Small boat arrivals 'drawn to UK because we can't return them after Brexit'

Migrants are being drawn to the UK on small boats because there is no return agreement with Europe after , MPs have been told.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said there is evidence that this is "a factor" for some people making the dangerous journey to claim asylum. She told members of the Home Affairs Select Committee the Government is trying to secure a new return deal with Europe to replace the one that was lost.

Ms Cooper made the remarks after being questioned by MP Chris Murray about the EU's Dublin scheme. This gives member states the right to return migrants to European countries where they had previously made an asylum claim.

The UK had such an arrangement with the EU until December 31, 2020. Ms Cooper said: "We want to see a replacement for the Dublin scheme to recognise the impact of that. There's evidence of people who are in the UK raising that as a factor for them."

The Labour frontbencher continued: "Nobody should be making these journeys, it was completely unacceptable the number that we saw on Saturday."

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So far 14,812 people are known to have crossed the Channel this year. It comes after a leaked recording revealed Tory shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp complained that after Brexit the UK "can't any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum".

In a clip obtained by Sky News last month, Mr Philp went on: "When we did check it out… (we) found that about half the people crossing the Channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe."

On Monday Éléonore Anne-Marie Caroit, deputy of the French national assembly, said Britain appears like an "El Dorado" - the mythical city of gold in South America - for migrants.

But she denied that France was failing to stop the problem, saying the two nations must stop blaming each other. Ms Caroit said the UK has suffered as a result of , with the UK no longer able to return people to the EU under the Dublin scheme.

She told the : "The numbers have been increasing since Brexit after the UK is no longer part of the Dublin Regulation and has a very weak asylum policy." This made it easier to return migrants with no right to be in the UK, she said.

It comes after Home Office figures showed the number of days with good conditions for migrants to cross the Channel this year have more than doubled compared to previous years.

There were 60 so-called "red" days between January 1 and April 30 this year, when factors such as wind speed, wave height and the likelihood of rain meant crossings were classed by officials as "likely" or "highly likely". Some 11,074 migrants arrived in the UK during these four months after crossing the Channel.

By contrast, there were 27 red days in the same period last year, less than half the number in 2025, with 7,567 arrivals recorded - nearly a third lower than the total for this year. There were also 27 red days in the first four months of 2022, with 23 red days in 2023, with 6,691 and 5,946 arrivals in these periods, respectively.

But Mr Philp responded: "Blaming the weather for the highest ever crossing numbers so far this year is the border security equivalent of a lazy student claiming 'the dog ate my homework'."