What £56,000 Per Return Says About the UK-France Asylum Pilot
Britain is paying about £56,000 for each person sent back to France under the 'one in, one out' agreement, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told MPs. About 1,400 people have been removed to France since the scheme started in August 2025. She faced questions about whether the pilot offers value for taxpayers. The Guardian
Under the deal, the UK returns someone who arrived by small boat to France. In exchange, Britain accepts an asylum seeker who applied through a legal route. It works like a swap. The pilot has already been extended once. It is due to run into October, and its long-term future has not been decided.
Mahmood defended the cost. She said it was still cheaper than, or roughly equal to, supporting someone in a hotel for a year. She said the scheme has already returned more people than Britain ever managed under Dublin, the old EU system that set rules for which country handled an asylum claim. She said increasing removals has been hard in practice, partly because of limited detention space to hold people before removal. Some of those sent to France later came back to the UK in lorries or small boats.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez-Belda told Mahmood he wants to end the 'one in, one out' scheme. He said the pilot deal signed in August 2025 was not meant to be renewed after 1 October 2026. Paris wants the bilateral deal between the two countries to be replaced in time by a wider returns deal between the EU and the UK.
Mahmood was also asked about a separate pilot offering up to £40,000 to rejected asylum-seeking families to leave Britain voluntarily. She told the committee that only relatively small numbers had taken it up. The hearing is listed on the UK Parliament Committees website as oral evidence titled 'Shabana Mahmood'. MPs pressed her on costs and enforcement as part of wider checks on asylum policy. The Sun
This scrutiny is not new. In November 2025, Mahmood defended major changes to the asylum system and told MPs the situation is "out of control." BBC Her remarks at the time linked returns, detention capacity and legal routes. The September figures put a price on one part of that system.
The broader context here is a shift from small-scale testing between two countries to negotiation with many. London has treated 'one in, one out' as a test of whether two countries can transfer cases outside Dublin. Paris sees it as temporary. A deal between two countries is simpler to run than one with 27 members, but it can be weakened if people return and if crossings move to other parts of the coast.
Looking at what comes next, three limits will shape any replacement. Cost per removal sets the budget starting point. Detention space sets the practical limit. Re-entry sets the enforcement test. The £56,000 figure answers the first question. It does not settle the other two. If Paris keeps to the 1 October cut-off, London will need either a new bilateral text or progress on the EU-UK deal France prefers, while cases from the pilot are still being processed.
