At 6:30 pm on Wednesday 26th August 2020 the Home Office’s official twitter account posted a video celebrating a series of charter flights organised to return asylum seekers from Sudan, Yemen and Iraq to Germany, France and Spain. The video has caused somewhat of a storm by stating:
Current return regulations are rigid and open to abuse allowing activist lawyers to delay and disrupt returns
Putting aside the problematic use of public funds and a civil service account to tweet what is seemingly a party political message there is the other slight problem of the above statement being manifestly incorrect. The video has since been taken down.
Can the UK return asylum seekers?
Current regulations, or at least regulations that will remain in place until 31st December 2020, allow for the UK to return asylum seekers to the first ‘safe’ European country they arrived (there are some exceptions mostly for those with existing links to the UK). I am here referring to the Dublin III Regulations, these regulations are not UK law but EU law. Meaning they will be gone with Brexit.
Reports last week revealed that the government are set to fail to implement a replacement or amendment to the Dublin regulations which would allow the UK to continue returning asylum seekers to Europe. And it is in this context that the recent actions of the Home Office begin to make much more sense.
Lockdowns across Europe are being relaxed and immediately the Home Office has made returns under the Dublin regulations a priority. They are aware that they have limited time to exercise their rights to return migrants and seem to be in a rush to use charter flights whilst they are still able to do so.
Demonising people in need
We had a week of government-led breathless discussion of dinghy crossings across the channel. Media coverage of this was unhelpful with some bizarre coverage attracting understandable criticism for the sight of reporters at sea shouting across to and poking boom mics in the direction of people fleeing persecution and war. Channel crossings often increase in summer due to calmer seas and, due to Covid, there have been fewer lorry crossings, forcing more desperate people to turn to dangerous journeys over the water.
This coverage was chiefly aimed at pointing the finger at France, arguing they had not done enough to prevent crossings. The focus on France, who take a significantly larger number of refugees than the UK, framed this as a Eurocentric issue. Once the transition period with the EU comes to an end the UK will have no right to return asylum seekers to other EU countries, meaning it is likely we see an increase in dangerous crossings unless safe routes to come to the UK are established.
Finally we come to the ‘activist lawyers’ tag. A Trumpian attempt to invoke discord. The lawyers referred to are simply professionals helping people to exercise the rights established under International Law and in the many different domestic Immigration acts and rules - not exactly grounds for a Hollywood blockbuster. Lawyers are regulated and obliged to act in the best interests of their clients, not the best interests of the Home Secretary. The Home Office have amended immigration law over sixty-five times since coming to office in 2010. If they are unhappy with the state of the law, they have certainly had sufficient opportunity to change it.
Hostile Environment in action
Many are trying to paint these actions as that of the Home Office setting out a comprehensive immigration plan. Perhaps we should more view them as that of a boxer, who after sustaining heavy injuries, knowing they are on their way to a KO, swinging wildly at the several different opponents their blurry vision displays. It is concerning to see such brazenly political material coming not from politicians themselves, but from their departments and the civil service.
The Home Office is aware that come the end of the transition agreement, and with no new agreement on the Dublin regulations, the UK will be forced to accept more refugees than it currently does (around 45,000 a year, approximately 1% of the world’s refugees and around 4% of the EU’s). Setting up targets now allows them to deflect the blame at a later date for not having negotiated new reciprocal arrangements with the EU.
Ultimately the Home Office are landing blows. Terrified individuals who have come to the UK in the hope of refuge and sanctuary are being detained and returned to countries where they have faced issues that have driven them away. It is naïve and dangerous to presume people wouldn’t seek to travel to places where they speak the language, know family or are aware of large communities from their country of origin. Some EU countries have also at times been declared unsafe for refugees due to a lack of resources such as safe housing, leaving refugees on park benches or without food.
Earlier in the year I wrote on this blog about the Windrush lessons learned review and whether there is a destination for the Home Office beyond the Hostile Environment.
This current evidence suggests there is not.
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