Healey: UK-France ties ‘reset’ on small boats

ODN

Defence Secretary John Healey says UK-France relations have been “reset” under the new government as both sides tackle small boat crossings. He said there’s no single solution to the issue, but France now recognises the need to share the challenge.  Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

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00:00There's certainly no one single solution that's going to deal with the problem of small boat

00:04crossings. But what the summit today shows is that for the first time, because we've been able to

00:10reset relations with France as a new government, France has recognised that we share this challenge,

00:18they're working together with us, and things are happening now that weren't happening before.

00:22More beach patrols, more drones, and for the first time we've started to see French police

00:27stopping boats in shallow waters off the French coast. We need more of that. We need the Borders

00:33Command Bill passed by Parliament to give us the extra anti-terrorism type powers to deal with the

00:39smuggling gangs. And we need to build up the Border Security Command that we've established since the

00:45last election.

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