Latest news with #DublinIII
Metro
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Metro
Risk and reward, Trump's Mini-Me and planting trees for the planet
Three readers (MetroTalk, Thu) debate why migrants run the risk of crossing the Channel in dinghies to get to Britain. To answer one point, migrants do claim asylum in safe countries in Europe, but if they are rejected they try again in the UK as we are no longer subject to the EU Dublin III agreement to automatically reject them. Others come as they speak English so have a better chance here. Single young men come – as they have throughout history – as they are most likely to survive dangerous travel, intending to settle and then send for their family. Allowing applications in France and a more thorough removal of failed claimants would discourage crossing attempts. Lewis Gibson, Birmingham I totally agree with Guy Wilkins (MetroTalk, Thu). Nigel Farage is Donald Trump's Mini-Me from the Austin Powers film and follows him without question, even wearing his 'Morons And Gormless of America' hats. Farage, like Trump, will make ridiculous promises with no possible way of achieving them. Facts and the truth are totally irrelevant to him, he incites fear and loathing of various groups and fails to condemn violence by the far right. They both live for publicity and adoration from the media. Farage would go to the opening of an envelope if a camera was present and without constant unjustified newspaper articles he would crumble as Dracula in sunlight. A Lloyd, Liverpool In response to my point that Jeremy Corbyn's new party will score an 'own-goal' by splitting the far-left vote and benefiting Reform, James Freeman (MetroTalk, Tue) and Brian Dooley (Wed) insist Labour could have avoided this by catering more for the leftist voter. However, neither mention that when Labour did this previously, they quickly became unelectable. As party leader, Corbyn's aspirations reduced Labour to its worst General Election defeat since 1935, giving Boris Johnson a landslide victory in 2019. Labour's previous experiment with socialism under Michael Foot resulted in Labour's 1983 pre-election manifesto being described as 'the longest suicide note in history' and gifted a huge majority to Margaret Thatcher. Labour has little to fear by losing the niche hard Left and should let Corbyn and his disciples get on with it. Labour must stop terrifying the wealth creators in this country with counterproductive policies and focus on gaining centrist support while masses of the electorate feel uneasy about the rise of Reform and exasperated by the deficiencies of Conservative and the Lib Dems. Robert Hughes, London We hear much about the catastrophic effects of carbon on our climate but few people talks of the effect of expanding deserts. More Trending Expanding deserts are a threat to many countries – but there are signs of a fightback. The Great Green Wall is a project by the African Union to restore degraded land across 22 countries in the Sahel region. But its great success in planting trees – which will also act as a carbon sponge – will not help us as much as benefit the southern Sahara. Italy has recently suffered temperatures as high as 45C, which can be fatal. This heat comes from northern Africa. The way to reverse climate change in Europe is to emulate the Great Green Wall scheme by planting trees in northern Africa. Such a project would be more beneficial to us than the futile net zero programme, which is destroying whole industries and thousands of good jobs. Mark Hardinge, Worcester There can be no excuses for the levels of violence carried out by Mohammed Fahir Amaaz at Manchester Airport against the police and a member of the public (Metro, Thu). The guilty verdicts were correct and I look forward to robust sentencing shortly. You cannot attack any emergency worker just because you don't like them doing their duty. I look forward to the retrial Amaaz and his brother face after the jury could not reach a verdict on the charge they assaulted a male PC causing ABH. Robert Boston, Kent MORE: Oasis fan dies after falling from stands at Wembley Stadium concert MORE: Rat the size of a dog found as monster vermin run riot in Yorkshire village MORE: Police continue to hunt 'brutal' killers of mum, 22, shot dead with toddler upstairs
Spectator
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Starmer's migrant deal is nothing but a sticking plaster
As French President Emmanuel Macron visited Britain this week for the first French state visit in over a decade, a deal on tackling small boat migrants became the trip's centrepiece. Ahead of the visit, in an apparent sign of greater co-operation, French police were filmed wading into the water to slash the sides of an inflatable migrant boat with knives, preventing it from attempting to cross the English Channel. The relative ease with which they were able to do so proves that France could prevent many Channel crossings if they wanted to. But the deal that has emerged is thin gruel. Other EU nations – including Spain, Italy, and Greece – have objected based on concerns that they might be obliged to take migrants returned to France. The EU Commission has also questioned whether the deal has strayed into areas of EU competency. With nearly 200,000 people having crossed the Channel on small boats since 2018, the existing asylum system is clearly broken A pilot scheme will be based on a 'one-in, one-out' policy