Only two migrants who arrived in the UK by crossing the English Channel have been deported to Europe under the post-Brexit agreement, figures from the Home Office reveal.
The post-Brexit returns policy, introduced in 2021, allows officials to deem migrants ‘inadmissible’ if they had travelled through a safe third country to reach Britain.
But zero migrants were considered ‘inadmissible’ in the past year and just two were deported, according to Home Office figures reported in The Times.
Since the start of the scheme, 83 inadmissibility decisions have been made and 23 migrants been deported in total.
Earlier this month there were talks of a new returns deal between the UK and the EU following the removal of the Dublin regulation, which allowed irregular migrants to be returned to the nation of first arrival after Brexit.
The regulation was seen as ineffective, with only 105 UK requests to return migrants to the EU accepted in the year before Brexit.
Overall, a total of 175,457 people were waiting for an initial decision on an asylum application in the UK at the end of June 2023, up 44% for the same period a year earlier – the highest figure since current records began in 2010.
Of these, 139,961 had been waiting longer than six months for an initial decision, up 57% year on year from 89,231 and another record high.
Labour said the record-high asylum backlog amounts to a “disastrous record” for Mr Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman, while campaigners called for claims to be processed more efficiently.
The Prime Minister warned the asylum system was under “unsustainable pressure” after the bill for the taxpayer almost doubled in a year to nearly £4 billion.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to ‘stop the boats’ ahead of the next general election (Yui Mok/PA)
Facing questions from broadcasters on Friday, Mr Sunak insisted that while fixing the issue “would take time”, his plan to end small boat crossings “is working”.
He said: “When I became Prime Minister, before I outlined my plan, the number of illegal migrants coming to the UK had quadrupled in just the last couple of years.
“But for the first time this year, crossings are down. They are down about 15% versus last year. That’s the first time that has happened since the small boats crisis emerged. That shows that the plan is working.”
