Pledge
“We will negotiate additional returns arrangements to speed up returns”
Our verdict
The government has announced new arrangements on returns with several countries, as well as a “one in, one out” deal with France.
Has the government negotiated new immigration returns arrangements?
Achieved 
What does the pledge mean?
Immigration ‘returns’ involve the removal of people who are in the UK without a legal right to be here, usually to their country of origin. Some of these returns are voluntary, meaning that a person leaves the UK of their own accord (either with or without notifying the Home Office), while others are enforced (meaning their departure is carried out by the Home Office).
After leaving the EU, and prior to Labour coming into government in July 2024, the UK negotiated bilateral returns agreements with a number of non-EU countries, including Albania, Vietnam, Pakistan and Bangladesh, in an effort to speed up the return of people with no right to remain in the UK, including failed asylum seekers, foreign national offenders and others.
We’ve not seen Labour set out details of its approach to negotiating further arrangements, though shortly after entering government it signalled that it wanted to negotiate a returns agreement with the EU, which would potentially allow the UK to return some asylum seekers who travelled to the UK via an EU member state to that country (as opposed to their country of origin).
We also don’t know exactly which countries the UK already has returns agreements with. The House of Commons Library says “there is no publicly available and up-to-date consolidated list of which countries the UK has returns agreements with and what those agreements say” because the government isn’t legally required to publish “a memorandum of understanding or operational protocal”, and notes that ministers have said receiving countries may end arrangements if sensitive details are made public.
The House of Commons Library estimated in December 2024 that the government had known returns agreements with 24 countries.
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What progress has been made?
We’re now rating this pledge as “Achieved”, as the government has announced new returns arrangements with several countries since the election, and has also established a “one in, one out” agreement with France for the return of asylum seekers who have arrived in the UK via small boat crossing.
On 20 November 2024 the Home Office announced a new “readmissions agreement” with Moldova, saying in a press release: “The UK has strengthened its returns cooperation with Moldova after signing a new readmissions agreement – boosting UK border security by further ensuring the swift removal of those with no right to be here.”
The Home Office also announced a series of co-operation deals with Iraq on 28 November 2024, including a joint statement on migration which it said included “further work on the returns of people who have no right to be in the UK, where returns are currently very slow, and the continued provision of reintegration programmes to support returnees”.
In March 2025 the government announced a joint communiqué signed with Vietnam which committed, among other things, to further co-operation on the return of Vietnamese nationals with no legal right to be in the UK—this was followed by an agreement between the two countries signed in October 2025 which the government said would see a “sped-up returns process of those with no right to be in the UK, backed by biometric data sharing and streamlined documentation”.
The UK signed an agreement with France in August 2025 to pilot a scheme in which asylum seekers who arrived in the UK via small boat crossing could be returned to France, in exchange for the UK accepting an equal number of eligible asylum seekers. The first returns under this deal took place in October 2025. This agreement differs from others as it involves people being returned to a country other than their country of origin.