Evidence that Priti Patel’s overhaul of asylum laws will reduce Channel migrant crossings is limited, according to the home secretary’s own department.
An impact assessment of the Nationality and Borders Bill by the Home Office says the plans could encourage migrants to take more dangerous journeys.
The document concludes that measures outlined in the bill will help to encourage migrants to claim asylum in the first country they reach in order to avoid making the dangerous 21-mile journey across the Channel. But it adds: “Evidence supporting the effectiveness of this approach is limited.”
The document raises questions over the capacity for the bill to achieve its main aim of reducing the number of people crossing in small boats.
This year 15,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats. There were 8,420 crossings last year.
In its duty to assess the bill’s impact on equality, the Home Office document says Patel’s plans have “significant scope for indirect discrimination” and the “potential for direct discrimination on the basis of race”. It insists that discrimination would be “objectively justified as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” of deterring illegal immigration into the UK.
The bill will give new powers to Border Force to intercept small boats, criminalise migrants intercepted in the Channel, bar them from claiming permanent residency in Britain, build new “simple” reception centres for those who make it across and stop failed asylum seekers lodging repeated appeals.
The legislation will also give the government powers to ship asylum seekers offshore for processing.
Border Force officials have begun training for new tactics that will allow them to intercept and redirect migrant boats back to France. Paris has warned that the plans breach international maritime law and has threatened to retaliate if they go ahead.
The impact assessment says: “There is a risk that increased security and deterrence could encourage these cohorts to attempt riskier means of entering the UK. Deploying these measures does advance the legitimate aim of encouraging asylum seekers to claim in the first safe country they reach and not undertaking dangerous journeys facilitated by smugglers to get to the UK, though evidence supporting the effectiveness of this approach is limited.”
It adds: “This is consistent with the overarching policy objectives of the plan to deter illegal entry into the UK, to break the business model of people-smuggling networks and to protect the lives of those they endanger.”
The Home Office said: “We do not want to see people risking their lives using unsafe routes, and this is why we are taking steps to ensure dangerous journeys are not incentivised and taking action to target the people smugglers behind them.
“We are determined to take every necessary step to stop the illegal crossings, control our borders, and return those who have no right to be in the UK.”
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “This government should uphold the principle that prime ministers since Churchill have adhered to and give a fair hearing on UK soil to all people escaping terror in countries such as Afghanistan regardless of how they get out to the UK.”
