
CAMPAIGNERS called on Labour today to resist delivering a watered-down version of the Tories’ migration policies after newly released archives revealed that Tony Blair considered sending asylum-seekers to a camp on Scotland’s Isle of Mull.
According to the papers, a 2003 report by the former Labour prime minister’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell — drawn up just months before the invasion of Iraq — said the scheme also suggested sending refugees to countries such as Turkey and South Africa.
The report questioned Britain’s need to accommodate asylum-seekers, saying: “Ideally we should not have an asylum hearing at all, simply a decision by an immigration officer to return someone followed by a one-tier fast appeal against that decision if that is necessary.”