Home Office plans to process asylum seekers overseas branded ‘inhumane and unworkable’

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Ministers have been accused of peddling “inhumane and unworkable” proposals after it emerged the Home Office is considering plans to start processing asylum seekers overseas.

Home secretary Priti Patel is hoping to change the law so that people seeking asylum can be sent to processing centres in third countries or territories, with officials said to be considering Gibraltar, the Isle of Man and islands off the Scottish coast, according to The Times.

Turkey is also said to be an option for holding UK asylum seekers, as well as other countries “closer to home”, according to the Daily Mail.

It comes after similar plans to process migrants off the UK mainland were floated last year, when ministers considered holding asylum seekers in disused ferries and decommissioned oil platforms in the North Sea. The plans were later dismissed as unrealistic.

Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds accused the government of “lurching from one inhumane, ridiculous proposal to another”.

“These absurd ideas show the government has lost control and all sense of compassion. Ministers must act to reopen safe routes, as promised, and deliver the promised agreement with France,” he said.

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The Gibraltar government released a statement on Thursday describing the reports as “groundless speculation”, saying it had not been informed of the considerations and that it would be “unable to host the processing of asylum seekers from the UK”.

“Immigration is an area of my responsibility as chief minister and I can confirm that this issue has not been raised with me at any level. I would have made clear this is not area on which we believe we can assist the UK,” said Gibraltar’s chief minister Fabian Picardo QC.

A Scottish government spokesperson described the reports as “very concerning” and said that, if true, Scotland would “strongly oppose” them.

Immigration experts described the idea of processing asylum seekers offshore as “rinse and repeat” proposal that has been floated a number of times before, and is used by ministers as a way to look tough on the issue.

Barrister Colin Yeo highlighted the fact that the reported proposals do not appear to provide any clarity on which foreign government would agree to take in UK asylum seekers, adding: “I keep thinking that maybe this time they have actually reached a deal with another country, but until then it is just posturing.”

Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London and former senior civil servant of more than 20 years, described the proposed plan as a “zombie policy”.

“The fact that it is both inhumane and has always proved unworkable in practice doesn't seem to stop successive home secretaries from wheeling it out at regular intervals, usually to distract from failures elsewhere,” he said.

“In this case, presumably the home secretary is trying to generate some press to distract from her fundamental failure in leadership over Napier Barracks.”

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Ms Patel has come under fire in recent months over her decision to place hundreds of asylum seekers in disused army barracks, which led to a major coronavirus outbreak at the Napier Barracks site in Kent.

Earlier this month, the government’s own inspectors found that the military facilities were “inadequate” for long periods of housing, with some vulnerable people held in “uninhabitable” conditions, and that the Home Office had failed to “exercise adequate oversight” of the way the sites were run.

The rise in Channel crossings over the past 12 months is said to have triggered the proposals, after a record 8,420 people reached the UK in small boats last year.

However, asylum claims have dropped by 18 per cent over the same period, indicating that the increase in boat crossings points to a shift in method for crossing to Britain, rather than an overall increase in people coming to the country to seek sanctuary.

In October, the UN refugee agency told MPs the rise in unauthorised Channel crossings was “far from being a crisis” and that the numbers “paled in comparison” to those elsewhere and were “manageable for an advanced democracy with a sophisticated asylum system” such as the UK.

Daniel Sohege, director of Stand For All human rights consultancy, said that offshoring refugees had been floated and then abandoned “time and time again” because it was always found to violate international law and human rights.

“As has been seen with Australia, for example, where such policies were enacted, offshoring is not only legally questionable, but also raises the risks of long-term mental health issues among detainees and increased risks of harm and suicide,” he added.

Since 2013, Australia has sent more than 4,000 people to government-sponsored immigration detention centres in the small Pacific state of Nauru or Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, where a number have subsequently taken their lives.

Sarah Teather, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service UK, said the proposals were designed to “appeal to dog whistle politics of xenophobia” and accused Ms Patel of “trashing public sympathy” for asylum seekers.

“The plans, of course, will be expensive and unworkable, but the damage to public perceptions of those in need will by then already be done,” she added.

Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said offshoring the UK’s asylum system would do “nothing to address the reasons people take dangerous journeys in the first place and will almost certainly have grave humanitarian consequences”.

The Home Office has been approached for comment.