but numbers will be small. Under the scheme, France will agree to accept back, within days or weeks, some illegal immigrants who have crossed the Channel. In return, Britain would accept an equivalent number of asylum seekers from France, with a focus on those with family already in Britain. The idea is that those seeking to cross the Channel will be dissuaded by their rapid return to France, putting them off further attempts, while the use of the regular asylum system would be encouraged. Yet, while a deterrent is necessary to stop the crossings, it is far from clear that the planned deal will be effective anyway. The small boats crisis began in 2018, whilst the UK was still a member state of the EU, and by January 2019 the French and UK Governments issued their first joint 'action plan' proclaiming their determination to stop illegal crossings. When the UK complied with EU rules on asylum seeker transfers, for these purposes after Brexit and until the end of 2020, it applied the procedures within the 'Dublin III Regulation', a 2013 piece of EU legislation which decides which Member State should be responsible for an asylum seeker's claim. Transfers out of the UK numbered only in the hundreds. By the end of our participation in the Dublin process we were taking more asylum seekers than we were returning. Dublin III is simply not a very effective system, and transfers to Greece (the state of first illegal entry for a significant number of migrants) have been procedurally difficult for years due to European Court judgments. Nonetheless, the Starmer and previous Conservative Governments, unwilling to countenance the radical change to domestic laws necessary to return asylum seekers en masse to their countries of origin, have been trying to negotiate a Dublin-style agreement at an EU or national level for years. Replicating a Dublin-type process with France is a mere sticking plaster, likely looking to exchange mere hundreds when over a thousand migrants can and do cross the English Channel in one day. It would be just another footnote in the long story of politicians lacking the moral courage to reform our ineffective asylum and immigration system. The litigation against the Rwanda scheme showed that third-country transfer agreements (i.e. not to their country of origin) face a high degree of legal jeopardy under our current framework. Dublin III worked (albeit not well) when we were an EU member state because EU law was supreme and overrode domestic law in a way that limited the routes of challenge for inventive human rights lawyers. Under a new UK-France deal, however, British courts could legitimately review applicants' ECHR and UN Refugee Convention claims to have their case considered in the UK on the grounds that France's system lacks adequate safeguards or that they are at risk of onward removal from France to a country where they would face persecution. Such grounds of challenge are spurious at best, ridiculous at worst; but then again so are so many other successful attempts to avoid deportation. We are well past the stage where tinkering either with international or domestic law will solve the sheer dysfunction of our immigration system, and the public recognise that too. A deal with the French that bakes in current unworkable international standards such as EU common asylum law, the ECHR, and the UN Refugee Convention will be a further rearranging of the proverbial deckchairs. Much is written about Britain needing to repeal the Human Rights Act and leave the ECHR. But such reform, though a necessary first step, is still insufficient. As well as removing ECHR blockers to deportation, we also need to simplify our own Byzantine domestic immigration legislation, to curtail endless appeal and judicial review rights, and remove legal requirements to support asylum seekers which act as such a powerful pull factor to migrants in the first place. This should not be seen as unthinkable. Our modern system of immigration appeals only dates back to the 1970s and prior appeal processes, like the Immigration Boards and the Deportation Advisory Committee, were abandoned when they failed to work. For much of the twentieth century there was no right to appeal the Home Office at all. With nearly 200,000 people having crossed the Channel on small boats since 2018, the existing asylum system is clearly broken. There is an obvious link between those arriving and violent or sexual crimes, while the cost of looking after these arrivals runs into the billions. Rather than time-wasting attempts at a deal with France or other European nations based on trying to preserve existing legal frameworks, politicians need to have the moral courage to start anew and implement tougher solutions.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Brexit stopped UK returning half of asylum seekers, claims senior Tory
Brexit has left Britain unable to return up to half of all asylum seekers who cross the English Channel, the shadow home secretary has claimed. 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.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Brexit stopped UK returning half of asylum seekers, shadow home secretary claims
Brexit has left Britain unable to return up to half of all asylum seekers who cross the English Channel, the shadow home secretary has claimed. 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 applies 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.'
