Political reporter
The UK must refuse to accept “undocumented males” arriving in the UK in small boats as part of any deal with French President Emmanuel Macron, Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage has said.
Downing Street is hoping to finalise an agreement on tackling small boat crossings during Macron’s three-day state visit, the first by a French president since 2008.
Speaking ahead of the summit, Farage said Sir Keir Starmer must not to bow to an “increasingly arrogant, anti-Brexit French president” and protect the UK’s say over who settles here.
Sir Keir said he was seeking “serious answers to serious problems” with allies, calling Farage’s approach, “break everything and claim that’s how you fix things”.
During the exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions, Farage said voters had backed Brexit “because we wanted to take back control of our borders”.
Farage said: “Does the prime minister understand that demand is even greater now than it was in 2016?
“Does he understand the country demands that you say to the French president ‘we will not accept undocumented males across the English Channel’ and that you are not dictated to by an increasingly arrogant, anti-Brexit French president?”
Responding in the Commons, Sir Keir accused Farage of exploiting the issue for political gain.
“We are fixing the mess we inherited and working with other countries to ensure we take the measures necessary to stop people crossing the Channel,” the prime minister said.
“They are serious answers to serious problems.”
Sir Keir said the Conservative Party had been following Farage’s approach to “break everything and claim that’s how you fix things” and “stick two fingers up at your neighbours then expect them to work with us”.
Following PMQs, Sir Keir headed to Downing Street for the first of two days of meetings with the French president where they will be discussing migration.
The prime minister is pressing to make a “one in, one out” deal the centrepiece of a new agreement with France.
The arrangement would allow Britain to return migrants who arrive by small boat to France in exchange for accepting asylum seekers with a family connection in the UK.
A group of five Mediterranean countries have written to the European Commission about the issue, complaining they may be forced to accept people deported from the UK.
Sir Keir has also been pushing for France to revise its rules to allow police to intervene when boats are in shallow water, rather than requiring them still to be on land.
Last week the BBC witnessed French officers use a knife to puncture an inflatable boat after it had launched in an apparent change of tactics.
In the Commons, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the UK should freeze any new funding to the French government unless it agrees to take back Channel migrants.
Speaking at PMQs, Sir Ed said: “The Conservative government badly undermined the security of our borders by ripping up the returns agreement that allowed us to send migrants back to Europe.
“So I hope the prime minister can secure a new returns agreement with France that acts as a real deterrent to stop the boats.”
Responding, Sir Keir said he was meeting President Macron over two days to strike a new agreement and would “only provide funding that delivers for our priorities”.
Small boat arrivals hit a record high in the first half of 2025, with nearly 20,000 people crossing the Channel.
This is despite the UK giving over £700m to France since 2018 to fund improved coastal patrols and surveillance.
Following PMQs, the prime minister’s spokesman said the government has been “addressing the issue” of “migration pull factors”, after Macron raised the issue in a speech.
The president said the UK and France “would only arrive at the lasting and effective solution” to people crossing the Channel in small boats if the “pull factors” attracting them to the UK were addressed.
When asked if Sir Keir agreed with Macron, the PM’s spokesman said the government was “toughening every part of the system to ensure the rules are enforced and respected”.
He said illegal working undermined businesses and wages, adding “the British public won’t stand for it and neither will this government”.
“That’s why we’ve surged illegal working raids and arrests,” he said.
