Thinktank proposes Channel Islands for migrant processing centre

Tuesday 22 February 2022

The Channel Islands should be considered as a location for an offshore processing centre for migrants who try to cross the Channel in small boats, a report by an influential conservative thinktank has concluded.

Policy Exchange says that joint UK-EU patrols in the Channel would be the “best possible response to the problem of small-boats arrivals” and that “immediate return to France is the best policy, if available.”

However, should agreement with France not be reached (“Plan A”), migrants should instead be removed to a British territory overseas and processed in a specially built centre (“Plan B”), the 44-page report claims.

The main location it suggests is the British overseas territory of St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan de Cunha -  but the Channel Islands are suggested as next in line, as they are “outside the UK but proximate to France.” 

The report firstly looks to Jersey and Guernsey, but suggests that Alderney would be most appropriate.  

Pictured: The report suggested that Alderney would be the most appropriate of the Channel Islands.

“The two main islands each have an airport suitable for large aircraft, but in other respects they seem distinctly less suitable than Alderney, the main lesser island dependency within the Bailiwick of Guernsey, with elements of local government,” the report states. 

“Its location and topography make it suitable in many respects. But not all,” it adds, “Its airfield is too small for large aircraft, and in the absence of its usual inhabitants the island was gravely misused during World War II by the Nazis. The airfield problem can be overcome by transfer when needed to the airport on Guernsey proper. The problem of bad associations may be less tractable.

“Removal for processing to one of other of the Channel Islands would make apparent the futility of departing regularly for the UK from France, only to find oneself a few miles west of the Cotentin/Cherbourg Peninsular, even closer to France, physically, than the UK (at least 60 miles away).

“On the other hand, the continuing proximity to the UK might sustain hopes of eventual transfer to the UK and thus dilute that disincentivising sense of futility and discouragement.”

Pictured: The report was put together by Policy Exchange, which describes itself as "the UK's leading thinktank".

Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus were also considered in the report.

However, Ascension Island, in the South Atlantic, was deemed “obviously most suitable territory”, in part due to its climate. 

“…The climate is extremely stable and favourable: year-round the average temperature is 22.7C and the record highest and record lowest temperatures are only 5 degrees above and below that. Rainfall averages only 7 inches per year.

“Plan B should be able to do better than Australia did on Naura, where too many were accommodated under canvas in wet and very markedly hotter conditions than Ascension’s. But if, unexpectedly and regrettably, some use of canvas were temporarily necessary on Ascension, such accommodation would be much less austere there than in Naura or Cyprus, let alone in the Channel Islands.”

Policy Exchange describes itself as the “UK’s leading thinktank”. Elsewhere, it has been described as "the largest, but also the most influential think tank on the right", whose reports “often inform government policy in Britain.”

It has a unit called the ‘Judicial Power Project’, which argues that unelected judges have too much power. It has been involved in scrutinising the case in which the Supreme Court was asked whether the power to invoke Article 50 to start the Brexit process lay with the Prime Minister or Parliament. 

The ‘Stopping the Small Boats: a ‘Plan B’’ report was prepared by a team of researchers and consultants working for the thinktank, including specialists in maritime law, international law, constitutional law, immigration and asylum law, border enforcement and human rights.

The team included the former Head of UK Border Force Tony Smith, University of Oxford Professors Richard Ekins (Head of the Judicial Power Project) and John Finnis, and Cambridge University Professor Emeritus Christopher Forsyth.

Also involved were Dean Godson (Director of Policy Exchange), David Goodhart (Policy Exchange’s Head of Demography, Immigration and Integration), Stephen Laws (former First Parliamentary Counsel and member of the Independent Human Rights Act Review, and barrister Simon Murray. 

More than 28,000 people reached the UK in small boats in 2021, while at least 44 people lost their lives in the process. The single biggest loss of life came in November, when at least 27 people – among whom were a seven year-old and a 16-year-old - attempted to cross in what French officials likened to a children’s inflatable pool. 

In July, a group of nearly 30 migrants – including 10 children – had to be rescued in the early morning after their boat ran out of fuel near Jersey. The group alerted the French coastal rescue authority when their six-metre vessel ran into difficulties 33km off Saint Malo, where they were returned to. A man was arrested on suspicion of trafficking days later.