The UK and Belgium are on the brink of a new migration deal to help tackle English Channel small boat crossings, The i Paper understands.
The two countries are set to strike an agreement on law enforcement cooperation to allow police and other forces to work more closely together to target people smuggling gangs.
The i Paper understands the deal will restore some of the data-sharing lost when the UK left the EU, albeit only with Belgium rather than the wider bloc and is designed to boost Labour’s pledge to “smash the gangs” operating dinghy crossings.
English is lit! Great Expectations rewritten by AI in Gen Z slang
‘I call myself Pip. It’s not a name with much rizz’
One of the great classics, written by Charles Dickens, has been modernised – but it’s not aimed at children studying the text in class.
- The Dickens classic has been fed into the AI model Claude Opus 4 to produce “Bare Expectations”.
- The shortened adaption uses the slang of teenagers today, using words like “ick” and “drip”.
- It was made by Tesco Mobile, in partnership with author Chloe Combi, to help parents better understand their children and keep them safe online.
- It was also read as an audio book by Allan Mustafa, from Kurupt FM.
Classic for the modern age
You’d think the best MC in the galaxy would know all the latest slang, and I do. If any kid tells you otherwise, they’re lying. Any words I don’t know are just not cool enough for me to care about!
Allan Mustafa, MC Grindah from Kurupt FM, told Retail Times.
A closer look at the detail
But 77 per cent of parents worry about their online safety. One in four parents felt unprepared when giving their child their first phone. More than half are confused by their child’s language at least once a week.
But campaigners say the best way to keep children safe online is by not giving them a smartphone in the first place.
Are Channel crossing numbers down?
The French authorities have become more “effective” at stopping migrants crossing in dangerous small boats across the Channel, the UK Government has said.
What do the figures tell us?
The figures compared to last year
5%
The increase in the number of small boats intercepted in the last three months compared with last year.
The Home Office said, citing French figures, that since April, 61 per cent of small boats have been intercepted.
The deal agreed by the UK and France in April.
This includes £161m in performance-based targets.
Channel crisis
In the past few weeks, three boats were stopped – two of which were at sea.
Numbers falling
Some 15,897 migrants have crossed the Channel, 43 per cent down on the same period last year.
Last month, a record 165 migrants reached the UK in a single boat.
“People smugglers should be in no doubt, we’re taking down their operations, seizing their equipment and breaking their business model for good,” said Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood.
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British rapper Yung Filly to face retrial on rape charges in Australia
The rapper and YouTuber who appeared on Celebrity Bake Off will face a retrial after a jury could not reach a verdict during trial.
Yung Filly denied all charges
The Colombian-born rapper, whose real name is Andrés Felipe Valencia Barrientos, was charged with raping and assaulting a 20-year-old fan after his show in Perth 2024. He denied all 10 charges and a jury last month found him not guilty of three charges of rape.
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He was accused of raping a fan
Barrientos was accused of having consensual sex with her until he turned violent and didn’t stop when asked. His lawyer said the evidence was full of “inconsistencies, embellishments and outright lies”.
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A closer look at the detail
- Last month, a jury found him not guilty on three counts of rape.
- He was cleared of one assault charge and another of strangulation.
- But he was found guilty of two counts of assault.
- Jurors were unable to make a decision on three counts of sexual penetration without consent.
Could El Niño make next year even hotter?
The naturally occurring phenomenon known as El Niño, which can drive up global temperatures and is brewing in the Pacific, could be the strongest in living memory, the Met Office has warned.
What is El Niño?
It is a climate phenomenon which occurs in the Pacific Ocean every two to seven years.
Normally, trade winds blow east to west across the equator – during and El Niño period, these weaken or reverse.
This pushes up global temperatures as warmth is taken from the ocean into the atmosphere.
El Niño’s impact already been seen
It has already started to affect weather systems in other parts of the world, with below-average monsoons in India and suppressed hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. In the UK, El Niño is usually felt later in winter.
A particularly strong El Niño coupled with global warming has left scientists worried that 2027 could be even warmer.
El Niño is strongest in living memory
We should be clear that this is an unprecedented event. I have never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts.
Professor Adam Scaife, head of
long-range forecasting, the Met Office
Risk of most intense El Niño in 1,000 years
- El Niño is declared when the sea temperature in the tropical eastern Pacific rises 0.5°C above the long-term average.
- But currently it’s over 2°C and could reach 3°C later this year.
- Some have suggested it could go above 4°C – meaning it would be the strongest El Nino in the last 500-1,000 years.
Next year could be hottest ever
The precise effect El Niño has on global weather can be unpredictable. But Met Office climate scientist Dr Nick Dunstone told the BBC average global temperatures could rise next year. This would make 2027 the hottest year on record, after 2024.
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But the deal will not include anything on migrant returns despite past UK efforts to include Belgium in its experimental one-in, one-out agreement with France.
Germany has also rejected British overtures to join the one-in, one-out agreement, although Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is poised for talks with Paris to extend the deal with France beyond its October expiry.
The expected deal with Belgium comes after a spate of smugglers launching so-called “taxi boats” from the country earlier this year. The boats move along the coast to pick up migrants in the water before heading towards France.
The dinghies have been launched from coastal towns such as De Panne, Nieuwpoort and Middelkerke.
Belgian police identified at least 32 such attempts between January and April this year, compared to just two in the whole of 2025.
There has since been a crackdown, with only a handful of similar attempts since May, with Government sources praising the efforts of Belgian police.
The i Paper understands the Home Office views Belgium as less of a concern currently, with smugglers instead launching boats further south in France before travelling northwards up the coast, such as the so-called “mega dinghy” that was carrying a record 232 people earlier this month.
But ministers still view a deal with Belgium as an important extra piece in the puzzle of taking on people smuggling gangs, to sit alongside existing deals on law enforcement with France and Germany.
A Government source said: “The Belgians are very keen on further cooperation. They have been very effective in their efforts on cracking down on small boats and there is much we can learn from each other’s approaches.”
The i Paper understands the deal will include more data-sharing after Britain lost access to some shared intelligence databases as a result of Brexit in 2020.
While the UK and EU agreed deals on sharing information on DNA, fingerprint and number plate records, Britain remains locked out of the bloc’s Schengen Information System (SIS2) that is seen by police as a faster way of sharing information than its post-Brexit replacements.
Former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer made boosting law enforcement cooperation a priority in his strategy to tackle people smuggling gangs.
His successor Andy Burnham has since pledged to push for the “eradication” of small boat crossings but refused to commit to achieving this by the next election, due in 2029.
As of Thursday, 15,897 migrants had crossed the Channel so far this year, down 43 per cent on the same time last year, and an 18 per cent drop from the same point in 2024.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We do not comment on leaks or speculation.”