BRIEFING
Compiled by the Channel Crossings research team
Last updated: April 2025
Context
This briefing has been produced by a team of researchers from the Universities of Liverpool, York, Sheffield and Nottingham. It is part of a larger project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which is exploring UK government responses to small boat Channel crossings.
There are no safe or legal routes by which to enter the UK in order to make an application for asylum, and we know that a majority of people who cross apply for asylum and are recognised as refugees. Small boat Channel crossings started in 2018. This happened because other routes to enter the UK to claim asylum (such as stowing away in lorries) had become very difficult as a consequence of enhanced border security in Northern France. People who cross the Channel in small boats often seek the services of smugglers.
Both the Conservative and Labour governments of recent years have drawn attention to the profits being made from the business of smuggling. As part of our research, we were interested to find out how much money is being made by the legal flip side of this business of smuggling: the business of bordering. In response to the movement of people to Europe and North America, border security is becoming big business globally. Tech companies, arms firms, and private security contractors promise to facilitate control over international borders and police the boundaries between wanted and unwanted mobility. Globally this market is projected to grow from US$377 billion in 2023 to US$679 billion by 2032. Driven by rising anti-immigration politics, business is booming for companies involved in border-security markets.
What we found was not simply businesses directly involved in bordering, but a broader border security economy relating to the small boat Channel crossings phenomenon. We looked for contracts between government departments and agencies (e.g. the Home Office, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency) from 2015 onwards which related to bordering the Channel and responding to irregular migration, including small boat Channel crossings. We identified 213 contracts using Crown Commercial Services, ContractFinderPro, the EU tendering portal, and data from Tussel. We discuss the challenges of accessing this information, and major gaps in the data relating to redacted or undisclosed figures, at the end of this briefing. We have included contracts that are solely for the management of the Channel, contracts that relate to the processing of asylum seekers who arrive by small boats and contracts for broader border surveillance that likely apply to the Channel border zone (see note below asking for further information).
We have identified £3.77 billion worth of contracts in total. The average contract amount is £24 million but there is huge variation in the size of contracts. The largest contract is £1 billion (Tekever, for drones), while the smallest contract is £4000 (awarded to Survitec Group to develop a life raft suitable for disabled people). Some contracts exclusively relate to the Channel, while others are part of a larger package of border security work which also relate to other locations and activities. A few contracts emerge from the unfortunate consequences of securitisation -managing maritime emergencies (such as Border Force boat escorting services). In this briefing we provide an overview of some key highlights from the contract dataset that we have compiled, but you are welcome to explore the data yourself in detail here.
Sectors
The top five sectors that contracted companies operate in are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Top Five Sectors
| 1 | Maritime: Selling boats and conducting boat maintenance |
| 2 | IT: Hardware and software for IT systems |
| 3 | Security: A wide variety of security operations from escorting to fitting CCTV cameras |
| 4 | Transport: Primarily transporting Border Force staff between France and the UK, but also transporting people who are being detained or deported. |
| 5 | Defense: Mainly selling drones and other high-tech surveillance and tracking equipment |
Companies operating in other sectors such as hospitality, interior design, telecommunications, energy, manufacturing, public services, research, legal, and management consultancy have also benefited from contracts relating to border security related to small boat Channel crossings.
The largest contracts
The table below shows the top ten largest contracts, as far as figures are known at this time. We believe that Channel specific aspects of two (with Entrust and IBM UK) of these are part of a larger package of work but we cannot find specific information on the geographies covered. Several of these top ten are related to immigration detention and removal centres. These are connected to small boat Channel crossings because they relate to government asylum policy which was oriented to solving the small boat Channel crossings phenomenon from 2018 onwards. Two factors increased the need for detention places in this period. First, (connected to the Conservative government’s Nationality and Borders Act 2022, and Illegal Migration Act 2023) the slowing of assessment of asylum applications without a decrease in the numbers of applications made, creating a large backlog in the asylum system, and therefore a greater accommodation need. Second, the Rwanda Plan and the need to significantly expand detention places in readiness for deporting people to Rwanda.
