Thom Brooks: Government is repeating same old lines about stopping boats, unable to acknowledge failure of Brexit deal
A notable new academic report by Professor Thom Brooks of Durham University takes a detailed look at the underlying reasons behind the large increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving in the UK after crossing the English Channel by small boat. Brooks is Professor of Law and Government at Durham Law School.
The 55-page report, Sea Change on Border Control: A strategy for reducing small boat crossings in the English Channel, can be downloaded from here.
Professor Brooks says the report aims to better understand how to deliver a more effective strategy for reducing small boat crossings by better understanding their contributing causes. As the report notes, the number of people crossing the Channel has 'skyrocketed' from less than 300 in 2018 to over 45,000 last year.
Most notably, the report finds that the UK Government's failure to negotiate a post-Brexit returns policy for asylum seekers with the European Union (EU) is the main cause for the increase in small boat crossings.
The report explains: "The UK's lack of a returns policy is the most significant pull factor for small boat journeys. Leaving the EU without a returns arrangement has meant individuals can now travel to the UK with the knowledge it is much more difficult for them to be returned post-2020 – which has not been true when the UK was in the EU pre-2020. When coupled with slow processing times for asylum applications, the UK has become easier to remain inside if and when migrants are able to get to our shores."
It is acknowledged in the report that criminal gangs are the ultimate cause of small boat journeys, but Professor Brooks says they are effectively taking advantage of this regulatory change created by Brexit.
Brooks says the lack of a returns agreement was a significant flaw in the post-Brexit deal, and the UK Government appears to be unable or unwilling to acknowledge this failure.
According to the report, the Government never assessed the impact of the consequences for leaving the EU without a returns agreement to replace the Dublin III Regulation and was caught by surprise.
With Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promising last week that a new immigration bill is coming that will 'stop the boats', Professor Brooks notes that the then Attorney General (and now Home Secretary) Suella Braverman made similar promises about the Nationality and Borders Bill last year.
Brooks comments: "The Government has become reduced to repeating the old lines – and hope that the public did not remember them repeated constantly less than a year ago. We find the same ministers claiming the very system that they said had been fixed by their hands remains broken – as if nothing has happened – and so it requires yet more, and as of yet unpublished and unseen, primary legislation to be published in the next few weeks like a second act in a repetitive drama."
Professor Brooks adds that a pledge to 'stop the boats' if Parliament passes new legislation that no one has yet seen is a mantra repeated too many times and without any record of success.
Accompanying the failure to agree a returns agreement is a growing backlog of asylum claims awaiting a decision. This backlog was not created by the small boats, but by the Government's administrative changes, especially the ending of the 6-month target for asylum decisions.
The report states: "[T]he Government has overlooked the main issue. The most significant factor in causing delays on decision-making times is the Government's change of policy on processing times. Nine out of ten asylum claims were processed within six months about eight years ago. By 2018, only one-quarter of applications were processed within six months. But in January 2019, the Home Office scrapped its 'customer service standard' of a six month target. It was reported this was to ease pressure on caseworker staff and allow extra time for complex applications. The result of scrapping the six-month target for asylum decisions was to accelerate a growing backlog of applications. This finding is confirmed by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration in a 2021 report, too. While the number of applications remained just under 9,000 from the first quarter of 2019 through to the second quarter of 2020, the backlog grew by about 25%."
Professor Brooks further notes that the launch of the Government's Rwanda policy does not appear to have had any deterrent impact to date: "Official statistics show that over 40,000 of the 45,756 who crossed the Channel in small boats in 2022 did so after the policy was announced."
The report says if the UK's goal is to ensure that refugees make claims for asylum when in a safe country and reduce, if not stop, the small boats, the most cost-effective approach is to prioritise a new returns agreement with France and the EU.
Brooks concludes: "If we are to avoid 'sticking plaster politics', we need to face up to this challenge. A central error is the lack of a returns agreement that must be at the core of any future strategy. This must be part of a new, fit for purposes system for a post-Brexit Britain. Until the Government acknowledges what lies behind the start of the problem and helped cause its significant growth, it will be unable to address it effectively. This report is an attempt to make this argument."