The UK is seeking to accelerate returns of migrants to 11 countries including Iraq, Ethiopia and Vietnam in a bid to reduce the number of people residing in the country without the right to work or study.
The government has posted a contract opportunity worth £15mn over three years for a commercial partner to support the “reintegration” of people returning from Britain to their home countries.
The Home Office intends to deliver the support in Albania, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Jamaica, Nigeria, Pakistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, according to official documents.
Activists have highlighted human rights violations in Iraq where the UK government acknowledges that returnees’ without certain documentation are at real risk of serious harm at security checkpoints when attempting to travel internally.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to “smash the gangs” that traffic asylum seekers across the Channel on small boats.
He has also vowed to significantly accelerate the return of irregular migrants to their home countries in a bid to reduce the increasing cost of supporting asylum seekers and foreign national offenders.
The government has identified a £6.4bn overspend in the asylum budget for this year, which it blamed for decisions to cut public spending elsewhere and raise taxes in the autumn budget.
According to a report released on Thursday by the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank, the previous Conservative government overspent billions each year on average on the asylum system between 2021 and 2023.
The contract released by the Home Office this month indicates where the government intends to focus its resources on migrant returns, including through bilateral agreements.
Previous administrations have struggled to significantly increase returns in part because of claims brought by migrants on human rights grounds and the large costs involved.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper announced last week that the government aimed to increase returns of migrants — which have dropped precipitously over the past decade — to levels last seen in 2018.
She has set a target of returning 14,500 migrants over the next six months, which can include asylum seekers, foreign national offenders, and people living and working in the UK illegally.
Labour has formed a “returns unit” inside the Home Office to fast track cases of people from priority countries and hired around 300 of the planned 1,000 people to staff this unit.
One issue facing the government as it seeks to accelerate returns is that many of the people arriving in the UK to claim asylum are not from the country’s list of “safe states”.
Under international law, people seeking asylum cannot be returned to a country if it puts their safety in jeopardy. The return of people from countries not listed as safe are examined on a case-by-case basis.
The Home Office said the government was planning to deliver “a major surge in immigration enforcement and returns activity to remove people with no right to be in the UK and ensure the rules are respected and enforced”.
It added that continued international co-operation with partner nations played “a critical role”, and that it would be “working closely with a number of countries across the globe”.