UK and France agree pilot ‘one in, one out’ returns scheme designed to curb migrant boat crossings – UK politics live | Politics
Starmer confirms ‘ground-breaking returns pilot’ scheme will start operating in coming weeks
Starmer moves to illegal migration.
This is a global crisis, he says. But it is also “acutely” a crisis for UK and France.
An enterprise run by criminals is leading hundreds of people to their deaths in the Channel.
They have agreed “a ground-breaking returns pilot”.
He says, in exchange for every migrant returned, another migrant will be allowed to enter the UK legally. This will be subject to strict checks, and only available to people who have not tried to enter the UK illegally.
This will be implemented in the coming weeks.
Some people will ask – why take anyone?
But it is right to offer haven to people in dire need, Starmer says.
But he says there is another point – the government has to show it can work with others on this.
He thanks Macron for his support for the French police using tougher measures to stop boats leaving.
Key events
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Starmer cites small boats deal as example of why ‘social democracy’ can get better results than ‘performative politics’ of Farage
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Macron says Brexit supporters were wrong to think leaving EU would make it easier for UK to tackle illegal migration
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Macron says nuclear weapons partnership deal response to ‘markedly more threatening environment’
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Coalition of willing to have new, permanent HQ in Paris, Starmer says
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Starmer confirms ‘ground-breaking returns pilot’ scheme will start operating in coming weeks
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Starmer and Macron hold press conference
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Why government says it is getting rid of FPTP for mayoral and PCC elections in England
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Rayner to scrap first-past-the-post for mayoral and PCC elections in England, reverting to supplementary vote
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Starmer and Macron urge allies to step up ‘pressure’ on Putin
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Starmer says European ‘coalition of willing’ plans to help Ukraine in event of ceasefire now ‘mature’
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Iran’s threat to UK on a par with Russia’s, security report finds
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Labour criticises Badenoch for not saying Tories would definitely keep pensions triple lock
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Ross Greer announces bid to become co-leader of Scottish Greens
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Badenoch rejects official figures saying 24% of people disabled, claiming this based on definition so wide it’s meaningless
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Badenoch dismisses Jake Berry as ‘banana republic’ opportunist after his defection to Reform
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Badenoch dismisses suggestion that defections to Reform UK reflect badly on her leadership
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Badenoch says supporting triple lock for pensions is Tory policy
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Badenoch claims UK becoming ‘welfare state with economy attached’
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Streeting says resident doctors have lost support of public with latest strike threat
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Badenoch claims Farage like ‘Corbyn with a pint’, saying Reform UK promising ‘unaffordable giveaways’ on welfare
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Badenoch calls for foreign nationals and people with less serious medical conditions to lose right to sickness benefits
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Almost 1.7m children living in homes affected by two-child benefit cap, figures show
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Macron suggests EU needs to be involved in finding solutions to illegal migration
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Starmer says UK and France have agreed ‘new tactics’ to deal with small boats
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Hospital waiting lists in England at lowest levels for more than two years, figures show
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Last Tory government helped to ‘wreck country’, says former party chair Jake Berry as he defects to Reform UK
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Britain and France agree use of their nuclear weapons could be coordinated in defence of Europe
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Tories claim ‘one in, one out’ migration deal with France ‘will not deter anyone’
Starmer cites small boats deal as example of why ‘social democracy’ can get better results than ‘performative politics’ of Farage
Starmer and Macron are now taking questions.
Q: [From ITV’s Robert Peston] Will this pilot scheme really have any deterrent effect? In French, he asks Macron how much money France is getting for this deal. And, back in English, he says Starmer and Macron are both centrists. Do they have any survival tips for centrists in this environment.
Starmer says the point about this is that it is “a pilot to break the [business] model” of people smugglers.
He says he and Macron have agreed this because they have cooperated, “through serioius diplomacy”.
Macron says France and the UK have agreements that are already effective. He says for every £1 the UK puts in to tackling small boats, France spends €3.
He again says Brexit made the illegal migration problem worse for the UK.
One third of illegal immigrants in Schengen countries are people who want to come to the UK, he says. He suggests that is why an EU-wide scheme is needed.
And, on the final part of the question, Macron says populists offer voters simple solution. He cites Brexit as an example. Did it solve the UK’s problems? No.
After Brexit, people thought it was over for centrists. They say policy is compicated. But that turned out not to be the case, he says.
And Starmer says, on this point, achieving results by quiet diplomacy is the mission of his government.
