• Mar. Jul 1st, 2025

fifebusinessjournal.co.uk

fifebusinessjournal.co.uk

Leaked recording exposes senior Tory’s knowledge of flaws in post-Brexit plan for returning illegal migrants

PorStaff

May 14, 2025
Pic: Reuters

One of Kemi Badenoch’s top team has admitted there were flaws in the plan to return illegal migrants after Brexit, Sky News can reveal. Boris Johnson repeatedly told the public that Brexit would mean taking back control of Britain’s borders and migration system.

Plans unveiled to ease prisons crisis – politics latest. But in a leaked recording obtained by Sky News, Chris Philp, now shadow home secretary, said Britain’s exit from the EU – and end of UK participation in the Dublin agreement which governs EU-wide asylum claims – meant they realized they «can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum.» Mr. Philp appeared to suggest the scale of the problem surprised those in the Johnson government.

«When we did check it out… (we) found that about half the people crossing the Channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe.» In response tonight, the Tories insisted that Mr. Philp was not saying the Tories did not have a plan for how to handle asylum seekers post-Brexit. Mr. Philp’s comments from last month are a very different tone to 2020 when as immigration minister he seemed to be suggesting EU membership and the Dublin rules hampered asylum removals. In August that year, he said: «The Dublin regulations do have a number of constraints in them, which makes returning people who should be returned a little bit harder than we would like. Of course, come the 1st of January, we’ll be outside of those Dublin regulations and the United Kingdom can take a fresh approach.»
Mr. Philp was also immigration minister in Mr. Johnson’s government so would have been following the debate closely.

The remarks were made in a Zoom call, part of a regular series with all the shadow cabinet on 28 April, just before the local election. Mr. Philp was asked by a member why countries like France continued to allow migrants to come to the UK. He replied: «The migrants should claim asylum in the first safe place and that under European Union regulations, which is called the Dublin 3 regulation, the first country where they are playing asylum is the one that should process their application. Now, because we’re out of the European Union now, we are out of the Dublin 3 regulations, and so we can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum. When we did check it out, just before we exited the EU transitional arrangements on December the 31st, 2020, we did run some checks and found that about half the people crossing the channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe. In Germany, France, Italy, Spain, somewhere like that, and therefore could have been returned. But now we’re out of Dublin, we can’t do that, and that’s why we need to have somewhere like Rwanda that we can send these people to as a deterrent.
The Conservative Party spokesman said: «The Conservative Party delivered on the democratic will of this country, and left the European Union. The last government did have a plan and no one – including Chris – has ever suggested otherwise. We created new deals with France to intercept migrants, signed returns agreements with many countries across Europe, including a landmark agreement with Albania that led to small boat crossings falling by a third in 2023, and developed the Rwanda deterrent – a deterrent that Labour scrapped, leading to 2025 so far being the worst year ever for illegal channel crossings. However, Kemi Badenoch and Chris Philp have been clear that the Conservatives must do a lot more to tackle illegal migration. It is why, under new leadership, we are developing g new policies that will put an end to this problem – including disapplying the Human Rights Act from immigration matters, establishing a removals deterrent and deporting all foreign criminals.

SOURCE

Por Staff

Deja una respuesta

Tu dirección de correo electrónico no será publicada. Los campos obligatorios están marcados con *