How could a Labour government change Britain’s migration policy?

As Britain prepares for an election that will likely lead to the first change of government in 14 years, the Conservatives’ plan to deport asylum seekers to the East African country of Rwanda appears to have stalled.

The policy, first announced in April 2022 in response to the growing number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, was ruled unlawful by the UK Supreme Court. But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak bypassed legal hurdles by pushing through legislation in April declaring Rwanda a safe country.

Sunak said that if he is re-elected, flights to Rwanda to remove asylum seekers would go ahead.

But with the Labour Party march forward in the elections and promising to abandon the deportation plan altogether, a change in Britain’s migration policy seems inevitable.

For Faheem, an Afghan asylum seeker who spent two years in the UK, a change at the top of the government is urgently needed to protect those seeking refuge in the country.

“This prime minister is telling all the newcomers here (they can’t) stay – I won’t let you stay in the UK, I’ll send you back to Rwanda,” Faheem, whose brother was killed by the Taliban, told Euronews. “It’s not good for me. Rwanda, Afghanistan, it’s the same for me.”

Under the plan, applications for protection for deported asylum seekers will be processed in Rwanda, where they will remain if their applications are successful.

It has attracted widespread criticism from opposition parties and human rights campaigners. Sunak says the policy will act as a deterrent to migrants crossing into dangerous passage across the Channel from the coast of France.

“In fact, the evidence from the studies suggests that the deterrent effect is quite small,” Dr Ben Brindle of the Oxford University Migration Observatory told Euronews. “That’s because, at least in the case of the UK-Rwanda scheme, only a few hundred people would be sent to Rwanda. So when an asylum seeker is considering whether to come to the UK, the risk of being sent to a third country is actually very low.”

Fizza Qureshi, chief executive of the Migrants’ Rights Network, welcomes Labour’s proposal to end its Rwanda policy but says the party must be careful not to pander to the hardline right wing in an attempt to please voters.

“Of course we support the complete rejection of the Rwanda plan, but we are afraid that an alternative will be introduced,” Qureshi told Euronews.

“So while Rwanda continues to be a concern and has been identified as a dangerous country for many people, we are concerned that Labour will look at another country. And we know this because bilateral agreements are already being made … between Bangladesh and the UK and India.”

In May, the UK government signed a deal with Bangladesh aimed at speeding up the return of migrants.

Labour has proposed better migration controls and greater cooperation with France to tackle the people smuggling that brings migrants across the English Channel. But with the UK election sandwiched between two rounds of snap general elections in France – where the far-right National Rally is set to enter government – experts say cooperation with Paris could become more difficult.

“France is interested in tackling migration, crime, but it’s not really interested in stopping migrants leaving France and going to the UK,” said Ian Bond of the Centre for European Research. “I suspect that could be an even bigger problem if France gets a more right-wing government in the second round of elections.”

Labour and Conservatives promise to cut net migration

Both Sunak and Starmer have said they want to reduce net migration – including legal migration – but they have different approaches to achieving this.

“The Conservatives would like to reduce the number of visas and would do this by setting an annual cap on the number of work and family visas granted,” Dr Brindle explained.

“Labour believes it is more about reducing the need for visas. To do this, it would like to link skills policy to immigration policy. This would require employers and sectors that apply for a large number of work visas to introduce staff training plans to fill the skills gaps in workers already in the UK.“

Since Brexit, the number of people emigrating to the UK from the EU has fallen sharply, while migration from outside the EU has increased dramatically.

The party’s vision of reducing net migration has therefore raised questions about the potential impact on labour shortages in key sectors, including health care.

“If there are fewer people coming to work in these types of jobs, the question is how do we fill those vacancies,” Dr Brindle explained. “It doesn’t have to be migration now, but it will have to be something else, like improving pay and working conditions in these jobs to make them more attractive to people who are already in the country.”