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.
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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 realised 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.
In public, members of the Johnson administration were claiming this would not be an issue since asylum claims would be “inadmissible”, but gave no details on how they would actually deal with people physically arriving in the country.
A Home Office source told journalists once the UK is “no longer bound by Dublin after the transition”, then “we will be able to negotiate our own bilateral returns agreement from the end of this year”.
This did not happen immediately.
In the summer of 2020, Mr Johnson’s spokesman criticised the “inflexible and rigid” Dublin regulations, suggesting the exit from this agreement would be a welcome post-Brexit freedom. Mr Philp’s comments suggest a different view in private.
The remarks were made in a Zoom call, part of a regular series with all the shadow cabinet on April 28, 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.”
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Mr Johnson announced the Rwanda plan in April 2022 – which Mr Philp casts as the successor plan – 16 months after Britain left the legal and regulatory regime of the EU, but the plan was blocked by the European Court of Human Rights.
Successive Tory prime ministers failed to get any mandatory removals to Rwanda, and Sir Keir Starmer cancelled the programme on entering Downing Street last year, leaving the issue of asylum seekers from France unresolved.
Speaking on Sky News last weekend, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said there has been a 20% increase in migrant returns since Labour came to power, along with a 40% increase in illegal working raids and a 40% increase in arrests for illegal working.
Britain’s membership of the EU did not stop all asylum arrivals. Under the EU’s Dublin regulation, under which people should be processed for asylum in the country at which they first entered the bloc.
However, many EU countries where people first arrive, such as Italy, do not apply the Dublin rules.
The UK is not going to be able to participate again in the Dublin agreement since that is only open to full members of the EU.
Ministers have confirmed the Labour government is discussing a returns agreement with the French that would involve both countries exchanging people seeking asylum.
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Asked on Sky News about how returns might work in future, the transport minister Lilian Greenwood said on Wednesday there were “discussions ongoing with the French government”, but did not say what a future deal could look like.
She told Sky News: “It’s not a short-term issue. This is going to take really hard work to tackle those organised gangs that are preying on people, putting their lives in danger as they try to cross the Channel to the UK.
“Of course, that’s going to involve conversations with our counterparts on the European continent.”
Pressed on the returns agreement, Ms Greenwood said: “I can confirm that there are discussions ongoing with the French government about how we stop this appalling and dangerous trade in people that’s happening across the English Channel.”
A 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.”
