‘Fundamental’ EU makes migrant sea rescues says former UK Border Force chief

We speak to Tony Smith, a former Director General of the UK Border Force.

Cathy Newman: Keir Starmer there saying that he’s interested in this Albanian processing centre that Italy set up. Could the UK do something similar? If so, where?

Tony Smith: Well, actually, the UK was doing something similar with Rwanda. No, it’s not the same. The Albanian plan, I think, is that people can be sent to Albania for processing and if they are successful, they’ll be brought into Italy. Whereas that wouldn’t have been the case largely with Rwanda. But I think this is really a cut and paste of quite a lot of elements of the British Rwanda plan that’s been installed in Albania. So I’m really interested to see how that’s going. Of course that’s not in place yet.

And I think, we know from our own experiences with setting up Rwanda, there are a huge amount of legal difficulties, of practical difficulties in offshoring. But it’s clear that, to me, a number of countries, not just Italy, are really looking at the offshoring model. So it’s interesting that our government is now looking at that as well.

Cathy Newman: There is a big difference, though, isn’t there, with the Rwanda policy, people were sent there and even if their claims were successful, they wouldn’t get to come to the UK. But I mean, could the UK pick a different country from Albania to do something similar?

Tony Smith: Well, I’m not sure where we’d go. I think there was quite a lot of work already done, Cathy, on that during the last three years by the previous government. And Rwanda was a place where we already had a migration and economic development partnership. There was a lot of money already going into Rwanda. We built an asylum system there. We signed a treaty with them to ensure that nobody would be recalled from Rwanda whether or not they qualify for asylum. So a huge amount of work and effort was put into the Rwanda plan.

And it’s clear now that a number of European countries were looking at that, including Italy, which is where I suspect this idea of Albania has come from, because they do have the geographical advantage. Albania is quite close to Italy, but it still remains to be seen how that would work. Is that going to withstand international scrutiny in international law? What happens if people go to Albania and then just come straight back again into Italy? How is that all going to work? I think there’s a lot of details still to be worked out in that scheme. And so at the moment, I’m not quite sure that’s the solution.

Cathy Newman: Okay. So are there other solutions? For example, might the UK have more luck sending people back to France than the previous government did, given that European countries are happy to send migrants apparently to Libya and Tunisia with very dubious human rights records?

Tony Smith: Well, I think that’s the question really is, why is it okay from an EU point of view on their southern border with places like Tunisia and Libya, to return people there whilst at sea. We know full well that off the coast of France, people are drowning because the French are not taking the same approach. That actually their approach is, ‘well people don’t want to be rescued by us. So we’re not going to intervene and we’re going to escort them across to the meridian line where the UK Border Force can pick them up.’

That does seem to me a very starkly different policy between the EU on their southern border, on their north western border with us. I think we need to call out because, after all, France is a lot safer, if you like, for third country returns from places like Libya and Tunisia. And yet the EU seems to be sanctioning that and indeed they’ve been funding it.

Cathy Newman: So you think there’s a hypocrisy there, that Keir Starmer should sort of stand up to France over?

Tony Smith: Well, Mr. Macron’s position, as I understand it, is that we need to talk to Brussels about this. This is a matter of EU competence. If we want to do third country returns to the EU, we need to talk to Brussels. But then I presume Brussels can oversee policy in all of the member states on this. And so I think we should call out the EU policy on rescues at sea because it is a fundamental principle – the law of the sea – that people should be rescued and made safe quickly. And there seems to be different standards to meet down on the southern border to their north western border.

Cathy Newman: Isn’t the reality that desperate people from countries like Afghanistan and Iran will carry on coming across on boats? You know, because Labour, for example, the new Labour government is not countenancing new safe and legal routes. There’s a problem there isn’t there?

Tony Smith: Well, I’m not opposed to safe and legal routes as a matter of principle. But the tradition of safe and legal routes comes through the UNHCR resettlement programmes where there are already about 40 million people in the care of UNHCR around the world. And what used to happen is that the UNHCR would bid to different countries, including us and the Europeans and the Americans and the Canadians, to take a certain proportion of those – the most vulnerable – and they would be lawfully resettled.

Unfortunately, because we’ve had a huge wave of migrants moving across borders irregularly, and that’s been taken over by the international criminal gangs, politically, a great deal of the Western countries that used to take significant numbers under that scheme have stopped doing so because they’re dealing with sheer numbers of of migrants, some of whom may be genuine refugees. So I’d like to see a return to discussions with the EU, but I can’t see that happening until we get control of our borders.