Gibraltar and Isle of Man deny plans to house asylum seekers for UK

Gibraltar and the Isle of Man have ruled out acting as processing sites to hold people seeking asylum in the UK after they were named in reports on ministers’ latest efforts to discourage clandestine migrants.

The British territories were cited in the Daily Mail and The Times on plans expected to be published next week to produce a “firm but fair” asylum system inspired partly by Australia, which has sent asylum seekers to await processing on Pacific islands including Nauru and Manus, and in Papua New Guinea.

The proposals represent ministers’ latest effort to deter crossings of the English Channel in small boats by people seeking asylum in the UK.

A record 8,420 people made the crossing in small boats last year, according to unofficial figures collated by charities, while more than 800 people have crossed so far this year.

Last year they considered sending arriving asylum seekers to offshore sites including St Helena and Ascension Island in the south Atlantic. They have also housed people arriving in small boats in rundown former military barracks, including Napier Barracks, near Folkestone, where hundreds of residents in January and February contracted Covid-19.

Government inspectors said last week the people were living in conditions that made an outbreak “virtually inevitable”.

Any efforts to remove asylum seekers forcibly to a third country would probably encounter multiple legal challenges because of the government’s obligation under the 1951 UN refugee convention to consider asylum claims from people arriving on its territory.

The Isle of Man’s government said in response to reports people seeking asylum could be housed on its territory that there was “no foundation” to the stories.

“There are no talks,” it said.

Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister, pointed out that the Isle of Man was part of the Common Travel Area with the UK, the Irish Republic and the Channel Islands, meaning that anyone sent there would be free to return to the mainland UK.

Meanwhile, Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s chief minister, ruled out housing asylum seekers there because of the effect such a step would have on the rock’s deal to participate in the EU’s Schengen free-movement area.

Picardo described the reports as “groundless speculation”.

“Gibraltar is always ready to help the United Kingdom as part of the British family of nations,” he said. “Our geography makes some things difficult, however, and the processing of asylum seekers to the UK in Gibraltar would be one of them.”

Ministers have been consistently frustrated at their inability to prevent small boat arrivals from France, where they insist migrants should seek protection, instead of coming to the UK. Britain has lost the ability to return asylum seekers to France and other European countries since December 31, when the end of the post-Brexit transition period removed the UK from the EU’s Dublin conventions on the return of asylum seekers.

Zoe Gardner, policy adviser on asylum at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said that, because the proposals would deny meaningful access to asylum in the UK to most refugees, they were “potentially incompatible” with Britain’s obligations under the refugee convention.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said the government was lurching “from one inhumane, ridiculous proposal to another” with its asylum plans.

“These absurd ideas show the government has lost control and all sense of compassion,” he said.

The Home Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.