Sending asylum seekers to holding camps on the Scottish island of Mull and removing them to “safe havens” in third-party countries such as Turkey, South Africa and Kenya, was among the “nuclear options” considered by Tony Blair’s government, documents reveal.
Twenty years before the Conservative government’s Rwanda plan, “big bang” solutions were discussed after Blair expressed frustration that “ever tougher controls” in northern France had failed, and demanded “we must search out even more radical measures” to tackle the growing number of asylum claims, which had reached 8,800 in October 2002.
A report titled Asylum: The Nuclear Option, after a “brainstorming” session by senior government advisers, was sent from the Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, to Blair in January 2003 and suggested the proposals “to send a shockwave through the system”. They also included legislating “incompatibly” with the ECHR to send people back even if they were at risk and with little right of appeal, files released by the National Archives show.
Though the plans were not implemented, Powell wrote that there should be a simple system that immediately returns those arriving illegally. “As an island, people who come here by sea have by definition already passed through a safe country. And very few of those who apply at airports are genuine refugees.”
He made reference to the “great successes of the Australians” holding asylum seekers in camps before returning them. “The AG’s [attorney general’s] office suggested we set up a camp on the Isle of Mull and detain people there till they could be returned,” he wrote. “I doubt that is going to work because of the nimby factor, but we have commissioned work to look at tagging, detention, etc to help deter people and ensure we are able to return them as soon as their appeals have been heard.”
Another suggestion was using the Falkland Islands to process asylum claims.
The main problem with removals was “the courts will not let us return them to countries where they might be at risk (eg Algeria) and there are some countries where there are no physical links to get them back (Iraq or Somalia)”.
One suggestion was creating “regional safe havens” managed by the UNHCR. “We would be able to return Iraqi asylum seekers to a centre in Turkey, Zimbabweans to a centre in South Africa, Somalis to a centre in Kenya.” Though sceptical that host countries would be willing, Powell wrote, the Foreign Office believed Turkey could be rapidly persuaded in return for financial support.
On the UN convention and ECHR, Powell wrote: “We would legislate incompatibly with the ECHR to allow us to remove people (Iraqis, Somalis, Algerians, Chinese) despite the risk that they might subsequently be persecuted.” That could apply to potential terrorists, too. “We would like to try to extend this to return any illegal immigrant regardless of the risk that they might suffer inhuman or degrading treatment.”
He added: “We would almost certainly lose this case when it got to Strasbourg. But we would have 2-3 years in the meantime when we could send a strong message into the system about our new tough stance”.
“And we would make it clear that if we lost in Strasbourg we would denounce the ECHR and immediately re-ratify with a reservation on Article 3.”
Guidance from Home Office ministers was that such measures would breach the UN convention on refugees, with Blair scribbling on one document: “Just return them. This is precisely the point. We must not allow the ECHR to stop us dealing with it.”
