Asylum seekers should not be allowed to abscond
The current situation is clearly unsustainable. To fix it, we must be prepared for an almighty political battle
Parliamentary committees don’t normally make for compelling viewing, but Wednesday’s session of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee bucked the trend.
During intense questioning from MPs, the Home Office’s most senior officials delivered a series of headline grabbing revelations. In an extraordinary exchange that has now been viewed millions of times, the Permanent Secretary told the Committee that he didn’t know how many failed asylum seekers have been deported in the last three years and admitted that the Home Office doesn’t know what has happened to 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been withdrawn.
These figures – and, indeed, the lack of them – are alarming.
The purpose of policing national borders is to control who comes in and out of our country, to prevent criminals and those who mean harm from entering the UK. If thousands of people who arrive in Britain illegally can abscond, it is a reasonable assumption that some will go on to engage in criminal activity.
The rise in the number of withdrawn asylum claims is at least in part due to a tenfold increase in the processing rate. And, thanks to the interventions of Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, a tougher stance is being taken, with those who fail to turn up for asylum interviews now finding their cases transferred to immigration enforcement without delay. These improvements should be applauded.
But Wednesday’s parliamentary showdown does draw attention to the inevitable consequences of the sheer number of people who enter the UK illegally (at least 150,000 since 2017). Of course, those who are genuinely fleeing war and persecution should be treated with the utmost compassion – and Britain has a long history of welcoming refugees. But for those who are not, it is clearly all too easy to slip away into the shadow economy, joining criminal gangs involved in drugs, prostitution, and other illegal activity.
We cannot solve this problem without an effective deterrent. Thanks to social media, international people trafficking gangs are extremely well informed of what measures are in place in each country to prevent illegal entry, and how easy it is for illegal immigrants to gain asylum or evade detection. If everyone who arrived illegally on UK shores was swiftly removed to a third country for processing, it will soon become known that there is little incentive to come to Britain without a genuine claim.
But, as the UK Government discovered when it lost its recent case in the Supreme Court, international treaties – and the way they are embedded in UK law – prevent us from creating that effective deterrent. Citing the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN Refugee Convention and others, judges ruled that it is not lawful to remove illegal immigrants to Rwanda for processing.
It is increasingly clear that we cannot control our borders within the confines of international law, or at least the current interpretation of international law, which often bears little relation to the (good and reasonable) intentions of treaties signed in the aftermath of World War Two. The Government is widely criticised for its handling of the “small boats” crisis, but the judgement of the Supreme Court makes clear that no sensible solution can be found without the UK Parliament disapplying at least some elements of international treaties. That is exactly what I and many of my colleagues hope will be achieved by emergency legislation due to be introduced to Parliament next week.
But there are strong and vocal objections to this approach. The political battle that will soon take place will epitomise the great schisms of our age.
Where does the highest form of sovereignty lie? Is it with democratically elected national parliaments or with unelected judges in international courts? And are strong borders and firm laws, consistently applied, necessary for the freedom of the majority or an abuse of the rights of a minority?
The dividing lines are about to be drawn.
