£44m to keep border at Calais

May agrees bill to help France police channel ports as Macron visits Britain to talk security

BRITAIN will today agree to pay France £44.5million to continue to police the border at Channel ports as Theresa May bowed to pressure from Emmanuel Macron.

The French president had threatened to abandon the Le Touquet agreement, which allows British border guards to patrol on French soil, after Brexit. Such a move would have risked tens of thousands more migrants arriving illegally every year, rather than be stopped in France before they can board ferries or enter the Channel Tunnel.

Today, France will renew the Le Touquet deal and the Prime Minister will agree to take more of the unaccompanied child migrants who flock to France in hope of reaching the UK.

Leading Brexiteers on the Conservative back-benches have said that giving more money to France is “absurd” since policing the Channel ports is a matter for the French and the bill could be taken out of the £39billion Brexit divorce payment.

The Government insisted the deal will save hundreds of millions in the cost of processing illegal migrants and asylum seekers once in Britain.

Mr Macron, making his first presidential visit to the UK, will meet Mrs May at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, Berkshire, chosen because the summit is focused on military and security cooperation.

History will also be made today when the heads of all five British and French intelligence services meet for the first time. They will agree to take intelligence sharing to “the next level” to tackle jihadists dispersing from Iraq, Syria and Libya to regroup and plan attacks on the UK and France.

The heads of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and France’s DGSI and DGSE – the equivalents of MI5 and MI6 – will also discuss better ways to “ensure that the internet cannot be used as a safe space for terrorists and criminals”.

Mr Macron, who said during his election campaign that France could no longer be Britain’s coastguard, forced the issue of border security on to the agenda. Mrs May, who is desperate for allies in the second phase of Brexit talks, agreed to pay £44million for security fencing, CCTV and detection technology at Calais and other ports.

The Elysée has hailed the extra money as a victory for Mr Macron, but Whitehall sources insisted it would