Hundreds of patrol officers, a fleet of drones and a new immigration detention centre will be jointly funded by the UK and France in a security deal aimed at tackling migrants crossing the English Channel.
At a summit in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hailed the new £479 million ($874 million) security deal as a new beginning in UK-France cooperation.
"We're writing a new chapter in this relationship," Mr Sunak said.
"Emmanuel and I share the same beliefs. Criminal gangs should not get to decide who comes to our country."
Mr Macron agreed, saying it was "time for a new start".
"In the fight against illegal immigration, we wish to make progress in lockstep, and we're aware of the human issues and the extreme sensitivities of these issues," he said.
Britain will pay France £479 million ($874 million) over three years to fund enhanced patrols, the use of drones and the detention centre in the hopes of cracking down on the thousands of migrants crossing the Channel each year to seek asylum in the UK.
Officers from both countries will also look to work with countries along the routes favoured by people traffickers.
The security package will be paid in instalments, with the French also contributing significant funding.
At a summit designed to rebuild ties after a fallout over Brexit, Mr Sunak and Mr Macron said the two sides had agreed to work more closely together, the relationship having been recently fortified by the countries' support for Ukraine since Russia's invasion.
The British Prime Minister has made stopping boat arrivals one of his five key priorities after the number of migrants arriving on the south coast of England soared to more than 45,000 last year, up 500 per cent in the last two years.
Earlier in the week, the UK Parliament introduced new law it celebrated as "pushing the boundaries of international law", barring entry of asylum seekers who arrive by boats across the English Channel.
The proposed laws would prevent arrivals from claiming asylum and would either turn them around or deport them to a third country.
Migrants arriving by boat would also face a permanent ban on re-entry to the UK and ever securing British citizenship, subject to only very narrow exceptions.
The Sunak government has faced widespread questions about whether the proposed legislation would be any more effective than previous attempts to deter people from making the crossing, and whether it passes legal tests, such as laws around migrant deportation.
The UK and Europe have seen a massive increase in the number of people seeking asylum in recent years.
Countries in the EU received almost 1 million applications for asylum in 2022 alone, an increase of more than 50 per cent on 2021.
Britain receives fewer asylum-seekers than France, but thousands of migrants from around the world travel to northern France each year in hopes of reaching the UK.
The Brexit campaign to leave the European Union in 2016 touted an end to uncontrolled immigration, but successive governments have so far failed to stop the arrivals.
ABC/wires
