Priti Patel ‘considered shipping asylum seekers to remote islands’

 

Priti Patel reportedly requested officers to look into establishing offshore asylum centres (Image: Rex/ Getty Photos)

The Residence Secretary requested officers to look into establishing an asylum processing centre on a distant volcanic island within the South Atlantic, it has been reported.

Priti Patel thought-about transferring asylum seekers to the British abroad territories of Ascension Island and St Helena, with the International Workplace additionally consulted on the plan, the Monetary Instances experiences. Each islands lie between between the coast of Africa and Brazil.

The FT experiences that an evaluation was made on the practicality of delivery asylum seekers to the islands earlier than the thought was dropped by Patel.

Whitehall officers informed the publication the transfer could have been impressed by Australia’s use of offshore asylum centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, which assist handle ‘unlawful’ migrants.

The method sees the navy intercept individuals arriving in Australia by boat and take them to the centres till their refugee claims are cleared. The final individuals to be transferred to the centres was in 2014, the Refugee Council experiences.

The organisation additionally states that refugees could be left in ‘limbo’ on the centres for years, and infrequently expertise ‘horrible situations’ which might have a extreme impression on psychological well being.

A supply near Patel mentioned: ‘Now we have been how different nations have been coping with this problem. Now we have been scoping every thing. No selections have been made by ministers.’

Greater than 5,000 migrants have arrived within the UK by boat this 12 months – however the quantity stays far decrease than different European nations (Image: Getty Photos)

Patel’s group additionally reportedly checked out creating asylum processing centres in north Africa, to display screen migrants earlier than they try to journey to the UK. This plan has additionally been thought-about by the EU.

By the top of August, greater than 5,000 individuals arrived within the UK by crossing the English Channel in dinghies, which is greater than twice the quantity who arrived via the identical route throughout the entire of 2019.

Nonetheless, the variety of boats arriving within the UK stays smaller than in different European nations, with Italy seeing almost 17,000 sea arrivals as of August and Spain greater than 10,800.

The federal government continues to take a hardline stance towards crossings, and has centered on making the route ‘unviable’ for migrants. Patel is predicted to deal with the scenario in her speech on the Conservative Occasion convention on Sunday.

Patel is alleged to have dropped the plan (Image: Rex Options)

A Residence Workplace official mentioned: ‘The UK has an extended and proud historical past of providing refuge to those that want safety. Tens of 1000’s of individuals have rebuilt their lives within the UK and we are going to proceed to offer secure and authorized routes sooner or later.

‘As ministers have mentioned we’re creating plans to reform insurance policies and legal guidelines round unlawful migration and asylum to make sure we’re capable of present safety to those that want it, whereas stopping abuse of the system and the criminality related to it.’

Get in contact with our information group by emailing us at [email protected]

For extra tales like this, examine our information web page.