Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has had recent discussions with her French counterpart on the potential merits of preventing small boats from crossing the Channel by intercepting them mid-journey.

The Home Secretary and I engage regularly with our French counterparts on the issue of small boat crossings.

Our joint work with France saw nearly 33,000 crossings prevented in 2022, 40% more than in 2021, and so far in 2023 a further 15,000 migrants have failed to reach our shores on small boats. Alongside this, since July 2020, the UK-France Joint Intelligence Cell (JIC) and French law enforcement partners have dismantled 82 organised crime groups linked to small boats. In 2022 alone, the JIC and French law enforcement partners secured the arrest of around 400 people smugglers.