New small boats deal may be throwing good money after bad

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The UK will pay France £662m under a new deal aimed at stopping small boats crossing the channel. The agreement lasts for three years, with part of the funding conditional on the number of journeys stopped. More than a 1,000 security personnel, including 50 riot police trained in crowd control tactics, will patrol beaches in northern France. Drones and helicopters will monitor the shores from above. Success is not guaranteed. Rishi Sunak signed a £500m deal with France in 2023 that also involved a surge in policing numbers, but it had little impact on the number of people attempting to reach the UK illegally. This is partly because smugglers have adopted new tactics, such as picking up migrants offshore. Tougher policing also fails to address the root cause of the small boats crisis, which includes a lack of legal asylum routes.