Brexit stopped UK returning half of asylum seekers, claims senior Tory
Chris Philp, the Tory frontbencher, said leaving the European Union meant Britain could no longer send illegal migrants back to the European country where they first claimed asylum.
In remarks leaked to Sky News, he said deporting asylum seekers was now more difficult because the Dublin III agreement no longer applied to Britain.
The EU law allows member states to return illegal migrants who had previously claimed asylum in another member state to those countries.
'Because we're out of the European Union now, we are out of the Dublin III regulations, and so we can't any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum,' he told an online meeting of Tory members on April 28.
'When we did check it out, just before we exited the EU transitional arrangements on Dec 31 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.'
A number of EU countries, including Italy, do not accept Dublin III, therefore illegal migrants who first claim asylum there cannot be returned there.
A spokesman for the Conservative Party said Brexit was the 'democratic will of this country'.
'The Conservative Party delivered on the democratic will of this country, and left the European Union,' the spokesman said. '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 return 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 [the Conservative leader] 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 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.'
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