The Home Secretary has told MPs that the Government’s “one in, one out” scheme has cost about £56,000 for every person sent from the UK to France since it began in August 2025. Shabana Mahmood made the disclosure during a hearing of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, where she was asked whether the policy offers value for taxpayers. Cost Per ReturnMahmood said she would update the committee once the latest figures were available, but that the cost figure quoted was based on returns made so far. She said: “I’ll need to write to the committee on the most recent figures.” She added that for the number of people returned to date, the cost was “about £56,000”. Since the scheme started, the Home Office has removed about 1,400 people to France. Mahmood also noted that some individuals have subsequently returned to the UK, including via lorries or small boats. The Home Secretary later defended the spending by arguing that it was “still cheaper, or just about the same as supporting someone in a hotel for a year”, in the context of alternative accommodation costs. How the “One In, One Out” Deal WorksUnder the arrangement, the UK removes a person who arrived in the country via small boats and sends them back to France. In exchange, the UK grants entry to an asylum seeker who applies through legal routes. The pilot was due to run for a limited period, but it has already been extended once and is now scheduled to end in October. Its longer-term future is still undecided. The Home Secretary said the programme had struggled to scale up for higher removal numbers. She described it as “operationally difficult” to increase removals, pointing to constraints including detention capacity. She told MPs that, while the pilot had produced results, “the numbers are still relatively small” and that the scheme had “challenges”. EU Plans And Dublin RejectionFrance has said it wants the bilateral model replaced over time by a broader EU-UK returns agreement. Mahmood said the UK should not assume that an EU-wide mechanism would solve the Channel crisis. She rejected suggestions that an EU system would be a “silver bullet”, telling MPs it would not eliminate the problem. She said that the scheme had already returned more people than Britain had achieved under the EU’s earlier Dublin arrangements, which existed before the UK left the bloc. She also said attempts to continue Dublin-style returns after Brexit had been rejected by EU leaders. France Seeks To End The PilotEarlier in the week, it emerged that Laurent Nuñez, France’s interior minister, had told Mahmood that he wants to end the scheme. Nuñez previously told a French parliamentary inquiry in June that France wanted to move away from what he described as a bilateral relationship with the UK. He said France did not want to “carry it alone” and argued that the programme should be integrated into an agreement between the EU and UK. According to the position relayed to Mahmood, the pilot agreement signed in August 2025 was “not intended to be renewed beyond October 1, 2026”. Separate Offer For Voluntary DepartureMahmood also told MPs about a separate pilot under which some rejected asylum-seeking families could be offered up to £40,000 to leave the UK voluntarily. She said only “relatively small numbers” had taken up that offer. She described the trade-off for families as the chance to receive £40,000 to support resettlement in their country of origin, in exchange for access they would otherwise have to services such as free healthcare and education for children. Join the discussion? 16 September 2026
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