How might Starmer’s migrant ‘return hubs’ even work?

Britain is in talks about plans to send failed asylum seekers to offshore detention centres, writes John Rentoul, but how would they be any different from the failed Rwanda scheme – and are there any better ideas?

Britain has opened talks about sending failed asylum seekers to detention centres abroad, Keir Starmer has confirmed during a trip to Albania. The prime minister said he wanted to send migrants to “return hubs” overseas once they had exhausted all avenues of appeal.

He did not specify which countries were engaged in discussions, but Edi Rama, the Albanian prime minister, made it clear that Albania was not one of them: “I have said from the outset, it is a model takes its time to be tested and if it works it can be replicated – not in Albania but other countries in the region.”

He added: “To be very frank with you we have been asked by many countries but we said no, as we are loyal to our marriage with Italy.” The Italian government has paid €600m (£505m) for two detention centres in Albania, although so far only 40 failed asylum seekers have been sent to them because the scheme has been beset by legal challenges.

So where might British ‘return hubs’ be?

As Rama suggested, other countries in the Balkans have been mooted as possible partners, including Serbia, Bosnia and North Macedonia.

Places further afield have been suggested, although the only country known to be in negotiation about opening a return hub is Uganda, which is in discussion with the Netherlands. As the British government is said to be keen to work with other European countries in dealing with asylum, it will be watching to see whether anything comes of those talks.

The European Union announced in March that it approved of member states seeking deals to establish offshore detention centres, which means that other countries may join the hunt for sites. Denmark, for example, passed a law four years ago to allow offshore asylum centres, although it has not yet established any.

How would return hubs differ from the Rwanda policy?

On Starmer’s first day in office last year he ended the scheme to remove irregular migrants to Rwanda – a policy he condemned as a “gimmick”. He said that it would “never” act as a deterrent because it would take only 1 per cent of people arriving by small boat.

The Rwanda policy was different from the current plan in that migrants would not be allowed to apply for asylum in Britain: they would have to apply for asylum in Rwanda, and if they were not accepted as genuine refugees they would be stranded there.

The plan for return hubs is to house migrants who have applied for asylum in Britain and who have been rejected. The rationale is that they would not be able to disappear into the grey economy in the UK, and would have an incentive to return home.

This is a development of the idea of setting up detention camps in Britain, or on British overseas territories such as St Helena. Tony Blair’s government briefly considered siting a detention camp on Mull, in Scotland, while Boris Johnson’s government looked at St Helena, Ascension Island and several other unsuitable locations.

The other big difference between this plan and the Rwanda policy is that the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, which condemned the Rwanda scheme, says return hubs are acceptable.

Are there any better ideas?

A Labour-leaning think tank this week proposed setting up asylum processing centres in France, so that those seeking refugee status in the UK could apply there. The problem with this plan is that many of those whose applications were rejected would still try to cross the Channel by small boat, knowing that once they were in the UK it would be hard to remove them.

The think tank’s plan is that Britain should propose a deal by which France accepts the return of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats. The idea is that for every genuine refugee the UK accepts, France should take one irregular migrant back.

The British government, under both Labour and Conservatives, has been trying to secure a deal like this for some time, but it is not sufficiently in the interest of the French government. It would be left having to deal with thousands of Britain’s “rejects”.

For the moment, then, offshore return hubs remain the most likely option, but as the Italian experience with Albania shows, they are hard to negotiate and remain vulnerable to legal challenge.