Tony Blair plotted to ship asylum seekers to Africa 20 years earlier than Rwanda plan
Labour needed to ship asylum seekers to Africa practically 20 years earlier than the controversial Rwanda plan was put ahead, bombshell new paperwork reveal.
A report ready for former PM Tony Blair additionally instructed establishing a camp on an island within the Inner Hebrides for many who confronted deportation. A doc drawn up by the then-PM’s chief-of-staff inspired a “nuclear option” and instructed deporting refugees to Turkey, Kenya and South Africa.
When Home Office legal professionals warned the plans may fall foul of the Geneva Convention on refugees, Mr Blair scrawled “just return them”. A handwritten be aware by Mr Blair continued: “This is precisely the point. We must not allow the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) to stop us dealing with it.”
Documents drawn up by prime aide Jonathan Powell revealed officers additionally checked out sending claimants to the Falklands, 8,000 miles from the UK. The confidential papers have lastly been launched by the National Archive as the present Tory Government tries to push by way of its controversial plan to ship asylum seekers to Rwanda.
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In the plan, which was by no means adopted, Mr Powell stated workers working for lawyer common Lord Goldsmith had instructed establishing a holding camp on the Isle of Mull within the Inner Hebrides. But he warned that the “Nimby factor” would in all probability cease it from working. He additionally instructed establishing a showdown with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg – in a means Tory hardliners are demanding now over the Rwanda deportation scheme. Mr Powell’s report, titled Asylum: The Nuclear Option, stated the Government ought to deport folks whatever the threat of persecution they confronted of their homeland.
And he stated the Government ought to cross new legal guidelines bypassing the ECHR. Mr Powell wrote: “We would like to extend this to return any illegal immigrant regardless of the risk that they might suffer human or degrading treatment. We would almost certainly lose this case when it got to Strasbourg. But we would have two to three years in the meantime when we could send a strong message into the system about our new tough stance.”
If the measures had been launched, these claiming asylum can be deported with little or no proper to attraction. A handwritten be aware by Mr Blair revealed frustration over rising asylum claimants, which reached 8,800 in October 2002 – a month-to-month file. The PM wrote: “We must search out even more radical measures.” Mr Powell’s confidential report instructed establishing “safe havens” in international locations like Turkey, Kenya and South Africa.
People from Iraq, Zimbabwe and Somalia may very well be despatched there, the doc stated, and the Foreign Office stated Turkey specifically can be prepared to begin “quite rapidly”. In one other passage hitting out at asylum seekers he wrote: “As an island, people who come here by sea have by definition already passed through a safe country.
“And only a few of those that apply at airports are real refugees. So in truth what we must be taking a look at is a quite simple system that instantly returns individuals who arrive right here illegally.” The No10 official wrote: “Ideally we should always not have an asylum listening to in any respect, merely a choice by an immigration officer to return somebody adopted by a one tier quick attraction in opposition to that call if that’s needed.”
The document was released as Rishi Sunak faces a New Year’s scrap within his warring party as he tries to get flights to Rwanda up and running. The Government has so far handed £240million to the African nation in a deal that would see asylum seekers sent there and barred from applying to remain in the UK.
A further £50million will be paid in April, with further annual payments to follow. Despite this no asylum seekers have been sent and the PM faces a Tory rebellion in his efforts to overcome a Supreme Court ruling last month that the plan was unlawful. Mr Sunak is pushing through new legislation and a new treaty with Rwanda aimed at tackling the court’s concerns. Labour chief Keir Starmer has stated that he’ll scrap the challenge if he turns into PM. He branded it a “coverage that they knew would by no means work”, while Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has dismissed it as a “gimmick”.
