In an interview with former Border Force chief Tony Smith GB News host Dawn Neesom asked “why the hell are we paying” France “three quarters of a billion pounds” to stop the boats crossing the English Channel.
Footage has repeatedly shown French police waving on migrants in boats and French police standing there taking photos.
Smith told GB News that the British government cannot do a lot to ensure the French authorities do their jobs as was agreed by the Tories in 2023 when Paris was handed nearly £500 million over a three-year period to stop the boats.
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Smith said, “We’ve seen on the beaches and heard about this deal with the French but your pictures show the French police aren’t doing much at all.
“This is politics. For those officers to be tasked to do something, it will come from the French Ministry of Interior. They’re the ones pulling the strings on this and that in turn is being run by Brussels and the European Union.
“There needs to be a very clear tasking to the French police for them to do the things we would like them to do. I’m not sure that is happening at the moment. We do need to keep that political door open.
“At the end of the day, we can’t control what the French police or the EU do, we need to concentrate on what we can do.”
The police in Calais are idly watching on as thousands of migrants are in camps ready to cross the English Channel and are waiting on the smuggling gangs to call them up to paddle across the water.
Neesom asked, “If we can’t control them, why the hell have we given them three quarters of a billion pounds?”
Smith replied saying that without that money the French police would do “nothing at all,” and called for “common ground” with the French President Emmanuel Macron.
He added, “This is not a good thing for France or Calais, they need to stop this constant flow of irregular migration from across the Schengen Zone into Calais or they will be facing law and order issues as well.”
“We do need to help them and we have good assets, but the problem is, what will they allow us to do?
“They only allow us to offer some level of support. They won’t allow us to put boots on the ground.
“We have huge assets we can offer so I think there is some sort of political blockage here.”
A Home Office spokesperson told GB News: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which fuel organised criminal activity, put vulnerable lives at risk and undermine the security of our borders.
“We are determined to tackle the gangs behind that trade and our law enforcement agencies have delivered dozens of high-impact disruptions against them in the past year.”
