ONE of the architects of Australia’s “inhumane” offshore policy has been appointed by Home Secretary Priti Patel to lead a review of Border Force.  

Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer will look at Channel boat crossings as part of his role leading the first review of the law enforcement agency in over a decade. 

The controversial appointment, announced today, comes amid government plans to give Border Force powers to carry out pushbacks in the Channel. 

PCS, the trade union representing Border Force staff, which has threatened to launch strike action if forced to deploy pushbacks, said that it was “deeply concerned” by the appointment. 

Mr Downer designed the Pacific Solution in 2001 which saw asylum-seekers attempting to arrive in Australia in small boats diverted to offshore detention centres in Nauru and Manus. 

The now defunct policy was found to be unlawful under international law and was deemed to be “cruel and inhuman” by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor in 2020. 

A PCS spokesman said: “[Mr Downer] was a prime architect of Australia’s inhumane immigration policy and his support for pushbacks recently make him a wholly inappropriate choice to lead this review.

“Border Force staff need support and resources to do a very difficult job as humanely as possible. 

“That will all be put in jeopardy if they are forced to carry out a potentially illegal and morally reprehensible pushback policy on the instructions of the Home Secretary.”

Ms Patel’s decision to hire Mr Downer was hailed by former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage as a “good move” on social media. 

Mr Downer is also the chairman of trustees at right-wing think tank the Policy Exchange, which published a report on Wednesday urging the government to send asylum-seekers to Ascension Island. 

The report says that its proposed policies would create a system whereby “no one, even a genuine refugee, who chooses to arrive or attempt to arrive unlawfully in the UK by small boat from a safe country like France will ever be granted a right to settle in the UK.”

Rights groups derided the think tank’s “slapdash” report yesterday, which also suggests asylum-seekers could be sent to Nauru, or the British Channel Islands — the only site in Britain to host Nazi concentration camps — for processing. 

Freedom from Torture director of policy and advocacy Steve Crawshaw said: “Fanciful plans to process refugees on Ascension island over 4,000 miles from the UK mainland are inhumane, impractical and likely unworkable.”

Mr Crawshaw said that the report’s suggestion to emulate Australia’s policy of detaining refugees on Nauru, where human rights abuses took place on an “industrial scale, including the shocking levels of child sexual abuse,” was particularly disturbing. 

Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds said: “This report is the latest in a long line of miserable attempts by ministers, their supporters and various other commentators at shirking this country’s responsibility to provide people safety from torture and terror.

“Tragically, it seems that some people, including some officials, will propose almost anything to avoid this country’s relatively limited asylum responsibilities — however impractical and whatever the enormous costs to public funds, the lives and wellbeing of people seeking asylum and the reputation of the UK.”

He added that the report was a “gross distraction” from what is needed, “which is to focus on delivering a safe, effective and efficient asylum system.”