Labour considered detaining asylum seekers on the Isle of Mull as part of a “nuclear option” to slash the number of migrants coming to Britain, files reveal.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair believed our system for processing applications 20 years ago was “mad” and urged his advisers to “search out ever more radical measures”.
They included scrapping the system altogether and telling immigration officers at the border to simply turn “suspicious” applicants away.
One proposal put forward in 2003 was to hold newcomers in the Hebridean beauty spot until their right to stay in Britain was assessed.
This is detailed in confidential documents from the Blair years which have been declassified and published today at the National Archives in Kew.
They make surprising reading with Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour bitterly opposed to the Tories’ current approach to the small boats crisis.
The party has vowed to scrap the Rwanda scheme if it wins the next election after branding it a “gimmick” which “isn’t going to work”.
Jonathan Powell, Mr Blair’s chief of staff, sent a memo on January 22, 2003, headed: “Asylum: the nuclear option”.
He tells of a proposal put forward by the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith relating to the Isle of Mull on Scotland’s west coast.
Mr Powell said: “The AG’s office suggested we set up a camp in the Isle of Mull and detain people there till they could be returned.”
“I doubt that is going to work because of the Nimby [Not In My Back Yard] factor, but we have commissioned work to look at tagging, detention etc, to help deter people and ensure we are able to return them as soon as their appeals have been heard.”
Mr Blair did not comment on this option and none of the more radical proposals were put into effect.
Files from his time in office reveal how much of a headache he believed the asylum applications process was – and a portent of things to come.
Mr Blair wrote on a typed memo: “It is mad. The system is mad.” On another he says: “We must search out ever more radical measures”.
A later note from January 2003 shows the weekly number of asylum bids lodged was 1,112 – including a 232% rise in Somalian applicants.
In the “nuclear option” memo, Mr Powell outlines problems including the cost of housing asylum seekers, the difficulty of assessing claims, and the challenge of deporting those with rejected bids.
He said the “most fundamental question” was “Do we need an asylum system at all?”, adding: “What we should be looking at is a very simple system that immediately returns people who arrive illegally.”
Mr Powell said one obstacle would be civil courts refusing to send migrants back to “countries where they might be at risk”.
He suggested a way around it was to set up “regional safe havens” run by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, saying: “We would be able to return Iranian asylum seekers to a centre in Turkey, Somalis to a centre in Kenya, etc.”
By contrast, after EU expansion in 2004, Labour welcomed in tens of thousands of migrants from 10 nations.
