Key facts
- The Home Office is understood to still be detaining dozens of people under the ended scheme, the Guardian reported.
- Seven of 23 deportation flights under the scheme were cancelled between July and September, freedom of information data showed.
- Home secretary Shabana Mahmood told a parliamentary committee that removals to France had cost at least £78m.
- Small boat crossings fell by approximately 40% so far in 2026 from the same period in 2025, the report said.
- Emma Ginn of Medical Justice said vulnerable people remain in detention awaiting forced removal to France.
- An asylum seeker in Dunkirk told the Guardian five or six people returned under the scheme were waiting to cross back.
The UK Home Office was still putting asylum seekers on planes to France weeks after the one-in-one-out returns scheme ended on October 1, the Guardian reported. The scheme, announced by French President Emmanuel Macron and then prime minister Keir Starmer in July 2025, forcibly returned some asylum seekers arriving in the UK to France while a similar number in northern France were brought legally to the UK.
The Home Office is understood to still be detaining dozens of people, and officials chartered a plane to France on Wednesday for a group thought to have arrived on small boats before the scheme ended. A second flight was scheduled for November 17. Home Office sources told the Guardian that returns of the remainder of the scheme's cohort were continuing after the deal had ended.
Freedom of information data showed seven of the scheme's 23 deportation flights were cancelled between July and September, more than double the total of cancelled deportation flights to France in the first six months of 2026. Home secretary Shabana Mahmood told parliament's home affairs committee that removing people to France had cost at least £78 million.
Emma Ginn, director of Medical Justice, said asylum seekers were still being held in detention centers in preparation for forced removal to France. "Even though the scheme has been abandoned, vulnerable people still held under its powers continue to suffer immensely," she said, citing harm from immigration detention and the prospect of return to France.
The Guardian said it had interviewed two asylum seekers, a Syrian and an Iranian, whom the UK sent to France under the scheme and who returned after October 1 and are having their claims processed in the UK. The Syrian said the Home Office first put him back in detention before releasing him. The Iranian said he had been abused by smugglers in France.
The Guardian also reported that at least seven asylum seekers returned to France had come back to the UK since October 1, with several more waiting in northern France. One asylum seeker in the Dunkirk camp known as the Jungle told the paper that five or six people from the scheme were waiting there to cross back.
Home Office data showed that after three weeks with no crossings, 263 people crossed in three boats on Thursday. Small boat crossings have fallen by approximately 40% so far in 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, the report said, a similar level of reduction to irregular migration to Europe over the same period.