Sir Ed Davey has unveiled plans to join the European Union’s asylum scheme after blaming Brexit for the UK’s small boats crisis.
Setting out his proposed plan, the Liberal Democrat leader took aim at Reform UK and the Tories, saying they should “hang their heads in shame”.
Sir Ed’s party has argued Brexit has made it more difficult to carry out checks, as the Home Office no longer has access to EU-wide databases with background information, criminal history and data on whose asylum applications have been denied elsewhere.
The Liberal Democrats now want the UK to sign up to the bloc’s new Migration and Asylum Pact, which would give the UK new powers to legally return migrants to the first EU country they entered.
Sir Ed said: “Farage and the Conservatives should hang their heads in shame for breaking our borders with their bad Brexit deal.
“But instead of apologising to the British public, they are now exploiting the mess they created for their own gain.
“We have a plan that would finally end the small boats crisis: a pact with every EU country that will allow us to return people who come over the Channel, taking away the major pull factor that Farage and co created and destroying the business model of the criminal gangs.”
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson also said the party was calling for a “humane and cost-effective asylum system”.
Speaking to GB News this morning, Mr Wilkinson said: “No one wants to see small boat crossings, but the UK does have a historic role in making sure that there are safe ways for refugees and asylum seekers to get here, but no one wants to see it happen in a disorderly way.
“The Liberal Democrats are rightly pointing out today that since Brexit it has become more disorderly.
“Those people…Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party and Reform, they said that we would have more control over asylum if we left the EU and in fact we’ve had the opposite.”
He added Reform’s policy to send in the navy to deal with the boats was “just totally absurd” and “irresponsible”.
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The pact includes a new version of the Dublin Agreement called the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation, which introduces a new duty on asylum seekers to apply for asylum in the first country they enter.
Under the previous Dublin agreement, asylum seekers could be returned to their EU country of first arrival.
However, research from the Migration Observatory found few people were returned under the agreement when the UK was still a member of the EU, with the average sitting at around 560 a year between 2008 and 2020.
Between 2016 and 2020, 3,830 people were transferred into the UK under the scheme.
Robert Bates, research director at the Centre for Migration Control, told GB News: “Just look at how the French have treated us during the Channel crisis.
“It is fanciful to think that the European Union would not treat us in a similar manner should we join its asylum pact.
“This plan would require Britain to take a huge number of asylum seekers from Europe, even more than we were taking under the previous Dublin regulations, and there is no guarantee that it would even stop the boats.
“The Lib Dems have woefully misread the mood of the British public, who want much less migration, not the opening up of new routes.”
Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf also criticised the Lib Dem policy.
He told GB News: “The answer to our illegal migration crisis is not to hand powers and sovereignty back to Brussels.
“This is a pathetic and transparent attempt by a Liberal Democrat party who would sell this country down the river in an instant if it meant we could rejoin the European Union.
“Britain is perfectly capable of stopping this invasion ourselves. By leaving the ECHR, detaining and deporting illegal migrants and intercepting boats in the Channel we can secure our borders.”
Meanwhile, a Labour spokesman said more than 47,000 crossings had been prevented in two years and 70,000 people with no right to be in the UK had been removed.
They added: “There’s more to do and that will only happen by working in collaboration with the EU.”
So far this year, more than 14,000 people have arrived in the UK by small boat, marking a fall of 43 per cent compared to the previous year.
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