Five migrants have won a High Court challenge against their removal under Labour’s “one in, one out” returns agreement with France, after judges ruled the Home Office failed to properly assess their claims of being trafficking victims before ordering their deportation.
Labour’s flagship migrant returns deal with France has suffered a significant legal setback after five asylum seekers successfully challenged their planned deportations at the High Court. The claimants argued their removals were unlawful because they showed credible signs of being victims of modern slavery and human trafficking, and should therefore have been referred through the UK’s National Referral Mechanism before any deportation decision was made. Judges agreed, ruling that the Home Office must now reconsider each of the five cases before any removal can proceed.
What the Court Found
The judge concluded that the Home Office had failed to properly assess relevant evidence relating to the migrants’ trafficking claims before issuing its original removal decisions. Representing the claimants, their lawyer argued that fundamental rights could not be “sacrificed for the sake of expediency and speed of decision-making or a desire to accelerate removals” — an argument the court ultimately accepted.
Government lawyers had defended the agreement as an important tool for deterring small boat crossings and disrupting people-smuggling networks. However, the court found that this policy objective could not override the statutory protections owed to potential trafficking victims, meaning existing legal safeguards had to be followed regardless of the scheme’s wider aims.
The Deal Survives, But With Conditions
Crucially, the ruling does not strike down the UK-France “one in, one out” agreement itself. Instead, it requires the government to comply with existing legal safeguards, including proper assessment of trafficking and modern slavery claims, when implementing the scheme going forward. The judgment is expected to shape how future legal challenges to removals under the deal are handled, particularly in cases where migrants raise claims of exploitation or trafficking.
