Small boats: It makes sense to give France money to stop the crossings, says the prime minister

Rishi Sunak said during an Anglo-French summit in Paris that spending more money with France to stop small boat crossings is a “sensible investment”.

The prime minister met French President Emmanuel Macron and the two men will hold a press conference later.

Speaking ahead of their meeting, Sunak said giving France £63m a year to boost policing on its shores had benefits for the UK.

He said it was better than paying to accommodate immigrants in the UK.

“I think everyone knows we spend £5.5m a day on hotels – we’d rather not do that, and the best way to stop that is to stop people from coming in the first place,” he said.

The UK government hopes to use the summit to bolster British and French efforts to prevent immigrants from crossing the English Channel.

But the two countries are not expected to reach an agreement on returning migrants who reach the UK to France.

The French government is believed to favor a UK-EU deal, which is frustrating for British diplomats who would like to see faster action.

“We want a return agreement between the EU and the UK and we will push that forward,” the prime minister’s spokesman said.

“But it is equally important that there is action on the ground right now to stop the crossings that we are seeing even in these winter months.”

“At this point, due to Brexit, there is no readmission agreement between France and the UK,” said a French government source.

Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer argued that without a deal to bring back rejected asylum-seekers, talks between the UK and France would “make a bad situation worse”.

He added, “We will have people who can’t get through the system, who can’t be sent back, and so they’ll end up in hotels and other accommodations at taxpayers’ expense.”

The conflict in Ukraine, nuclear energy and renewable energy are also on the agenda of the Paris summit.

Sunak also said he plans to speak with the French president about relations with China, ahead of Macron’s visit to the country.

The prime minister met Macron at the Elysee Palace on Friday morning, and the two men are now participating in a roundtable discussion with French and British companies.

Sunak is accompanied on his trip by Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, Home Secretary Soyla Braverman and Environment Minister Therese Coffey.

The summit comes in the week that Sunak revealed his plans to deter people from crossing the canal in small boats.

Under the plans, anyone found to have entered the UK illegally would not only be removed within 28 days, but would also be barred from returning or claiming British citizenship in the future.

Those who reach UK shores are either repatriated, or another “safe third country” such as Rwanda.

The British government feels that the relationship with their counterparts in Paris on this issue has improved significantly in the past two years.

But Downing Street’s desire to “make the little boat route across the Channel unviable” is a bold ambition – especially given that numbers proving the opposite have continued to rise.

So far this year, some 3,000 people have arrived on small boats, but the two governments claim their joint action has prevented a similar number from embarking.

Announcement is expected to deepen cooperation on this issue, not a major breakthrough.

Officials note that both the United Kingdom and France are nuclear powers, members of the Group of Seven, the Group of Twenty, the defense alliance NATO and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

Brexit has been a cornerstone of the relationship between the United Kingdom and France in recent years.

It’s a month of particularly intense activity between the two countries – King Charles and the Queen Consort will be in France in a few weeks.

Next year marks the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, which ended centuries of rivalry between the two countries.