Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want to fix the Channel migrant crisis because he is keen to ‘punish’ Britain for Brexit, a Tory leadership hopeful claimed today.
Robert Jenrick launched the sensational attack on the French President as he bemoaned how the UK ‘cannot rely’ on its neighbour to stop small boat crossings.
The former immigration minister revealed the French leader ‘wouldn’t give a hearing’ to his plan for a ‘one-in, one-out’ migrant swap deal while he was in the Home Office.
His proposal would have seen Britain pay for each illegal migrant returned across the Channel, while the UK would take asylum seekers from France in exchange.
Mr Jenrick presented the plan to former prime minister Rishi Sunak in March last year, but said it was rejected by Mr Macron when offered to France.
Appearing on The Sun’s Never Mind The Ballots show, Mr Jenrick was confronted with a leaked Home Office letter revealing his proposal to Mr Sunak.
‘What was shameful about that incident was that, as I understand it, Rishi Sunak put it to President Macron, and he rejected it,’ he said.
‘He wouldn’t even give it a hearing, because he didn’t want to fix this problem, probably as a punishment for Brexit.’
Mr Jenrick, who is competing with ex-business secretary Kemi Badenoch to replace Mr Sunak as Tory leader, claimed the French ‘don’t care’ about helping Britain.
He added: ‘The French could stop this tomorrow… but what I learned is you cannot rely on the French.’
Details of the Home Office letter, published by the newspaper, revealed how Mr Jenrick wrote to Mr Sunak on 2 March, 2023 ahead of an Anglo-French summit.
He told the then-PM that Britain ‘should be willing to make highly meaningful concessions’ to the French in a bid to stop Channel migrant crossings.
This included ‘offering to take one asylum seeker that has been successfully granted asylum in the French system in return for every one illegal migrant that we return to them’.
Mr Jenrick added the UK could even accept ‘more than one’ asylum seeker from France, in exchange for each illegal migrant returned, in a bid to ‘quickly break’ the business model of people-smuggling gangs.
He also proposed making an ‘ex gratia payment’ to France for each illegal migrant returned across the Channel as part of a ‘generous compensatory’ scheme.
The then-immigration minister suggested this could prove cheaper than Mr Sunak’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed.