Keir Starmer’s migrant return deal is under scrutiny after charities called for more clarity on how people will be chosen for deportation and the EU said it was still assessing the agreement.
No 10 said on Friday it was confident in the legality of the deal to return about 50 people a week to France in return for accepting the same number through a safe and legal route.
However, the agreement has had a mixed reception by those supporting refugees in Calais. The charity Médecins Sans Frontières said it was a shameful and dangerous pact that was reducing men, women and children to “exchangeable tokens”, while Care4Calais questioned whether “racial profiling” would be used to choose which people were deported back to France.
Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, was also unhappy, saying she believed it would act as a pull factor bringing more people to France hoping to cross into the UK by small boat or to claim asylum legally.
Others were more positive, including the Refugee Council which urged the government to make sure the scheme was “implemented in a way that treats all those seeking asylum fairly and with respect and dignity”. The United Nations refugee agency said the deal “could help achieve a more managed and shared approach, offering alternatives to dangerous journeys, while upholding access to asylum”.
A spokesperson for the European Commission on Friday said it would “assess the concrete modalities of this cooperation” and whether it complied with the “spirit and the letter of EU law”.
Despite concerns raised by Italy, Spain, Greece, Malta and Cyprus, British officials are convinced that the EU will end up supporting the deal, while Whitehall sources said there would be little that could be done to stop it going ahead regardless.
Steve Peers, a professor of EU law at Royal Holloway, University of London, said the commission could not realistically unpick the deal.
“Even if it were that the commission thinks that this breaches EU law, then they can’t order France not to do it. France might say, ‘That’s interesting, we have a different view, we’re going to do it anyway’, and then it would be up to the commission to sue France,” he said.
One diplomat from one of the five nations with reservations about the deal said they understood that France had “to give something to the UK to satisfy public opinion” at a time when the EU wants to keep the British government tied into to future defence and security in the face of continued Russian aggression.
But the diplomat said there was surprise at the content of the deal. The return of 50 people a week represents one in 17 of the average weekly arrivals by small boats this year so far.
“It is difficult to see why the French over-stepped the EU treaties without delivering something more spectacular,” they said. “We do want to help the British government to be engaged with Europe and that is a priority, but I find it very difficult to see this agreement go smoothly because the French overstepped the mark.”
Other nations said the deal with the UK was just “smoke and mirrors” because France can return people to the country of arrival under the EU’s Dublin rules. More than 21,000 people have made the Channel crossing in rudimentary vessels this year.
Many details of the scheme remain unclear, such as how many people will be returned, how those involved will be chosen and when it will start.
Steve Smith, the chief executive of Care4Calais, said the announcement was a “gimmick that lacks any operational credibility”.
“How will those refugees be selected? If our previous experience of supporting people accommodated at sites such as the Wethersfield camp and the Bibby Stockholm barge is anything to go by, then we fully expect this plan will lack any form of sophisticated selection process. Will the government, shamefully, choose to implement some form of racial profiling? Or will people simply be selected at random?” he said.
“The indication is that 50 people, chosen at random, will have their human right to claim asylum unilaterally removed. This scheme will have no impact on Channel crossings. Why? Because it fails to recognise that those making the crossing are desperate. They have fled war, conflict and persecution. They may have survived violence and torture during their journey. They are willing to risk their lives to seek safety in the UK, and, as we have seen time and time again, these so-called deterrents will not deter people from seeking safety in the UK.”
Louise Calvey, the executive director of Asylum Matters, was also unconvinced, saying it was a “convoluted Rwanda-style gimmick and yet another example of our governments choosing not to implement the only policy that will save lives: safe and accessible routes for all who need them”.
Legal experts suggested the deal would be harder to challenge than the Conservatives’ Rwanda plan because people will be returned to France, which is considered a safe country.
However, Zoe Bantleman, the legal director of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, said the process must be fair. “At the moment, we have no details as to how the deal will work in practice, who will be chosen for return, whether it will create another backlog of ‘inadmissible’ asylum claims, leaving people lingering in limbo and detention, how the UK will ensure it does not unlawfully discriminate, or how individual rights and access to justice will be upheld,” she said. “All of these are questions the government will need to answer in the weeks ahead.”
