Small boat migrants will be locked up as part of France return deal, Yvette Cooper confirms

Small boat arrivals will be detained as part of a returns deal with France, Yvette Cooper has revealed.

The Home Secretary said migrants will be prevented from fleeing so they can be sent back across the Channel when a new trial scheme starts. She said the UK wants to extend the agreement - the first returns agreement the UK has struck with France since Brexit - "as far as we're able".

On Thursday Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron announced they had agreed on a one-in-one-out pilot scheme to deter small boat crossings. This will see people who come to the UK without authorisation returned to France in exchange for migrants with a legitimate case to settle in the UK.

Ms Cooper told BBC Radio 4's Today programme:"We will be detaining people certainly as the pilot is introduced and as the programme becomes operationalised." Pressed who would be detained, the Home Secretary said: "Those will be operational decisions and we will update people on those as we roll the programme out."

READ MORE: 'I was in the room as Starmer hammered Farage over small boats - one thing stood out'

It is initially expended that 50 migrants a week will be returned to France, with 50 others going the other way. But Ms Cooper refused to be drawn on the number, hinting that it could rise higher in the future.

She said: "We will want to be able to extend this as far as we're able to where we will continue to build." She had earlier told Times Radio: "The numbers are not fixed, even for this pilot phase that we are starting now.

"So this will be a programme that we roll out step-by-step, and we will provide updates as we go. But we are going to do this in a steady way."

The Labour frontbencher said France is committed to stopping the crossings to end the "nightmare" of camps and people moving to northern towns like Calais.

The UK has long been seeking a returns deal with France, to replace a scheme it lost access to after Brexit. Ms Cooper said: "This is us working properly with our neighbouring countries in a way that frankly the previous Government never did.

"For six years they just shouted at France, they didn't work with France, they didn't get France to change their maritime rules, they didn't get France to come up with this new agreement that means we can return people to France. And it's something people have been calling for for a long time."

In a blistering statement on Thursday, Mr Macron claimed Brits had been told a pack of lies by Brexiteers about the impact on immigration. He said losing access to the Dublin Agreement - an EU wide deal that means migrants can be returned to the first country they entered - had been devastating for the UK.

Asked if he had a point, Ms Cooper told Sky News: ""I think what I've seen happen is that the way that the criminal smuggler gangs operate is that they will weaponise anything that is happening.

"And so what we saw in the run-up to Brexit being implemented was we saw criminal gangs promising people that they had to cross quickly, and they had to pay money to the smuggler gangs quickly in order to be able to cross in time before Brexit happened.

"As soon as Brexit happened, they then said 'Oh, well, now you've got to pay us money, because this means you can't be returned because the Dublin Agreement isn't in place'.

"So the thing about the criminal smuggler gangs is whatever arrangements are in place, they will use them in order to make money, but that's why we have to be fundamentally undermining their model."

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