Senior Tory Chris Philp has admitted it was harder for the UK to return asylum seekers post-Brexit in a leaked recording.
In the recording, obtained by Sky News, the shadow home secretary said Britain’s departure from the EU had actively hindered how many asylum seekers could be returned to countries in Europe.
Philp said leaving the EU meant the UK was no longer part of the Dublin agreement, which governs EU-wide asylum claims. He said this meant the Tory government at the time realised they “can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum”.
Philp suggested Boris Johnson’s government hadn’t understood the scale of the problem until after Brexit.
He said: “When we did check it out… (we) found that about half the people crossing the Channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe.”
Johnson and other Brexiteers had repeatedly promised voters that leaving the EU would allow the UK to take back control of its borders.
During his time as immigration minister in 2020, Philp had suggested being part of the EU and the Dublin agreement was actually hampering asylum removals.
He said in August 2020: “The Dublin regulations do have a number of constraints in them, which makes returning people who should be returned a little bit harder than we would like. Of course, come the 1st of January, we’ll be outside of those Dublin regulations and the United Kingdom can take a fresh approach.”
Other figures from Johnson’s government had also publicly stated that leaving the Dublin agreement would not be an issue since asylum claims would be “inadmissible.”
Related: Keir Starmer told to ‘start discussions with EU on what rejoining would involve’