Failed migrants will receive free accommodation and help getting a job as part of a £15million plan to ‘reintegrate’ them back into their home countries.
The Home Office wants to deliver the support in 11 nations including Albania, Iraq, Pakistan and Vietnam as part of a bid to speed up returns.
This support would include ‘cash assistance’, ‘provision of care and food packs’, five days’ accommodation upon arrival and help getting a job, according to contract documents posted on its website.
Returned migrants could also be helped getting new official documents, after the government accepted returnees without documents were at risk of mistreatment at security checkpoints.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has vowed to dramatically increase the number of failed migrants being deported from Britain, and has set a target of 14,500 this year.
Labour has vowed to crack down on the people smuggling gangs that are fuelling cross-Channel migration
Small boats and motors used by Channel migrants pictured at a warehouse in Dover today
It follows the decision to axe the Conservative government’s Rwanda scheme, which has left critics accusing Labour of having no deterrent for people planning to enter the UK illegally.
The contract for the ‘Home Office Reintegration Programme’, posted online on August 22, would run from April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2028.
The nations it names are Albania, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Jamaica, Nigeria, Pakistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
It comes as a new report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) criticised overspending on the asylum system by the Tories and accused Labour of repeating their mistakes by submitting figures it ‘knows to be insufficient’.
Between 2021/22 and 2023/24, plans put before parliament by the Home Office at the start of each year budgeted an average of £110million for asylum operations, but it ended up spending much more – an average of £2.6billion per year.
The IFS report claims that the ‘woeful way’ the Home Office and HM Treasury have budgeted for asylum costs lies at the heart of the recent disagreement between Chancellor Rachel Reeves and her predecessor Jeremy Hunt.
In a financial audit of public spending conducted not long after Ms Reeves took office, spending pressures relating to asylum and illegal migration were one of the largest items identified amounting to an estimated £6.4billion in 2024/25.
In response, Mr Hunt argued that this contradicted the budgets signed off by civil servants and presented to parliament just weeks before.
The IFS said both the current and former chancellors have a point – but only because the Home Office and HM Treasury are continuing the ‘poor budgeting practice’ of recent years.
The number of Channel small boat arrivals has now passed 6,000 since Labour came to power.
Figures from the Home Office, published yesterday, showed 526 migrants reached the UK from northern France on Tuesday.
It brought the total since the general election to 6,246, and the total since the start of the year to 19,820.
Hundreds more arrived yesterday but numbers are yet to be confirmed.
Yvette Cooper , the Home Secretary, has vowed to dramatically increase the number of failed migrants being returned to their home countries, including 14,500 this year
Some 613 arrivals are also believed to have crossed the Channel yesterday. It brings the total since the General Election to a reported 6,858 – and 20,433 overall since the start of the year
This year’s running tally is almost identical to the number who had arrived by the same point last year – 19,801.
But it is down 21 per cent on the 25,065 who had arrived by the same point in 2022 – the year which went on to see an annual record.
One of Labour’s first acts in office was scrapping the Conservatives’ Rwanda asylum scheme, which was designed to save lives in the Channel by deterring migrants from crossing in the first place.
Labour’s plan to deal with the crisis involves creating a new Border Security Command, which will bring together existing immigration units and equip it with new ‘counter-terrorism style’ powers, as well as seeking new returns agreements with other countries.
Tuesday’s arrivals – including children – were the first to reach the UK for a week.
They were intercepted in the Channel by Border Force vessels Defender and Volunteer, and brought into the Port of Dover in Kent.
One young girl needed a wheelchair as she was brought up the gangway.
Last week it emerged that the number of Channel migrants winning permission to remain indefinitely in Britain has quadrupled, while efforts to increase deportations have stalled.
More than 25,300 people who arrived here by small boat were granted asylum or another type of humanitarian protection in the year to June, Home Office data showed.
It compared with about 6,600 in the previous 12 months.
Across all types of asylum claims, the number granted last year hit an all-time high of 76,176, – more than triple the previous year’s figure.
The increases were due to a backlog-clearing exercise launched by former prime minister Rishi Sunak which aimed to eliminate ‘legacy’ asylum claims by the end of last year.
At the same time, only three per cent of the total number of small boat migrants to have arrived here since the start of the Channel crisis have been removed.
The data showed that of the 127,834 migrants to reach Britain since 2018, only 3,788 have been sent home.
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘As the Home Secretary announced last week, the Government is 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.
‘Continued international cooperation with partner nations plays a critical role in this, and we will be working closely with a number of countries across the globe as part of the mission to end irregular migration.’
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