Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday said he expects to “abolish” the UK’s asylum applications backlog by the end of next year as he unveiled plans to tackle illegal immigration, change asylum rules, and set an annual quota for refugees.
Presenting a packed five-point plan to Parliament, Sunak said he would set up a dedicated team to crack down on people smuggling using small boats and working illegally in the UK; house asylum seekers in cheaper accommodation; revamp the asylum application process to ramp up productivity; and speed up the deportation of failed applicants.
He also set out plans to change the immigration legal framework, including legislating to remove those who arrive illegally and ban them from reentry.
The policy announcement came as almost 150,000 asylum applications are waiting for decisions, with almost two-thirds having waited for more than six months.
Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, hailed the announcement as a “welcome, if belated” proposal to solve to the problem, but said the prime minister and his party will be judged “on results.”
Alan Mendoza, co-founder and executive director of foreign policy think tank Henry Jackson Society (HJS), also applauded the prime minister’s plan, saying the UK has to “get a control of this situation” in order to restore confidence in the asylum system.
Five-Point Plan
Sunak announced a “permanent” and “unified” Small Boats Operational Command, which he said will consolidate the military and civilian capabilities to take a coordinated approach to policing the English Channel.The National Crime Agency, which is promised 700 new recruitments and a doubling of its funding, will also be part of the unit.
The investment will free up immigration officers, allowing a 50 percent increase in raids on illegal working, Sunak said.
Citing the £5.5 million daily cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels, the prime minister said the government is eyeing alternative sites such as “disused holiday parks, former student halls, and surplus military sites” to halve the bill.
He also said Whitehall will try to get local authorities to “take their fair share of asylum seekers in the private rental sector,” saying it’s “the cheapest and fairest way to solve this problem.”
Setting out plans to clear the asylum application backlog, Sunak said claims need to be processed “in days or weeks, not months or years.”
Albanian Claims Fast-Tracked
The changes will mean most claims from Albanians can “simply be declared ‘clearly unfounded,’” Sunak said, before unveiling a new deal with the Balkan country which contributed a third of all small-boat arrivals this year.Citing Albania’s credential as “an EU accession country, a NATO ally and a member of the same treaty against trafficking as the United Kingdom,” Sunak argued the UK should stop accepting 55 percent of Albanian claims while Germany, France and Sweden rejected “almost 100 percent.”
Caseworkers will be told “Albania is a safe country” and only those with “objective evidence of modern slavery” can be referred as potential victims, Sunak said.
Regarding Albanian human-trafficking victims, Sunak said the Albania government had promised to “protect genuine victims and people at risk of re-trafficking.”
Legal Changes
Labour previously introduced a similar fast-track scheme when it was last in power, but the scheme was mired in legal changes and eventually suspended in 2015 after it was ruled to be “structurally unfair.”If the new Albanian policies are challenged in the courts, Sunak said, he will “put them on a statutory footing to ensure the UK’s treatment of Albanian arrivals is no different from that of Germany or France.”
Sunak also vowed to introduce new legislation early next year to “make unambiguously clear that if you enter the UK illegally you should not be able to remain here.”
The prime minister argued many of the small boat arrivals came from “fundamentally safe countries” and all travel through safe countries.
Illegal arrivals will be “detained and swiftly returned” to their home country or a safe country where their asylum cases will be considered, and will have “no right to reentry, settlement, or citizenship,” Sunak said.
Regarding who will be allowed to travel to the UK for protection, Sunak said the government will work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to identify “those most in need.”
Opposition Parties
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer welcomed Sunak’s plan to fast-track clearly unfounded claims and to increase the number of caseworkers, but he largely dismissed Sunak’s plan as “unworkable gimmicks,” saying they have all “been said almost word for word before.”He also criticised the government’s £140 million deal to ship illegal arrivals to Rwanda, saying it was an “unworkable, unethical” plan and a waste of money.
Sunak responded by saying Labour previously voted to block the Conservative government’s plans to tackle immigration, and accused Labour of not having a plan.
Stephen Flynn, Scottish National Party’s leader in Westminster, said he has “grave concerns” over the proposed legislation, alternative accommodation, and the “one size fits all” Albanian policy.
Mixed Reactions
In an email to The Epoch Times, Mehmet at Migration Watch UK welcomed Sunak’s statement, which he also said is “belated,” arguing the UK would “not be facing the chaos and mountain of illegality that we now do” if the resources and efforts had been promised when small boats first started showing up.He also said the promise is “only a start,” adding, “Fine words in Parliament are all very well but the voters will judge the PM and his party on results and whether they have the political will and courage to keep to their promises and not cave at the first sound of gunfire.”
Focusing on Sunak’s stated plan to remove those who arrive illegally, Walsh said the proposal, if taken at face value, “seems to entail the UK abandoning its international obligations to hear asylum claims.”
But the announcement could also be “just more of the same tough rhetoric but no radical departure from what has come before,” the Migration Observatory researcher told The Epoch Times in an email.
Since the UK’s exit from the European Union, the UK could no longer return asylum seekers to the first EU country they arrived in. As a result, fewer illegal immigrants were successfully returned despite the new powers created in the UK’s Nationality and Borders Act.
Walsh said the failure to remove people who travelled from safe countries such as France, is owing to the lack of agreement with safe countries.
“Fundamentally, the UK is obliged under the Refugee Convention to hear asylum claims, and the government has given no indication of withdrawing from the Convention,” he said.
Speaking to The Epoch Times, Mendoza argued Sunak’s proposal is fair, saying it’s “unfair” when people are allowed to abuse the asylum system.
The HJS director said there are “limits” to the number of immigrants any country is able to bring in and assimilate at one time.
He also said the UK government has to make sure asylum seekers are “genuinely persecuted” in order to restore confidence in the asylum system and for it to work fairly.
Asked whether he believes the prime minister’s plan will work on fixing the problems, Mendoza said the success of the plan can be judged against Sunak’s own goal to clear the backlog by next year, but the plan appears to “have every possibility of working.”
Commenting on potential legal challenges Sunak will face over the plans, Mendoza spoke of an “immigration lobby” involving “people who wish to see untrammeled immigration into this country.”
“This is just not something that most people here will understand or believe in. What they want is for deserving cases to be looked at and undeserving cases to be also looked at quickly, and then moved on,” Mendoza said.
The Epoch Times approached the Refugee Council for comment.
