Ministers in Paris are close to agreeing on a change in police rules that would allow officers and gendarmes to start stopping so-called “taxi” boats in shallow sea waters up to 300m from the coast from July.
A Home Office source told The i Paper: “We’ve been working with the French to change their maritime posture, making sure they do the interventions of taxi boats and in shallow waters. We really welcome seeing this come into action in July.”
The rule change comes as people smugglers have adopted more dangerous tactics after UK and French officials blocked rivers leading to the Channel with floating dams, to stop small boats accessing the sea.
Yvette Cooper delivers a speech during the International Border Security Summit (Photo: Stefan Rousseau /AFP)
Yvette Cooper stepped up calls for a rule change after a record 1,195 asylum seekers reached Britain in 19 small boats last Saturday, which the Home Secretary described as “disgraceful and unacceptable”, amid images of police watching as asylum seekers boarded a dinghy in Gravelines, between Calais and Dunkirk.
Paris is likely to argue that the deal agreed between ex-prime minister Rishi Sunak to hand nearly £500m to help France stop crossings in 2023 is due to expire next year, and the new mode of operations will require extra resources from both sides.
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Cooper visited Calais in February for talks with her counterpart to check the money was being spent properly, and also agreed to roll over the agreement to 2027 as long as France follows through on a commitment to build a £12.5m asylum detention centre in Dunkirk.
France, in particular, sees the Compagnie de Marche unit as experimental and could demand more money for it to continue if it proves successful.
In one particularly violent episode recently, French police officers were sprayed with petrol by asylum seekers and threatened with being burned as they attempted to stop a small boat crossing.
It will be designed to be compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but France is braced for potential legal challenges from charities and non-governmental organisations.
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