Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure support from the French authorities in preventing small boats from crossing the Channel.

Home Office officials regularly meet with French counterparts to exchange information so that operational activity against these dangerous, illegal and unnecessary crossings is optimised. As a result of those joint efforts nearly 33,000 crossing attempts were prevented in 2022, an increase of over 40% on 2021 and over 16,000 more have been prevented so far this year.

Measures introduced to tackle illegal migration since the Prime Minister took office include a package of measures agreed with France which will see the deployment of more than double the number of French personnel and enhanced technology to patrol beaches.

A strengthened partnership with Turkey which includes UK and Turkish law enforcement officers stepping up joint operations to tackle Organised Immigration Crime and disrupt the supply chain of boat parts and other materials used as part of illegal migration journeys.

A new partnership between social media companies and government to tackle people smuggling content online. Backed by a new Online Capability Centre, it will undermine and disrupt organised crime groups using the internet to facilitate these journeys