The truth about Labour’s asylum ‘plan’ is about to be exposed
Right by an airport that could prove very useful for deporting failed asylum seekers, builders are revamping an old immigration detention centre. Campsfield House has always been controversial, largely because of its location on the outskirts of Oxford. While millions of voters across the UK are exasperated by the ongoing failure to secure our borders, and welcome the incarceration of those who enter this country illegally, Left-wing liberals in the City of Dreaming Spires have other ideas.
Many are opposed to the detention of any illegal immigrants whatsoever. Backed by local Labour politicians, a coalition of students, lecturers and refugee charities is gearing up for battle. As Labour fast tracks plans to allow migrants earmarked for deportation to Rwanda to claim asylum in the UK, what happens on this site will reveal whose side Sir Keir Starmer is on.
In truth, Oxford airport couldn’t handle the phenomenal number of illegal migrants whose applications for asylum do not withstand scrutiny. A stone’s throw from Blenheim Palace, where Sir Keir Starmer was hosting European leaders yesterday, the small airfield is more suited to private jets than the commercial aircraft that would have to be pressed into service, all day every day, if the new government wanted to show it is serious about deporting illegal migrants.
That already looks doubtful. In an early indication of Sir Keir’s approach, he is expected to grant what the Tories have labelled an “effective amnesty” to more than 90,000 illegals, allowing them to apply for asylum. That is a dramatic shift from the policy adopted by Rishi Sunak – under which new Channel migrants were automatically barred from applying for asylum, and earmarked for deportation to Rwanda.
If recent statistics are anything to go by, what the Labour announcement will mean is that the vast majority of the 90,000 will be given the green light to stay. Even under the Tories, the system was heavily geared towards approving claims. Official guidance for Home Office personnel handling applications was staggeringly soft touch, with staff ordered not to be “sceptical” when quizzing those who enter Britain in back of lorries or on small boats. Officials were forbidden from asking certain seemingly fundamental questions. Extraordinarily, they were encouraged to shrug off evidence that applicants were lying. No wonder two thirds of claims were nodded through!
All that was under a Conservative government that – however hopeless ministers proved at doing anything about it – was instinctively opposed to mass uncontrolled immigration. How much worse is the situation about to get? After all, Sir Keir’s administration is stuffed full of ministers who can barely conceal their languor about this crisis. While the Prime Minister harps on about “smashing the vile gangs” that facilitate Channel crossings, his most significant step so far has been to remove the one measure that might have dampened demand for their services: Sunak’s deportation scheme. Unless he has some very well hidden trick up his sleeve, we can expect a tsunami of fraudulent asylum claims.
Of course, some of those who make it from Calais to Dover really are fleeing war and terror, though their claims would be more convincing were they to apply in the first safe country they can reach. Others are economic opportunists, taking advantage of a very real prospect of building better lives in a country with an exceptionally generous and undiscriminating benefits system. The question is what the new government will do with these fakes. What happens at Campsfield is a huge test of Home Office resolve.
At this point, Sunak could be forgiven for some Schadenfreude. Just weeks before he and his government were booted out, the Home Office awarded a £70 million construction contract to refurbish the mothballed detention centre outside Oxford.
Work on the project is now full steam ahead – making it very difficult for Sir Keir to U-turn. Awkwardly, many of the leading critics of the site are Labour activists and councillors. Some 80 academics and student bodies at Oxford University have already demanded a re-think. In an open letter to the last government, the “Keep Campsfield Closed” campaign complained that immigration detention has “immediate and long-term negative consequences on people’s medical and mental health”.They argued that the £227 million bill for revamping the centre cannot be justified during a cost of living crisis, and that the money would be better spent “helping refugees rebuild their lives in the UK”.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper now faces a bitter dilemma. Press ahead with Campsfield, and face an outcry from these handwringers, along with endless noisy demonstrations of the kind staged outside the centre every month when it was operational – or try to do something different. Any backtracking would dramatically undermine the Government’s insistence that it will not tolerate abuse of the asylum system.
Cooper may be no snowflake (as work and pensions secretary under Gordon Brown, she led a controversial crackdown on the workshy), but she will not relish facing down Labour-dominated Oxford City Council, which along with Oxford County Council is vociferously opposed to the scheme. These people believe Oxford should be a “City of Sanctuary” and that the detention of any asylum seekers – whatever the merits or otherwise of their claim – is “inhumane.” Thus the scene is set for a very telling showdown.