Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government is taking to help create a more effective working relationship with the French Government to reduce deaths and injury resulting from illegal channel crossings.

The UK maintains regular contact with the Government of France on our joint cooperation to tackle illegal migration at the shared border. The UK has committed several funding packages to support this work, including a bilateral arrangement which was reached between the UK and France on 20 July 2021.

This year, through our partnership and collaboration, over 19,000 crossing attempts were prevented – around 85% more than to this point in 2021. We remain committed to addressing this issue which requires long term and ambitious action