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Shabana Mahmood has accused asylum seekers of making “vexatious, last-minute claims” to avoid removal to France as the Home Office said it would review modern slavery laws to save Keir Starmer’s returns deal.
After an 11th-hour injunction that scuppered Labour’s “one in, one out” scheme, the home secretary said she would stop claimants “suddenly deciding that they are a modern slave on the eve of their removal”, adding that it made a “mockery of our laws and this country’s generosity”.
Her unusually forthright words come as Keir Starmer’s government faces intense pressure from its own backbenchers and Reform UK over the issue of immigration and small boat arrivals from France.
The prime minister announced the returns deal in July and has fuelled expectations that rejected claimants would be sent back this week. So far, no one has been put on a flight.
On Tuesday, a high court ruling blocked the deportation of a 25-year-old Eritrean man who was due to be flown to Paris. The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said he was a victim of trafficking and would be made destitute if sent to France.
Following the ruling, officials abandoned plans for a flight on Wednesday. The Home Office has announced it will appeal against the decision. Mahmood said: “Last-minute attempts to frustrate a removal are intolerable, and I will fight them at every step.
“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. I will robustly defend the British public’s priorities in any court. And I will do whatever it takes to secure our border.”
A legal source with knowledge of the case said: “The reason [trafficking claims] are last minute is because the Home Office isn’t identifying those from a known slavery route, for example via Libya, and expects vulnerable people to somehow raise it after a torrid journey.
“They [the asylum seekers] put in late claims as they only get advice late due to the government’s own rushed detention and removal policies.”
Under the deal, signed in July by Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, the UK agreed to detain Channel claimants and send them back to France in return for taking a similar number of asylum seekers with family ties to the UK.
Tuesday’s high court injunction was granted after the Home Office changed its legal position on the question of whether it could accept evidence from France.
The unnamed man has been given extra time to submit evidence to back up his claim that he is a victim of modern slavery because he was trafficked on his journey to the UK.
Mr Justice Sheldon, who granted the temporary injunction, said more time was needed to investigate his claim that he was a potential victim of human trafficking.
The court was told he and his mother had travelled to Ethiopia when he was a young child and that he had been trafficked from there to Libya in 2023.
He said he had then made his way via Italy to France, and arrived in Britain by small boat across the Channel on 12 August after his mother paid £1,000 to smugglers, court papers said.
The Home Office still plans to send some failed asylum seekers to France this week, sources said. France has been planning to fly asylum seekers to the UK this Saturday as part of the agreement.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “The home secretary is reacting in panic to the collapse of her gimmick returns deal.
“On Monday I told Shabana Mahmood in parliament that fundamental reform of human rights and other law was essential. She brushed it off, and now, for the third day in a row, flights to France have left empty. No one is fooled by tough talk from Labour.”
It remains unclear whether asylum seekers will come to the UK from France if reciprocal flights have failed to take off.
A solicitor representing asylum seekers questioned why the government had taken an “arbitrary and chaotic approach” to choosing who would be removed, including mistakenly selecting children.
Imogen Townley, from the firm Wilsons, said: “There has been quite an arbitrary and chaotic approach to selecting people arriving on small boats without much consideration given, or seemingly any consideration given, to whether they are suitable for return to France.
“You would think that the government of the UK working with France would be able to select some people, particularly in a pilot scheme when there is quite a lot of resources aimed at a small group of people.”
Campaigners for migrant rights have called for Mahmood to scrap the scheme. Lochlinn Parker, the acting director of Detention Action, said: “The scheme has been beset with foreseeable problems. Screening for vulnerabilities and age is not working and the system designed to get people legal advice has predictably failed.
“The only way to end this chaos and the harm it is causing people is for the government to end this deal urgently.”