Going back to migration, he says this is a problem around the world. It requires a serious, pragmatic response, not performative politics.
He says, while he and Macron have been working hard, others have just been “taking pictures”. That is a reference to Nigel Farage.
He says it is really important that social democracy shows it has the answers.
Macron says Brexit supporters were wrong to think leaving EU would make it easier for UK to tackle illegal migration
At the press conference Macron says some people in the UK thought Brexit would make it easier for the UK government to stop small boats.
But he says the opposite happened, because the UK was no longer bound by the Dublin convention.
He says the agremeent reached today will come into effect as soon as the legal process has been concluded.
He says it could be a “major deterrent”.
The International Rescue Committee, the international aid charity run by former Labour cabinet minster David Miliband, has also condemned the plan. Flora Alexander, the IRC’s UK director, said:
This agreement marks yet another step in the wrong direction – doubling down on deterrence rather than offering meaningful protection. Prioritising tougher enforcement without creating safe, legal routes is both dangerous and ineffective. Evidence shows that these policies don’t stop people from seeking safety – they simply force them into more perilous journeys, putting lives at risk.
Proposals such as a ‘one-in, one-out’ scheme risk undermining the right to seek asylum, a core principle of international law. They ignore the root causes of why people cross borders in the first place – to escape conflict, persecution and crisis. Border security must not come at the expense of human rights or the UK’s moral and legal obligations.
Care4Calais, a refugee charity, has condemned the ‘one in, one out’ deal that has just been announced. It says:
A grubby deal between two Governments that trades human lives. A deal that will likely be expensive, will make life harder for people who seek safety in the UK, but will do nothing to tackle the root cause of crossings – a lack of safe routes
The government would probably argue that the scheme does establish a safe route of sorts.
Starmer will take questions on this in a moment. But Macron is still talking at the moment.
Macron says nuclear weapons partnership deal response to ‘markedly more threatening environment’
Macron is speaking about the nuclear weapons deal.
He says this goes beyond what the two countries have agreed in the past on the use of nuclear weapons. They say they cannot imagine any extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response from both powers.
The two countries are independent and sovereign. But they will have the ability to work together given the “markedly more threatening environment” they face.
Emmanuel Macron is speaking now (in French).
He says the state visit shows the strength of the relationship between the two countries.
Starmer says he and Macron have also signed a Northwood declaration, confirming that the UK and France are willing to coordinate their use of nuclear weapons. (See 9.29am.)
Coalition of willing to have new, permanent HQ in Paris, Starmer says
Starmer says he and Macro also discussed economic cooperation.
And they strengthened their work on European security, and in support of Ukraine.
They have just chaired a coalition of the willing meeting, he says.
And it will have a new HQ in Paris.
No 10 has just put out a press release about this. It says:
The Coalition of the Willing will have a new permanent headquarters in Paris, with plans in place for a future coordination cell in Kyiv, as command structures for the future reassurance force are finalised.
It comes after leaders from the Coalition of the Willing met virtually today, with the Prime Minister and President Macron joining from the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood and President Zelenskyy, Prime Minister Meloni and other leaders joining from the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome to discuss the latest planning and our wider efforts to support Ukraine.
For the first time, representatives of the United States, including Special Presidential Envoy, General Keith Kellogg, Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Richard Blumenthal, joined the meeting.
Military chiefs updated on the significant progress made, including the completion of reconnaissance visits to Ukraine, to better understand how a post-ceasefire force could best help regenerate the strength and firepower of Ukrainian forces and provide reassurance in the years to come.
Following agreement on command structures for the force, leaders agreed that planning should continue on an enduring, business as usual footing, to ensure that a force can deploy in the days following the cessation of hostilities.
That will include a 3-star multi-national operational headquarters in Paris, led by the UK and France, to oversee all tactical and operational arrangements.
Starmer confirms ‘ground-breaking returns pilot’ scheme will start operating in coming weeks
Starmer moves to illegal migration.
This is a global crisis, he says. But it is also “acutely” a crisis for UK and France.
An enterprise run by criminals is leading hundreds of people to their deaths in the Channel.
They have agreed “a ground-breaking returns pilot”.
He says, in exchange for every migrant returned, another migrant will be allowed to enter the UK legally. This will be subject to strict checks, and only available to people who have not tried to enter the UK illegally.
This will be implemented in the coming weeks.
Some people will ask – why take anyone?
But it is right to offer haven to people in dire need, Starmer says.
But he says there is another point – the government has to show it can work with others on this.
