Labour is accused of providing an ‘amnesty’ to 100,000 asylum seekers
Labour was today accused of offering an ‘amnesty’ to asylum seekers after the Government announced it is scrapping legislation linked to the Rwanda scheme.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper this afternoon told MPs she would reverse part of former prime minister Rishi Sunak‘s Illegal Migration Act.
The legislation has barred anyone arriving in the UK illegally since March 2023 from being granted asylum, with these people having been earmarked for removal to Rwanda.
It is estimated Labour’s law change will affect around 100,000 migrants who have arrived in the UK by small boats or other illegal routes.
The Refugee Council, a UK-based charity, has suggested 70 per cent of those migrants previously earmarked for deportation to Rwanda will be successful with asylum claims.
Shadow home secretary James Cleverly branded the move ‘an effective amnesty’.
Since winning power, Labour has declared the Rwanda scheme ‘dead and buried’ and Ms Cooper today told the House of Commons it had been a ‘costly con’.
She revealed the Conservative scheme had cost British taxpayers £700million, with a total of just four volunteers sent to the African country.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper this afternoon told MPs she would reverse part of former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s Illegal Migration Act
A group of people are pictured boarding a smuggler’s boat in an attempt to cross the Channel on the beach of Gravelines, near Dunkirk, in northern France
James Cleverly, Ms Cooper’s predecessor as home secretary, is pictured with Rwanda’s foreign minister Vincent Biruta after signing an agreement in Kigali, Rwanda, in December last year
In a Commons statement, Ms Cooper branded the Rwanda scheme the ‘most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen’.
She said the costs of the scheme included a £290million payment to Rwanda, ‘chartering flights that never took off’ and ‘detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them’.
The Home Secretary warned that co-operation with European police forces is ‘too limited’ and more needs to be done to tackle people-smuggling ‘upstream’ long before migrant boats reach the French coast.
‘I’m extremely concerned that high levels of dangerous crossings we have inherited are likely to persist through the summer,’ she said.
Ms Cooper also blasted the previous government for creating an ‘asylum Hotel California’ in which people arrived in the system but never leave.
She said there were ‘legal contradictions’ in the Illegal Migration Act and ‘no decision’ can be taken on an individual’s case if they arrived in the UK after March 2023 and meet key conditions in the legislation.
‘They just stay in the asylum system,’ the Home Secretary said.
‘Even if they’ve come here unlawfully for economic reasons and should be returned to their home country, they won’t be because the law doesn’t work.
‘Only a small minority might ever have been sent to Rwanda and everyone else stays indefinitely in taxpayer-funded accommodation and support.’
Ms Cooper warned the cost of the ‘indefinitely rising’ asylum backlog in hotel and accommodation support bills was ‘astronomical’.
She told MPs: ‘The potential costs of asylum support over the next four years, if we continue down this track, could be an eye-watering £30billion to £40billion – that is double the annual police budget for England and Wales.’
Ms Cooper vowed to ‘end the asylum chaos and start taking asylum decisions again so we can clear the backlog and end asylum hotels’.
The Home Secretary said she was laying a statutory instrument which ends the ‘retrospective nature’ of the Illegal Migration Act provisions to ensure that the Home Office can ‘immediately start clearing cases from after March 2023’.
She added: ‘Making this one simple change will save the taxpayer an estimated £7billion over the next 10 years.’
Responding to Ms Cooper, Mr Cleverly said Labour had already worsened the issue of small boat crossings in the Channel in just two and a half weeks in power and criticised the Government for removing the ‘deterrent’ of the Rwanda scheme.
He told MPs: ‘The reality is everybody knows, including the people smugglers, that the small boat problem is going to get worse, indeed has already got worse under Labour because they have no deterrent.
‘People are being sold a lie when they’re being smuggled into this country across the busiest shipping lanes. And we do need to stop them. Too many lives have already been lost.’
He asked Ms Cooper whether she had ‘started negotiations on returns agreements with the Taliban, or the ayatollahs of Iran, or [Bashar] Assad in Syria?’
‘The fact there is now no safe third country to return people to who cannot be returned home means that we ask, where is she going to send the people who come here from countries like Afghanistan or Iraq, in Syria?,’ Mr Cleverly said.
He branded the Home Secretary’s Commons statement as ‘hyperbole’ and ‘made up numbers’.
‘Labour has given an effective amnesty to thousands of asylum seekers who were banned under Conservative plans,’ he added.
Today’s Commons clashes followed reports that, under Labour’s plans, those who come from ‘safe’ countries such as India, Vietnam and Albania will have their asylum claims prioritised because it will be easier for them to be returned home.
This is in contrast to those from countries such as Afghanistan and Syria.
Only 3 per cent of asylum seekers from India have their applications accepted, along with 7 per cent of Albanians and 46 per cent of Vietnamese.
Some 1,499 migrants arrived in the UK in 27 boats from July 15 to 21, according to latest Home Office figures.
The provisional total for the year so far to 15,831, which is 9 per cent higher than the number recorded this time last year (14,534) and up 3 per cent on the same period in 2022 (15,314).
