After two years in office, Labour may have begun to realise the Tories were right. One of Keir Starmer’s earliest acts as Prime Minister was to scrap what he called a ‘gimmick’ – the Tories’ Rwanda scheme, under which illegal arrivals were to be deported to the African country. At the time some 52,000 migrants had been identified for deportation, but Starmer said it had ‘never been a deterrent’, and instead promised to ‘smash’ the people smuggling gangs.
Now, with Starmer gone, and after two years of ‘smash the gangs’ around 80,000illegal migrants have crossed the Channel, representing almost 40 per cent of all small boat arrivals since records began in 2018. In government, Labour have made no serious effort to eliminate ‘pull factors’, and indeed actually added some new ones when they scrapped the Tories’ Illegal Migration Act, under which those who arrive here illegally would never be allowed to settle. Meanwhile, asylum approval rates remain very high, despite the widespread belief amongst those who make asylum decisions that the majority of asylum claims are fake. Even those whose asylum claims are rejected, and who lose every appeal in our soft-touch immigration tribunals, almost certainly won’t be deported.
Of the almost 200,000 illegal migrants who have arrived by small boat between January 2018 and the end of March this year, just 8,427 have been returned – just 4.3 per cent of the total. That return rate would be bad enough, but the reality is even worse. The vast majorityof the small-boat returns are Albanians, not least because the UK agreed a return deal with that country in 2024. What this means is that almost no illegal arrivals from other countries have been returned home. Part of the reason for this is that our courts have ruled that many countries are unsafe. Ando so we have a situation in which those who manage to cross the Channel will almost certainly never leave, representing a huge pull factor driving illegal migration.
Labour are clearly desperate for solutions, and so it has been reported that the Home Secretary is considering a ‘Rwanda-style crackdown’ on failed asylum seekers. Are Labour about to embrace a Tory policy they scrapped two years ago?
Not quite. When I asked the Home Office for comment they were very clear, saying ‘the Home Secretary repeated what has been said before, which is that the UK – like other European countries – continues to explore new models like return hubs. these are not Rwanda style plans, which did not work’. Instead of the Tories’ approach, under which those who arrived in the country illegally would have been sent to Rwanda shortly after arrival, what Labour seem to be ‘considering’ is the idea that those whose asylum claims have failed, and whose appeals have been exhausted, will find themselves shipped to a ‘third country’, if they can’t be deported to their homes.
This seems very small beer. I spoke to Alp Mehmet, Chair of MigrationWatch, who told me that:
‘The implied plan to deal only with failed asylum seekers is hardly radical and highly unlikely to deter either the gangs or migrants. Even this, though, will struggle to get past Labour’s open-border zealots, who will try to thwart Ms Mahmood at every step of the way. If the Home Secretary is serious about stopping illegal immigration, she should be thinking about changes to the legal framework that would allow for the detention of illegal, undocumented, arrivals, speedy processing and swift removal’.
Rob Bates of the Centre for Migration Control was similarly scathing, saying:
‘The Home Office has been floating this idea for the last 18 months, and made no progress. Even if they get it off the ground, the scheme will be meaningless if it only applies to failed asylum seekers. The only way this would act as a deterrent is if it applied to anyone crossing the Channel and required them to apply for asylum in the third country’.
To their criticisms I would add that Labour continue to be far too slow on migration. They’ve been in government for two years, and announced (as yet unimplemented) plans to change the asylum system and stop the Boriswave almost a year ago. To be merely ‘considering’ a third-country deportation scheme almost halfway through the parliament shows they aren’t taking this seriously. At this rate they may realise that the Tories were right and they need a Rwanda scheme in 2029, just in time to campaign for it at the next general election.
Comments