Tony Blair’s government considered setting up a holding camp on the Isle of Mull to drive down the number of asylum seekers entering the UK, according to newly released official papers.
The plan, put forward by one of the then-Labour prime minister’s closest aides, was part of a “nuclear option” that would see people who arrived in the UK by unauthorised means detained on the Scottish island before being removed.
Drawn up just months before the US-UK invasion of Iraq, the scheme also called for the creation of regional “safe havens” in countries such as Turkey and South Africa, where refugees who could not be returned to their own country could be sent.
Although the plan was not taken up, it echoes the debate still taking place more than 20 years later around Rishi Sunak’s plans to deport people to Rwanda, with officials in Blair’s government also discussing denouncing the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to get the scheme going.
The proposals, contained in files released by the National Archives in Kew, west London, reflect Mr Blair’s frustration that “ever-tougher controls” in northern France had not had an impact on the number of asylum claims – which reached a new monthly high of 8,800 in October 2002.
“We must search out even more radical measures,” Mr Blair scrawled in a handwritten note.
Following a brainstorming session with senior officials and advisers, the prime minister’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, produced a paper entitled Asylum: The Nuclear Option, in which he questioned whether the UK needed an asylum system at all.
Mr Powell said because the UK was an island, people who had arrived by sea had already passed through a safe country “so in fact what we should be looking at is a very simple system that immediately returns people who arrive here illegally”.
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Rwanda: PM avoids damaging defeat but braces for showdown next year
He said that officials in the office of the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, had suggested setting up a camp on the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides where people could be detained until they could be removed.
Mr Powell said the government would have to legislate to allow for the removal of people despite the risk 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 advised.
He conceded the plan would be challenged by the ECHR in Strasbourg but said this would take two to three years and in the meantime “we could send a strong message into the system about our new tough stance”.
He said if the government lost 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 lawyers warned that the measures would fall foul of the Geneva Convention on refugees.
An exasperated Mr Blair scrawled “just return them”, adding: “This is precisely the point. We must not allow the ECHR to stop us dealing with it.”
The discussion draws parallels with Mr Sunak’s flagship Rwanda plan.
The deportation scheme has cost £290m despite no flights taking off due to a series of legal challenges. Mr Sunak has put forward legislation to address this but it has caused a war among his own MPs, with Tories on the right wanting it to go further and those on the moderate wing keen to stick to the UK’s international obligations.
Blair supported return of Elgin Marbles to Greece
Echoing another debate that is still ongoing, other cabinet papers released today reveal Mr Blair was keen to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece in an attempt to boost support for London’s bid to host the Olympic Games in 2012.
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The Elgin Marbles and Greece’s fight to get them back.
Number 10 advisers believed the Marbles – also known as the Parthenon Sculptures – could be a “powerful bargaining chip” but warned any attempt to reach a sharing agreement with Athens could face stiff resistance due to the “blinkered intransigence” of the British Museum, where they have been housed since the 19th century.
Greece has long demanded the return of the marbles but the debate spiralled into a diplomatic row last month after Mr Sunak ditched a planned meeting with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who he accused of grandstanding over the issue.
The ancient sculptures were removed by Lord Elgin from occupied Athens in the early 19th century and are now owned by the British Museum – with Downing Street said to be opposed to any sort of loan agreement that would allow their return.
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Number 10 ‘lost credibility under Alistair Campbell’
Alastair Campbell was Blair’s top aide for most of his premiership
Also in the cabinet office files were revelations about the perception of Mr Blair’s combative communications chief Alastair Campbell, who spent nine years as the former PM’s closet aide.
After Mr Campbell resigned in 2003, Mr Blair was warned by remaining advisers that the Number 10 press office had lost “all credibility.. as a truthful operation” under his reign and that the prime minister’s own authority was being undermined because Downing Street was seen as a “politically-dominated spin machine”.
The warnings followed a series of bruising rows between the Labour government and the BBC over its coverage of the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003.