He thanks Macron for his support for the French police using tougher measures to stop boats leaving.
Starmer and Macron hold press conference
Keir Starmer is opening his press conference.
He starts by calling Emmanuel Macron as a “firm friend”.
Why government says it is getting rid of FPTP for mayoral and PCC elections in England
Here is an extract from a briefing note being circulated within government explaining why FTPT is being abandoned for mayoral and PCC elections. (See 4.16pm.)
Mayors serve many millions of people and manage multi-million pound budgets yet can be elected by just a fraction of the vote, under recent changes by the previous government. This is despite the supplementary vote system working effectively for over a decade previously, providing a strong, personal mandate for regional mayors.
While FPTP is a simple voting system, on a vast geographic scale it can lead to individuals being elected with only a small proportion of the total votes cast. Given the large population that regional mayors and PCCs represent – far exceeding that of parliamentarians – the government believes that they should be elected with a greater consensus among their electors. The bill will therefore change the voting system for these types of elections to the supplementary vote system.
Rayner to scrap first-past-the-post for mayoral and PCC elections in England, reverting to supplementary vote
Labour is going to bring back the supplementary vote (SV) for mayoral and police and crime commissioner (PCC) elections in England.
The provision is included in the English devolution and community empowerment bill, which has been published today. It is clause 59 of the bill.
These elections always used to be held under the supplementary vote system, which gives voters the chance to select a first preference and a second preference and means that, if no candidate gets more than 50% when first preference votes are counted, the top two candidates go into a run-off, with the second preference votes for candidates who are eliminated being taken into account.
But in 2022 the last government changed the voting system for mayoral and PCC elections to first past the post (FPTP) – the system used in UK parliamentary elections.
The Tories argued that FPTP is easier to understand. But the move was widely seen as an attempt to boost the chances of Conservative candidates, and a Constitution Unit analysis of how the system operated in 2024 confirmed this. It said that, although none of the mayoral election results that year were affected by the switch to FPTP, at least four, and potentially up to 12, PCC election results were affected. It went on:
Because the left in British politics is currently more fragmented than the right, the switch from SV to FPTP favoured the Conservatives over Labour and other left or centre-left parties. By changing the voting system, the Conservatives significantly reduced their losses.
Many Labour figures believe that a switch from FTPT to SV will help their party beat Reform UK in mayoral contests.
Curiously, Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, has not mentioned this aspect of the bill in her press release about it.
Starmer and Macron urge allies to step up ‘pressure’ on Putin
Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron called for more pressure in the form of fresh sanctions against Moscow to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine, Jakub Krupa reports on his Europe live blog.
The Starmer/Macron press conference is now due to start at 4pm.
I will be covering it here, but Jakub will also be covering European angles, particularly relating to Ukraine and the coalition of the willing.
With Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron set to announce a ‘one in, one out’ migration deal, the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has decided to spend the day on a boat in the Channel. He posted this on X.
And this is what he told GB News:
This is a classic day in the English Channel over the last five years when the weather’s calm, or a red day, as they call it.
You’ve got a migrant boat and we’ve seen it through the binoculars.
There’s about 70 people on board, being escorted, all the way over by the French Navy and behind us, we have Border Force sitting on the 12-mile line, waiting for the handover.
Starmer says European ‘coalition of willing’ plans to help Ukraine in event of ceasefire now ‘mature’
Keir Starmer has said that European plans for a peacekeeping force to aid Ukraine once the war ends are now “mature” after months of planning.
Speaking at the Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) centre in Northwood, London, during a call with allies who make up the “coalition of the willing”, Starmer said:
I am very pleased to say today that these plans are mature and we are putting them on a long-term footing.
He also said what was important now for the coalition was “making sure that our focus is on ensuring Ukraine is in the strongest possible position” in the event of a ceasefire.
New headquarters for the coalition are to be based in Paris, he added.
And Emmanuel Macron, who is with Starmer, told the gathered allies: “We have a plan that is ready to go and initiate in the hours after a ceasefire.”
Sitting alongside Starmer was defence secretary John Healey, national security adviser Jonathan Powell, and Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff.
Macron was joined by Healey’s French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu, and high ranking officials.
Iran’s threat to UK on a par with Russia’s, security report finds
Iran’s intimidation, including the fear of physical attack and assassination of Iranian dissidents living in the UK, is comparable in scale to the threat posed by Russia, parliament’s intelligence and security committee has found. Patrick Wintour has the story.
