has confirmed that a target for reductions was not included in it.
“It’s really important you understand that we are we are dealing with an evolving situation,” insisted James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, in comments to the BBC — as if “the situation” has not in fact been a fairly consistent one involving migrants in France and Belgium — safe, European Union member-states — paying criminal people-smugglers to carry them to Britain in small boats, and the authorities declining to turn them around, since at least 2018.
Unions seem to be unimpressed by the deal, with a PCS union representative for Border Force staff, Kevin Mills, pointing out that it does not mean that migrants caught trying to reach Britain will actually be detained and dealt with by the French authorities instead of simply released to try again later, as is typical at present.
“This deal is not enough and the lack of detail is telling. If you stop thousands today and let most of them go, how many are just going to try again tomorrow? There is no plan as far as I can see,” Mills told The Guardian.
Alp Mehmet of the Migration Watch UK think tank, which has been pressing the Conservatives to keep their serially broken promises on curbing mass migration, legal and illegal, for over a decade now, was also unimpressed by the scheme.
“Working with France on this crisis is all very well but the public will be forgiven for seeing this latest, more-of-the-same, agreement as another one throwing good money after bad,” he said in a press release seen by Breitbart London.
“What remains puzzling for most people is why France is willing to stop migrants from setting out from its shores but refuses to take back those migrants back if they slip through and are apprehended by the British.”
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