Tony Blair’s authorities thought-about organising a holding camp on the Isle of Mull to drive down the variety of asylum seekers getting into the UK, in accordance with newly launched official papers.
The plan, put ahead by one of many then-Labour prime minister’s closest aides, was a part of a “nuclear option” that will see individuals who arrived within the UK by unauthorised means detained on the Scottish island earlier than being eliminated.
Drawn up simply months earlier than the US-UK invasion of Iraq, the scheme additionally known as for the creation of regional “safe havens” in nations reminiscent of Turkey and South Africa, the place refugees who couldn’t be returned to their very own nation could possibly be despatched.
Although the plan was not taken up, it echoes the controversy nonetheless going down greater than 20 years later round Rishi Sunak’s plans to deport folks to Rwanda, with officers in Blair’s authorities additionally discussing denouncing the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to get the scheme going.
The proposals, contained in information launched by the National Archives in Kew, west London, replicate Mr Blair’s frustration that “ever-tougher controls” in northern France had not had an influence on the variety of asylum claims – which reached a brand new month-to-month excessive of 8,800 in October 2002.
“We must search out even more radical measures,” Mr Blair scrawled in a handwritten be aware.
Following a brainstorming session with senior officers and advisers, the prime minister’s chief of employees, Jonathan Powell, produced a paper entitled Asylum: The Nuclear Option, by which he questioned whether or not the UK wanted an asylum system in any respect.
Mr Powell mentioned as a result of the UK was an island, individuals who had arrived by sea had already handed by a protected nation “so in fact what we should be looking at is a very simple system that immediately returns people who arrive here illegally”.
He mentioned that officers within the workplace of the lawyer normal, Lord Goldsmith, had recommended organising a camp on the Isle of Mull within the Inner Hebrides the place folks could possibly be detained till they could possibly be eliminated.
Mr Powell mentioned the federal government must legislate to permit for the removing of individuals regardless of the danger of persecution.
“We would like to extend this to return any illegal immigrant regardless of the risk that they might suffer human or degrading treatment,” he suggested.
He conceded the plan can be challenged by the ECHR in Strasbourg however mentioned this may take two to 3 years and within the meantime “we could send a strong message into the system about our new tough stance”.
He mentioned if the federal government misplaced in Strasbourg “we would denounce the ECHR and immediately re-ratify with a reservation on Article 3 (the right not to be tortured)”.
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Home Office attorneys warned that the measures would fall foul of the Geneva Convention on refugees.
An exasperated Mr Blair scrawled “just return them”, including: “This is precisely the point. We must not allow the ECHR to stop us dealing with it.”
The dialogue attracts parallels with Mr Sunak’s flagship Rwanda plan.
The deportation scheme has price £290m regardless of no flights taking off as a result of a collection of authorized challenges. Mr Sunak has put ahead laws to handle this but it surely has triggered a conflict amongst his personal MPs, with Tories on the best wanting it to go additional and people on the average wing eager to stay to the UK’s worldwide obligations.
Blair supported return of Elgin Marbles to Greece
Echoing one other debate that’s nonetheless ongoing, different cupboard papers launched right now reveal Mr Blair was eager to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece in an try to spice up help for London’s bid to host the Olympic Games in 2012.
Number 10 advisers believed the Marbles – often known as the Parthenon Sculptures – could possibly be a “powerful bargaining chip” however warned any try to achieve a sharing settlement with Athens might face stiff resistance because of the “blinkered intransigence” of the British Museum, the place they’ve been housed for the reason that nineteenth century.
Greece has lengthy demanded the return of the marbles however the debate spiralled right into a diplomatic row final month after Mr Sunak ditched a deliberate assembly together with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who he accused of grandstanding over the difficulty.
The historic sculptures had been eliminated by Lord Elgin from occupied Athens within the early nineteenth century and are actually owned by the British Museum – with Downing Street mentioned to be against any type of mortgage settlement that will permit their return.
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Number 10 ‘misplaced credibility beneath Alistair Campbell’
Also within the cupboard workplace information had been revelations in regards to the notion of Mr Blair’s combative communications chief Alastair Campbell, who spent 9 years as the previous PM’s closet aide.
After Mr Campbell resigned in 2003, Mr Blair was warned by remaining advisers that the Number 10 press workplace had misplaced “all credibility.. as a truthful operation” beneath his reign and that the prime minister’s personal authority was being undermined as a result of Downing Street was seen as a “politically-dominated spin machine”.
The warnings adopted a collection of bruising rows between the Labour authorities and the BBC over its protection of the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Source: information.sky.com”