UK to hand France £54m extra cash in new migrant deal

Priti Patel has agreed to give French border authorities £54million to help stop migrants crossing the Channel - as the total of arrivals in England this year hit 8,000.

The Home Secretary and France's Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin confirmed they had signed an agreement to strengthen UK-French cooperation on illegal immigration in the Channel.

It follows accusations of the French navy allowing small boats crowded with migrants to enter British waters rather than being returned to Calais.

At least 430 migrants sailed across the Channel on Monday in a new single-day record.

It is believed that at least 8,452 people have now made the crossing in 2021 - more than in the whole of 2020.

The extra funding will see police officers patrolling French beaches more than double in an effort to prevent departures into in the world's busiest shipping lane.

With UK support last year, France doubled the number of officers deployed daily on French beaches, improved intelligence sharing and purchased more cutting-edge technology.

This allegedly resulted in France preventing twice as many crossings so far this year than in the same period in 2020.