Well, well, well. At long last, two months after it was agreed, the first illegal migrant has been deported from Britain to France under Keir Starmer’s ‘one in, one out’ deal with Emmanuel Macron. The news comes after this week saw a number of delays thanks to lawyers submitting eleventh-hour legal challenges – putting a spanner in the works of Starmer’s deportation plans. But while today is a breakthrough for the PM, it’s going to take some amount of work to make a dent in Britain’s migrant crisis – given more than 30,000 have crossed the Channel illegally this year…
After the scheme faced delays earlier in the week, the new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood launched an urgent review of Britain’s modern slavery law to prevent it being used by migrants to block their deportation – which, the cabinet minister fumed, made a ‘mockery of our laws’. Not that this has gone down well with everyone, with the independent anti-slavery commissioner Eleanor Lyons insisting that Mahmood remarks could dissuade real victims of modern slavery from coming forward.
Today the Home Office will appeal Tuesday’s High Court ruling that temporarily blocked the removal of an Eritrean man, who was supposed to one of the first migrants to be deported to France under the scheme agreed with Macron. Mahmood raged about the matter:
Migrants suddenly deciding that they are a modern slave on the eve of their removal, having never made such a claim before, make a mockery of our laws and this country’s generosity. I will fight to end vexatious, last-minute claims.
Strong stuff – but will the Home Secretary be able to see it through? Stay tuned…
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