Table 2: The Ten largest contracts
| Year | Company | Detail | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-2022 | Tekever Ltd | Maritime patrol aircrafts: for a UAV Managed Service to enhance maritime awareness | £1,000,000,000 |
| 2018-2028 | Mitie Care and Custody Limited | In-country and overseas escorting operation and management of short term holding facilities | £514,200,000 |
| 2020 | Serco | Tinsley House Detention Centre & Brookhouse Removal Centre | £276,600,000 |
2005-2019 | Serco | Fixed Radiation Detection Systems | £149,300,000 |
| 2023 | Entrust Corporation | Identity verification technology | £109,300,000 |
2024 | Galliford Try Construction Limited | Haslar removal facility (reconstruction) [one of two detention facilities reopened, linked to the detainment of people before they are sent to Rwanda] | £102,000,000 |
| 2018-2028 | Leidos | Biometrics and fingerprinting | £96,395,438 |
| 2016- | UNDISCLOSED | Freight Searching, searching of persons, detention and escorting services in Northern France | £80,000,000 |
| 2024 | Galliford Try Construction Limited | Campsfield removal facility (reconstruction) [one of two detention facilities reopened, linked to the detainment of people before they are sent to Rwanda] | £70,036,749 |
| 2023 | IBM United Kingdom | Biometric matcher platform | £65,659,748 |
Large multinationals
Large multinationals who work in many contexts selling products and services to governments are well represented amongst those benefiting from contracts related to bordering the Channel. For example, Serco, a company which sells public services to governments, has a contract totaling £52,500,000 for freight searching and escorting of persons at the juxtaposed controls in Northern France. Capita, another business that sells outsourced services to the public sector, have received £3,108,998 to supply, install and support the voice and data communications service to the Border Force Maritime Fleet of five Cutters. UK based defense company BAE Systems have had three contracts (that we have found) relating to digital border security infrastructure. Deloitte, Elbit Systems, Fujitsu, G4S, Kongsberg Norcontrol, and Mitie have also all benefited from UK government contracts in this area.
Diversity of contracts
While the aforementioned sectors are prominent, there is a wide diversity of contracts from repairing boats to providing office furniture, coach services and app development. Across the 117 companies we identified, here are five examples which give a sense of the range of types of contracts:
- Between 2020 and 2024 The Kings Ferry coach company received £2,776,000 for coach services for Border force.
- In 2022 Aeolian Offshore Ltd received £2,739,000 for craft and crew to bring in people on small boats.
- In 2022 Wagtail UK received £23,400,000 (£23.4 million) for the provision of sniffer dogs that can find humans.
- In 2023 Addleshaw Goddard LLP received £300,000 for legal services to support the Border Force maritime programme.
- In 2023 Speedy Asset Services Limited received £7,700,000 for marquees as temporary accommodation during the screening process.
In 2022 British Event Catering received £700,000 to provide emergency catering services to support Border Force operations.
The smallest contracts
Some of the diversity of contracts and types of companies is made apparent by looking at the contracts which have the lowest values. Table 3 shows the ten smallest contracts that we have found.
Table 3: The Ten Smallest Contracts
| Year | Company | Detail | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Survitec Group | Life raft concept development: disabled life raft | £4,000 |
| 2015-2017 | Fast Engineering Ltd | Border force custody suite bedding | £6,000 |
| 2019 | Docnloc | Collection, loading, unloading & transportation of small craft seized by Border Force | £7,000 |
| 2022-2024 | Bell Container Trading Ltd | Hire of two containers at Dover, one accommodation the other storage | £9,999 |
| 2024 | UNDISCLOSED | Three Yearly Service of Valise Liferafts | £10,000 |
| 2021 | AMBEX LIMITED | Supply and Installation of Satellite Telephone Systems. Dover | £10,259 |
| 2023 | Lifting Gear & Safety Ltd | Inflatable rafts maintenance | £10,294 |
| 2020 | RGES International Ltd | Development of vessel arrest boom | £12,395 |
| 2023 | Versa Dock | Supply, delivery and installation of x1 floating dock for 7.5 metre rigid hulled inflatable boats | £13,212 |
| 2020 | ENTERPRISE RENT-A-CAR UK LIMITED | Annual rental of 2 x specialist 4 x 4 vehicles to transport Border Force small maritime vessels to remote launch locations | £13,500 |
Our methods, data gaps, and public accountability
The Parliamentary Research Office has noted the difficulty of tracking the amounts of money given to the French government in numerous deals over time as they are not consistently and transparently reported. We have had a similar experience in researching contracts with private companies. This leads us to believe that there is a lack of public accountability in this area.
Contracts are not made accessible for public scrutiny. We have trawled through databases which are designed for private companies to identify tender and contract opportunities, searching for the types of contracts that we are looking for. These databases are listed on page 2 and 3. The government contract finder database has poor searchability, and the contract titles are often highly obscure. We found it more straightforward to go through commercial providers (such as Contract Finder Pro) to find the links back to the government contracting pages. Even then, we sought help from Tussel to identify a number of larger contracts which we could not find through these methods. We are certain that there are many contracts that we have not found through this trawling method.
