No Channel migrants removed from UK this year as enforced returns hit record low

None of the record 12,500 Channel migrants who have reached the UK so far this year have been removed, with official figures showing enforced returns of all illegal migrants are at a record low.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has been unable to remove Channel migrants even to "safe" third countries where they should have claimed asylum.

France and other EU states are refusing to take migrants without new bilateral agreements to replace pre-Brexit arrangements under which migrants could be returned to countries through which they travelled and in which they should have claimed asylum.

It comes as record numbers of migrants cross the Channel, with some 12,500 arriving so far this year – up from 8,400 in the whole of last year.

New Home Office figures show that just 2,420 people were forcibly returned in the year to this March,  less than half the number in the previous year. This is the lowest since records began in 2004 and a fraction of the peak of more than 15,000 in 2012.

The Home Office blamed Covid travel restrictions and border closures for limiting removal flights, but it has also been hit by increasing human rights claims by lawyers following the backlash against the Home Office's admitted mistreatment of the Windrush arrivals.

Tory MPs and former Border Force chiefs warned that the surge in Channel migrant crossings would not be curbed until the Government established an effective returns policy or adopted a "turn back" strategy to stop people reaching the UK in the first place.

Natalie Elphicke, the Dover MP, said: "If migrants motoring across the Channel in small boats know they can stay in the UK even when they have no legal right to do so, then they will keep on coming, and in greater numbers. That's what is happening.

"If other countries aren't playing their part in returns, we must make sure the boats don't get here in the first place."

Tony Smith, a former director general of Border Force, said: "The problem is that we don't have any safe third country agreements with the EU, and the current French administration is saying it won't take any returns unless there is an agreement with the EU.

"The strategy has to be to reduce the intake and that can only be done by an agreement with France where migrants are instantly taken back to the point from where they came and their asylum applications dealt with there. At the moment, I can't see the Macron administration agreeing to it."

Even under the previous Dublin agreement with EU states for returns to safe countries, Home Office figures suggest that, in the 18 months to last October, fewer than 250 migrants who crossed the Channel were returned to mainland Europe – only 2.5 per cent of just under 10,000.

Ms Patel has said she intends to replace the Dublin regulation with bilateral arrangements and has already changed the law to make asylum claims in the UK inadmissible where people have travelled through, or have a connection to, safe countries.

Her new immigration plan, currently before Parliament, also proposes that illegal migrants will be denied asylum and face restricted residency rights in a bid to deter Channel crossings.

Chris Philp, the immigration minister, said: "All countries have a moral responsibility to tackle the issue of illegal migration. We expect our international partners to engage with us, building on our good current co-operation, and continue to highlight the importance of having effective returns agreements to stop people making perilous crossings."