Tories could campaign to leave European human rights treaty

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The deal was made without a returns agreement in place. Under the Dublin Convention, an EU law which sets out which country is responsible for looking at an individual’s asylum application, the UK could ask other EU countries to take people back if they had entered the UK via safe countries. However, under the post-Brexit deal, no alternative to the Dublin Convention returns agreement was put in place.

“The government used to have a deal on returning migrants, but it ended with Brexit and no alternative was agreed. This made it far more difficult to return any new arrivals, and numbers have skyrocketed after this deal stopped,” says Professor Thom Brooks.

The study found that up until 2018, there were no recorded small boat crossings. Prior to this year, would-be refugees and immigrants more commonly hid aboard lorries, trains and ferries to enter the UK, and small boat crossing were rare. Levels of migration were also steady until the Brexit transition period ended in 2020, the report found.

Professor Brooks said he had forecast as far back as 2016 that migrant numbers to the UK would rise sharply without a returns agreement in place. According to the academic, the Conservative government had been warned repeatedly that a returns policy needed to be implemented.

The Durham University professor argues that the most effective way to stop more small boat crossings would be for the UK to agree new post-Brexit returns policy with France, and the wider EU. He warns that the number of Channel crossings will increase to as many as 80,000 this year, up from 45,000.

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The research also found that there is no evidence that the government’s highly controversial Rwanda policy has acted as a deterrent to those making the perilous journey.
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