'One in, one out' deal with France sees costs jump to £56,000 for every small boat migrant sent back, Shabana Mahmood reveals

See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred Source Published: 13:15 EDT, 15 September 2026 | Updated: 13:15 EDT, 15 September 2026 The cost of sending small boat migrants back to France under the ‘one in, one out’ deal has risen to £56,000 a head, the Home Secretary has confirmed.Shabana Mahmood told MPs more than 1,400 migrants have been deported to France so far.It would mean the policy has hit the British taxpayer with a £78million bill so far - not including the cost of accepting more than 1,100 asylum seekers into the UK as part of reciprocal terms of the deal.Previous figures had put the cost of each return at less than £50,000.The deal, which is due to expire next month, had handled ‘relatively small’ numbers of migrants and it had been ‘operationally difficult to scale up very large numbers of removals every week into the French system’, Ms Mahmood said.She also confirmed to the Commons’ home affairs select committee that only a ‘small number’ of failed asylum seeker families have accepted Labour’s offer of up to £40,000 to leave Britain voluntarily under a separate scheme.Labour unveiled the offer of £10,000 a head for up to four members of a failed asylum seeker family in March.Officials argued that it would be cheaper than the average £158,000 cost of keeping them in taxpayer-funded accommodation.The Home Secretary acknowledged for the first time that families were calculating whether to accept the deal or remain able to access free public services in Britain. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood giving evidence to the Commons' home affairs select committee on Tuesday‘If you're a failed asylum-seeking family, what you're trading off is an offer of £40,000 which will help you resettle back in your country of origin, versus access to free healthcare and education for your children,’ she told the committee.She also confirmed Govt is still ‘pursuing with interest’ the concept of setting up overseas returns hubs for failed asylum seekers.It came as top lawyers warned that Labour’s new immigration Bill ‘tinkers with the edges’ of the law and fails to address the ‘central problem’ of the small boats crisis.A separate Commons committee scrutinising Ms Mahmood’s Immigration and Asylum Bill, published in June, were told it ‘leaves untouched the central structural problem’ which allows illegal migrants to claim asylum in Britain.Richard Ekins KC, professor of law at Oxford University, said: ‘The measures it makes are simply going to tinker with the edges and aren't addressing the central problem.’ Dr Conor Casey, from the University of Surrey and a fellow of the Policy Exchange think-tank, added: ‘I don't see anything here that would deter in any way unlawful crossings in the Channel.’In a separate report published on Tuesday a watchdog warned the UK Border Force risks ‘losing the wrong people in the wrong areas’ as part of a plan to cut its number of employees by nearly 600.The official report by Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration John Tuckett raised concerns over a programme to cut 563 staff from the Home Office agency which protects Britain’s border.The inspector said top civil servants had acknowledged the target could not be hit by natural wastage alone - but there are no other schemes in place to cut numbers, which could lead to ‘skills and knowledge gaps’.He also warned there was a ‘lack of clarity’ over who was responsible for overseeing the cuts.