Starmer Discusses Processing Asylum Seekers Outside The UK

Keir Starmer is looking into plans to process asylum seekers outside the UK as part of a rethink of the government's immigration policies, even as a returns agreement with the EU appears more distant than ever.

- Kiran Stacey & Lisa O’Carroll

The prime minister said yesterday he was open to the idea of Britain processing claims offshore, after a day spent discussing illegal migration with fellow European leaders at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. Those talks included a meeting with Edi Rama, the Albanian prime minister, whose country processes asylum claims on behalf of Italy.

But he admitted a deal to return failed asylum seekers to the EU was low priority, as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said his country was not willing to shoulder any additional burden.

Starmer said: "In relation to the agreement between Albania and Italy, obviously there's interest in how that might work, but that wasn't actually the central discussion in the taskforce in the roundtable. That was about the practical measures that we want to discuss, which is about how we deal with taking the gangs down in the first place.

"I'm a practical person. I'm a pragmatist. And I've always said we'll look at what works, and where cases can be processed closer to origin then that is something which of course ought to be looked at."