Yes, Priti Patel Is Considering Shipping Asylum Seekers Offshore
Downing Street has refused to deny suggestions that the government is examining plans to ship asylum seekers to offshore remote locations to process their claims.
While reports that home secretary Priti Patel could look to create an asylum processing centre 4,000 miles away from the UK on Ascension Island have been played down, No.10 suggested ministers were looking to learn from Australia’s approach.
The country’s controversial “stop the boats” policy sees asylum seekers moved to offshore processing centres on remote Pacific islands.
Even if they are found to be refugees they must be settled in other countries.
While Ascension Island is no longer believed to be under consideration for a UK processing centre, Boris Johnson’s official spokesperson said: “We have been looking at what a whole host of other countries do to inform a plan for the United Kingdom and that work is ongoing.”
The United Nations said the Australian model, which was implemented by the country’s former PM Tony Abbott - now a UK government trade envoy - had “brought about incredible suffering on people who are guilty of no more than seeking asylum”.
Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, the UK representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in evidence to the Commons home affairs committee: “It has also additionally, I think, cost, and continues to cost, an incredible amount of money, so it seems to be both extremely inappropriate in terms of the commitments that the country should have to human rights and to asylum, but also an incredibly impractical and expensive way of doing so.
“I do hope the UK will not choose to go down this way.”
She added: “It will really change what the UK is, its history and the sort of values that it stood for up to now.
“The UK has a very proud reputation in providing asylum and refuge to people across the centuries.
“This would be a really very significant departure from that approach.”
No.10 said the government was...
