Macron 'to vow tougher approach' on Channel migrants as he kicks off State Visit TODAY… but how much more will it cost the UK?
The French president is getting the red carpet treatment with three days of pomp and ceremony to 'reset' relations.
But Keir Starmer is hoping for concrete gains from the trip, including confirmation that harder tactics will be routinely deployed against those trying to cross to Britain.
French police were recently seen using knives to slash inflatable boats in shallow water off the coast.
Downing Street has been pushing for a 'one in, one out' deal to return arrivals - but the prospects of sealing that this week are hanging in the balance. Sources said the negotiations were 'complicated' after the European Commission intervened with concerns about a bilateral agreement.
There is also alarm about the cost to UK taxpayers of any pact, with complaints that the £770million handed to Paris for border controls over the past 12 years has achieved little.
No10 has refused to rule out increasing the funding for France, merely stressing that the government wants 'value for money'.
Sir Keir and Mr Macron are due to hold a bilateral summit on Thursday at the end of the visit - the first by a French premier for 17 years.
The two leaders are likely to announce details of new measures, including moves which will finally allow gendarmes to intercept dinghies already in the water.
There may also be pledges for wider 'dragnet' tactics in French rivers and canals, installing floating barriers to prevent traffickers using them to launch so-called 'taxi boats' into the Channel.
The mooted 'one in, one out' deal could allow the UK to return some illegal migrants, but take an identical number of asylum seekers from France.
Critics have ridiculed the idea as a 'migrant merry-go-round'. Whitehall sources have played down the prospect of a breakthrough this week following an intervention by the European Commission - although it remans a possibility.
Downing Street declined to say whether the PM was ready to pay France tens of millions more to step up patrols, saying only that the Government 'will only ever provide funding that delivers for the priorities of the British public'.
A report by the House of Commons Library, published this week, set out how £657 million has been given to France by the UK since 2018.
A further £114 million was handed over in the previous four years for other security measures, making a total of more than £770 million over 12 years.
The report added: 'There is little publicly available information about how funding is spent and monitored.
'UK authorities have refused Freedom of Information requests seeking detailed information.'
In 2023, it emerged some of the UK's money had been used to buy equipment for French police operating on the French-Italian border – not the Channel coast.
It was also revealed that most of the funds had been spent on helicopters, cars, motorbikes, e-scooters and quad bikes, plus surveillance equipment such as binoculars, drones and dash cams.
Asked whether the hundreds of millions of pounds given to the French over the last decade to stop the small boat crossings in the Channel was 'value for money', Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told Times Radio: 'We will always spend our money in the public interest, in the national interest.
'I think that footage that we saw, whilst it wasn't pleasant to see, in terms of the action that the French authorities were taking to cut those boats, to prevent people leaving the French shores, that's action that we are supporting.'
Ms Alexander said watching footage of French authorities slash small boats 'wasn't pleasant' but 'that's action that we are supporting'.
Asked whether the one in, one out arrangement was necessary to deal with Channel crossings, she told Times Radio: 'Well, look, we're working very closely with the French authorities, and the visit of President Macron this week is another opportunity to continue those discussions.
'I'm not going to speculate on the coverage of this possibility of a one in, one out agreement with France. We've seen in the last couple of days, haven't we, that the French authorities are now using some new tactics to stop the boats in shallow waters.
'We welcome that and we want to build on it. I know that the Prime Minister spoke with President Macron at the weekend.
'We're looking forward to further discussions this week, because I think all of us want to tackle the misery, really, that these very sophisticated international criminal gangs are inflicting through this vile trade that operates across the channel.'
She added: 'We've been honest that this is a problem that we're not going to fix overnight… So we need to tackle this from all sides.'
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