The information within the publicly available contracts as reported on the government contracts pages are not designed for non-specialist scrutiny. They appear designed to be legible to people who work in specialist fields (e.g. containing many acronyms and technical language) and have attended sector briefing events about upcoming tender opportunities. It is unusual for the location that a technology will be deployed in to be mentioned. This makes identifying which contracts connected to the Channel difficult.
In addition to the challenges of finding contracts and understanding what they are specifically related to, there is also information which is missing. For four contracts the company name is undisclosed, and nine of the contracts found do not disclose the contract figures. Often this appears to be because the figure is large. In some cases this could significantly impact the total contracted. For example, a £1 billion contract with Portuguese drone company Tekever 2020-2022 was renewed in 2022 but the cost of renewal has been redacted. If the renewal contract cost the same amount as the original contract, then this adds a fifth again to our headline figure. Our total figure of £5 billion is therefore certainly an underestimation owing to these difficulties, as well as contracts that we have not included as we could not find the paper trail. For example, we cannot find a record of the Sentry Watch Tower sold to the Home Office by Anduril Industries, which we have physically seen in Dover, and which has been reported in the press and has been the subject of a (refused) Freedom of Information Request by other researchers.
“Our research reveals a system where governments manufacture crises and private companies profit from the supposed ‘fix’.” – Dr Arshad Isakjee
Could you help?
As you can see above, it is very challenging finding clear and reliable information about who has been contracted to do what, and at what cost. While we believe that our methods are as robust as possible, given the challenges of accessing the data, these challenges mean that there may be omissions or miscategorisations.
If you have: evidence of additional contracts; evidence that any of the contracts that we have found are not connected small boat Channel crossings; verifiable information about what proportion of the more general contracts relates to Channel crossings; or anything else that you think could be useful in this work, please get in touch. We are happy to correct any inaccuracies if these can be evidenced.
We are updating the database as any corrections and clarifications come in, check the “last updated” date above to confirm you have the latest figures.
Email the Channel Crossings team:
Arshad Isakjee aisakjee@liverpool.ac.uk
Thom Davies thom.davies@nottingham.ac.uk
Lucy Mayblin l.mayblin@sheffield.ac.uk
Joe Turner joe.turner@joeturneryorkacuk
Tesfalem Yemane T.Yemane@liverpool.ac.uk
Responses from Migrant Rights and Civil Society Organisations
Tim Naor Hilton, Chief Executive of Refugee Action, said:
“Successive governments’ obsession with tough borders has created a boom for private contractors while record numbers of people drown off our south coast.
“Perversely, some of these companies making profit from this border misery also work in industries such as defence that displace people in the first place.
“At Refugee Action we see this play out in the accommodation system, where firms make eye watering profits while people languish in segregated and unhealthy housing.
“The Government must turn off this tap of taxpayer cash and start to invest in solutions that will make positive changes to the lives of refugees and the communities that welcome them.”
Tomi Amole, Divest Borders Coordinator for People and Planet, said:
“The Channel Crossings research team have produced an important report that draws attention to the ways that corporations are profiting from the violence of bordering and the moral panic around “small boats”. The border industry operates with the support of British universities, whose investments and research partnerships with companies like Serco, Mitie, G4S, BAE, Elbit and Fujitsu make them complicit in the violence of bordering. But students across the country are campaigning for their universities to stand for justice, not oppression, calling for an end to these investments that give social license to corporations in the border industry to continue profiting from the violence they enact.”
Corporate Watch said:
“This excellent research highlights how corporate profiteers continue to reap millions from the violence of the UK’s border industry. We need to dismantle the alarming rhetoric coming from Starmer’s Labour and far-right agitators and instead focus on the financial gains made by these companies directly from public money.
Many companies that appear on this list – such as Capgemini, Accenture, Deloitte, Fujitsu, G4S, IBM, Mastek, Mitie, and Serco – are not only gaining massive profits from Border Force contracts but also collectively reap billions from work across multiple sectors, including the NHS, defence, education and social services. People continue to seek safety and asylum as a direct result of wars, climate-driven chaos and political unrest that many of these same companies also profit from.
The ‘enemy’ is not individuals trying to cross the Channel: the true enemy is the brutal, profit-driven capitalist machine and the policymakers who enable it. If these capitalists are protecting their interests and expanding their power across different sectors then our grassroots organising needs to be doing the same.”
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