by Rishi Sunak said new laws would mean people arriving in the UK without valid documents would be deported “within days”, with asylum claims rejected and migrants sent back.
The prime minister also said he was committed to Rwanda’s deportation policy, despite legal challenges, answering “yes” when asked if it would ever continue.
In an interview on his 100 days as prime minister, he said asylum applications would be considered in “days or weeks, not months or years”. The UK has a large asylum backlog, with more than 140,000 people awaiting an initial decision.
The Home Office is trying to double its number of asylum workers and triple the rate at which they complete cases. Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, revealed in November that each social worker handles an average of one case a week.
The government aims to have 2,500 social workers in place by August, up from just under 600 in 2020.
Sunak said he intended to speed up the process of assessing people alongside the introduction of a law saying people who arrive in the UK ‘illegally’ – without valid documents – will not be able to seek asylum.
“The system we need, the system I want to introduce, is one whereby if you come here illegally you should be detained quickly and then in a few days or weeks we will hear your claim, not months and years, and then we’ll take you somewhere else safely,” he told TalkTV. “And if we do that, that’s how we’ll break the cycle.
Sunak said people should judge him on his asylum record, including a new deal with the French government for extra patrols to spot boats crossing the Channel, as well as negotiating a deal with the Albania. He said Albanians made up “30% of all illegal migrants” and called it “ridiculous”.
He said: “I will work with the Albanians to put in place a new agreement which means that for people who come illegally from Albania, we can return them safely to Albania, and that is already the case.
“But the essential thing that we have to do is introduce new laws, and very soon we are going to introduce new laws in parliament which put in place the system which I explained, the system which says that if you come here illegally , you’re not really going to be able to stay here.
Sunak said he was committed to reducing the time it takes to deport people from the country. “We will hear your request in days or weeks, not months or years, and we will have the capacity in the vast majority of cases to send you to another safe country, whether it is where you come from, s ‘It’s safe, like Albania, or Rwanda. That’s the system.
When asked “Is Rwanda going to arrive one day?”, the Prime Minister replied: “Yes”.
This is not the first time that Sunak has given the Interior Ministry an ambitious immigration target. In December it said it would eliminate the asylum backlog by the end of 2023. Downing Street later said the pledge covered 92,601 applications made before the Refugee Act came into force. nationality and borders in June.
