Only two Channel migrants deported to EU in past year
The UK’s asylum backlog hitting a new record high of more than 175,000 people waiting for a decision - Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesBritain has deported only two Channel migrants to the EU under its post-Brexit returns policy in the past year, official figures show, despite 45,000 arriving from France in small boats.In January 2021, the Government introduced new immigration rules that allowed it to declare asylum seekers “inadmissible” if they had travelled through a safe third country where they could have applied for asylum.However, the Home Office data showed that, in the year to June, none had been issued with inadmissibility decisions and only two had been removed.Since the scheme was introduced, only 83 asylum seekers have been served with inadmissibility decisions and 23 have been returned.This is despite all the 93,500 migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats in that time having travelled through the EU and set off from beaches in northern France.Immigration experts said
Britain has deported only two Channel migrants to the EU under its post-Brexit returns policy in the past year, official figures show, despite 45,000 arriving from France in small boats.
In January 2021, the Government introduced new immigration rules that allowed it to declare asylum seekers “inadmissible” if they had travelled through a safe third country where they could have applied for asylum.
However, the Home Office data showed that, in the year to June, none had been issued with inadmissibility decisions and only two had been removed.
Since the scheme was introduced, only 83 asylum seekers have been served with inadmissibility decisions and 23 have been returned.
This is despite all the 93,500 migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats in that time having travelled through the EU and set off from beaches in northern France.
Immigration experts said the rules were unworkable without the co-operation of other countries to which to return them. It was confirmed earlier this month that the European Commission is refusing to negotiate a new returns agreement with the UK to replace its pre-Brexit predecessor, known as the Dublin III Regulation.
The failure to remove the migrants has contributed to the UK’s asylum backlog hitting a new record high of more than 175,000 people waiting for a decision at a cost of almost £4 billion a year to taxpayers, including £6 million a day on hotels.
The Home Office data showed that the number of asylum seekers awaiting a decision has risen by 44 per cent from 122,213 in the year ending June 2022 to 175,457 in the year ending this June.
That surpasses the previous record high, when Tony Blair’s government faced a migration crisis with a backlog of 125,100 asylum seekers in 1999.
The number of new asylum applications in the year to the end of June was also at a 20-year high, at 78,768, dwarfing the 36,500 during the European migration crisis in 2016.
The increase was largely fuelled by small boat Channel migrants lodging asylum applications on arrival in the UK. They accounted for 41 per cent of all asylum applications in the year ending this June.
Around 90 per cent of small boat arrivals, 40,836, claimed asylum or were recorded as a dependent on an asylum application.
Afghans fleeing the Taliban topped the nationalities crossing in small boats since January with 1,474, followed by Iranians (921), Indians (867), Iraq (656), Eritrea (611), Syria (602) and Turkey (485).
The “inadmissibility” rules were designed to replace the EU’s Dublin III regulation, an EU law that governs which member state is responsible for processing asylum applications but is no longer applied to Britain after the end of the Brexit transition period.
The figures show that more than 60,000 migrants were told they were considered inadmissible, but they can only be confirmed as inadmissible if there is a country to which they can be removed.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “This clearly demonstrates how the Government has failed to establish returns agreements and that its laws to ban the right to asylum are not only unfair and immoral but are utterly unworkable.”
Tony Smith, a former Border Force director general, said the European Commission needed to be “called out” over its refusal to negotiate a new returns agreement. “We have got to talk and work together on this if we are going to stop the boats. Rwanda is not going to be enough on its own,” he said.
Rishi Sunak has maintained that the Government remains “open to working” with the EU on a returns deal. On Friday, he said that the 15 per cent decline in the numbers of migrants crossing the Channel showed his “stop the boats” plan was working.
“I never said it was easy. I said it would take time,” he added. “There is no simple, single solution that will solve it. We are working on a range of different things, for example the deal with Albania that has returned 3,000 illegal migrants to Albania.”
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