Albania’s prime minister has launched an astonishing attack on home secretary Suella Braverman’s “insane” rhetoric – saying the UK should stop blaming his country for the small boat crossing crisis.
Ms Braverman has claimed she will tackle the “invasion” on Britain’s south coast, with British officials claiming Albanian criminal gangs are facilitating the English Channel crossings.
But prime minister Edi Rama said the British government “stop discriminating” against Albanians to “excuse policy failures” as she targets them during the immigration crisis.
The Albanian leader tweeted: “Targeting Albanians (as some shamefully did when fighting for Brexit) as the cause of Britain’s crime and border problems makes for easy rhetoric but ignores hard fact.”
Mr Rami said: “Repeating the same things and expecting different results is insane (ask Einstein!). UK should fight the crime gangs of all nationalities and stop discriminating v Albanians to excuse policy failures.”
“Albania is not a rich country and was for a very long time a victim of empires, we never had our own. We have a duty to fight crime at home and are doing so resolutely … Ready to work closer with UK, but facts are crucial. So is mutual respect,” he added.
Ms Braverman is under fire following her inflammatory “invasion” comments in the Commons on Monday, saying: “Let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress.”
The government is said to be drawing up plans to change asylum rules so Albanians arriving on small boats will have their claims assessed separately and “within days” in a bid to start rapid returns.
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick, who previously said ministers were working on a “fast track” system, plans to visit Albania in the next fortnight, according to The Times.
The newspaper reported that the government is considering how to block Albanians migrants from appealing against speedy rejection of their initial asylum claim so they could be deported immediately.
However, a legal expert said: “How can you exercise your appeal rights if you’re not in the UK? It would be extrajudicial, and contravene rights under the [UN] Refugee Convention.”
But ties with Albania appear to have worsened after a warning issued by Dan O’Mahoney, the Home Office’s Channel threat commander, said Albanian gangs have a “foothold” in northern France and were now “dominating” the operation.
He told the Commons: “Two years ago, 50 Albanians arrived in the UK in small boats, last year it was 800 and this year so far it’s been 12,000 of which about 10,000 are single adult men. So the rise has been exponential.”
Cabinet minister Mark Harper defended Ms Braverman over her language on small boat crossings, saying she was merely demonstrating to the public she “gets it” and “understands the scale of the problem”.
Rishi Sunak told the Commons on Wednesday that he was “on the same page” as his home secretary. But refused to say whether she was given legal warnings about blocking the transfer of asylum seekers from overcrowded processing centre in Manston into hotels.
Hundreds of migrants have been moved from Manston in Kent in recent days – but councils are fighting to stop the government from using hotels to house asylum seekers, with at least four authorities taking legal action.
Great Yarmouth Borough Council said it had secured an interim injunction in relation to one hotel in a “prime tourism location where there is a proposed use as a hostel for accommodating asylum seekers”.
East Riding of Yorkshire Council, Stoke City Council and Ipswich Borough Council are also taking legal action.
Seperately, a local authority chief has warned that the system for moving lone asylum-seeking children out of the hotels and on into long-term care placements is “overloaded” and “simply cannot cope”.
Britain “cannot and should not” have such children staying in hotels, said Local Government Association (LGA) chairman James Jamieson, who called for a better system across the country.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer attacked the government’s failure to process asylum claims at PMQs – saying figures showed that only 4 per cent of people arriving via small boats last year have had their claim processed.
Sir Keir Starmer questioned how a “broken” asylum system could be anyone’s fault but the Tories, after Ms Braverman said earlier this week that the asylum system was broken. “Who broke it?” he asked.
Mr Sunak admitted that “not enough” asylum claims had been processed – but insisted: “That’s what we are going to fix.” He described the small boats crossings as a “serious and escalating problem”.
Meanwhile, new analysis by Labour found that new rules introduced by the Tories in January 2021 have added additional six-month delays to thousands of cases on top of the existing asylum backlog – adding £400m to the cost of the system.
Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, said: “There has been a total collapse in asylum decision making with just half the number of decisions being made, and a big increase in bureaucracy at the same time as there are no return agreements in place.”
