Having rejected the Rwanda scheme as violating human rights law, the Labour Government is seeking new ways to deter asylum-seekers from entering the UK. Some options that could be compatible with human rights law could include processing asylum seekers offshore and offshore return hubs for those whose asylum claims fail, writes Derrick Wyatt.
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In 2024, 43,630 asylum-seekers and others arrived illegally in the UK, and 36,649 of these came via small boats across the Channel. Numbers crossing the Channel so far this year are the highest since records began – more than 10,000 by the end of April.
For some context – in 2024 the UK Government admitted 79,312 individuals via safe and legal humanitarian routes. Overall, net UK migration in 2024 stood at 728,000.
Yet it is the small boat arrivals which cause most concern to many voters and politicians. One of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledges in January 2023 was to “pass new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed.” That removal was to be to Rwanda.
Sir Keir Starmer is reported to be backing offshore return hubs for failed asylum-seekers. Could Starmer go further, and try offshore processing of asylum-seekers?
Sunak’s successor Keir Starmer avoided a promise to stop the small boats, and instead pledged to “stop the chaos and go after the criminal gangs who trade in driving this crisis.” Starmer announced the scrapping of the Rwanda scheme on his first day as Prime Minister. The EU and its Member States are considering offshore solutions to Europe’s refugee problems, and Sir Keir Starmer is reported to be backing offshore return hubs for failed asylum-seekers. Could Starmer go further, and try offshore processing of asylum-seekers?
Why the Rwanda scheme failed
The Rwanda scheme aimed to deter asylum-seekers from entering the UK illegally by frustrating their hopes of being settled in the UK if they did so. Illegal entrants would be deported to Rwanda, where they would have their claims to asylum assessed by Rwandan officials, with successful applicants being settled in Rwanda.
The key reason why Rwanda could not be considered to be safe was that it did not have a system capable of fairly processing asylum applications, and of ensuring fair judicial appeals where necessary.
UK judges concluded that it was consistent with the 1951 Refugee Convention on the Status of Refugees (the Refugee Convention) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to deport illegal entrants to a safe country which would process their claims and allow successful applicants to settle there. However, the UK Supreme Court held the Rwanda scheme to be unlawful because Rwanda could not be considered to be a safe country.
The key reason why Rwanda could not be considered to be safe was that it did not have a system capable of fairly processing asylum applications, and of ensuring fair judicial appeals where necessary. This meant that in practice genuine asylum seekers could be refused asylum in Rwanda, and risk deportation to the country from which they had fled.
Would offshoring deter Channel crossings?
“Offshoring” in this context means one country transferring asylum-seekers to another for the processing of their claims, or for both the processing of their claims and their settlement if their claims are successful. It can also mean returning failed asylum-seekers to their country of origin via an intermediary country, or “return hub”.
This option was never fully put to the test by the Rwanda scheme because although the UK has stopped processing new illegal arrivals, deportations had yet to be implemented at the time of the 2024 general election.
Claims by Irish Government Ministers that 80 per cent of asylum applications in Ireland were made by asylum-seekers reaching Ireland via the UK, and that the prospect of the UK’s Rwanda policy being implemented was to blame, were unproven by relevant data, but were not inconsistent with it.
A Rwanda-style policy could have been expected to deter illegal Channel crossings, because it would have deprived illegal entrants hoping to claim asylum of the opportunity to do so, but for two reasons in particular critics doubt that it would have done so.
One is that asylum-seekers would not have known about the policy, and the other is that, according to Sir Keir Starmer, only about one per cent of arrivals would have been deported.
Offshore return hubs backed by the UNHCR
In March 2025 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued guidance on return hubs. The guidance defines such hubs as countries to which rejected asylum-seekers can be sent – voluntarily or involuntarily – pending their removal to their country of origin. Hubs would provide accommodation and reception and temporary legal status. Monitoring is recommended to ensure standards are met, and the UNHCR offers advice on compliance with human right standards and assistance to facilitate onward return to country of origin.
The European Commission backed return hubs in March 2025 and has proposed that EU law be changed to cover this option.
This guidance by the UNHCR has been linked in UK press and media reports to plans by the Starmer Government to set up return hubs in the Balkans for asylum-seekers whose claims have been rejected, with reports naming countries such as Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and North Macedonia as likely partners.
The European Commission backed return hubs in March 2025 and has proposed that EU law be changed to cover this option.
One aim of return hubs is to boost the proportion of failed asylum-seekers actually leaving the country in which they claimed asylum. In the EU only about 20 per cent of those ordered to leave actually do so. In the UK the proportion could be as low as 50 per cent.
Another aim of return hubs, according to the EU, is to deter illegal entry into the EU. Starmer no doubt has the same aim in mind for the UK.
Deterrence is also likely to be part of UK thinking behind the returns agreement currently under discussion with France, under which the UK would return one illegal cross-Channel arrival to France in exchange for receiving from France one asylum-seeker having legitimate family links with the UK. France’s interior ministry has no doubts about the deterrence issue: “France’s interest is to discourage migrants (and smuggling networks) from attempting to reach the UK from France.”
UNHCR guidance published in 2013 covered transfers of asylum-seekers to another country for processing, followed by settlement of successful applicants either back in the transferring country, or in the country to which they had been transferred.
The guidance states that the primary responsibility to provide protection rests with the State where asylum is sought, but adds that asylum-seekers have no unfettered right to choose their country of asylum.
Offshore processing, but settlement in the UK
Under this guidance, the UK could arrange for illegal arrivals to be promptly removed from the UK for offshore processing of their asylum claims, which would be done by UK officials operating under UK law and subject to UK judicial supervision.
Human-rights-compliant offshore processing, with settlement in the UK, could be Starmer’s answer to the Rwanda plan
Vulnerable groups, such as unaccompanied children, would be screened out in the UK, as per the UNHCR guidance. Successful applicants, whether assessed offshore or in the UK, would then be settled in the UK.
The offshore partner country could also serve as a returns hub for unsuccessful applicants, and an existing returns-hub partner might be a first-choice partner for this scheme from the UK’s point of view – perhaps one of the Balkan countries referred to above. All arrangements could be set out in a binding treaty framework, as per the guidance.
Could Starmer go with offshoring?
Human-rights-compliant offshore processing, with settlement in the UK, could be Starmer’s answer to the Rwanda plan, but it would be far from being a safe bet to counter Tory and Reform messaging in the run-up to the next election.
The fact that an offshore processing scheme would be human-rights-compliant does not guarantee that it would be regarded as politically and ethically acceptable by Labour MPs and voters, while Tory politicians would seek to blur the distinction between any offshoring plans of Starmer’s and the Rwanda plan denounced by Starmer and cancelled by him.
That said, there would be a qualitative difference between the offshore processing of asylum-seekers in Europe, by UK officials, with settlement in the UK for those whose applications were successful, and a one-way ticket to Rwanda, where asylum-seekers would have had their applications decided by a process little better than a lottery, and they would have faced an uncertain future thereafter. That difference could be spelled out to voters as being a real one in both ethical and legal terms. The Rwanda plan would have led to the violation of the human rights of asylum-seekers, while an offshore processing scheme of the kind outlined above would put human rights first, and accord priority to compliance with the Refugee Convention, UNHCR guidance, and the ECHR.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Sean Aidan Calderbank on Shuterstock
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