Row over Labour's small boats plan deepens

Labour has defended its proposals to tackle the small boats crisis - after the government accused it of pursuing an "open border policy".

Sir Keir Starmer has said he would aim to negotiate a returns agreement with EU countries to send back some failed asylum seekers if Labour wins power.

Government ministers claim the policy would lead to 100,000 illegal migrants a year being shipped to the UK.

But this was rejected as "garbage" by Labour's shadow home secretary.

On Thursday, Sir Keir suggested he may be willing to accept a quota of migrants in the UK in exchange for a returns deal, as he set out plans to crack down on international people smuggling gangs.

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This was seized on by the Conservatives as evidence Labour would pursue an "open border" migration policy if it won power.

Home Office minister Chris Philp told Times Radio: "I think his policy has no credibility and the British public don't want to see 100,000 of Europe's illegal immigrants being shipped over here under Keir Starmer's open border policy."

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper rubbished the government's claims in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, arguing that their figures were based on a returns scheme for EU member states.

Formally joining the EU quota scheme would not be part of the plan because the UK is not a member state, she said, meaning any agreement would be with individual countries.

Ms Cooper told Today: "We have seen total garbage on this from the Conservatives over the last 24 hours, which just shows how desperate they are that their whole system is failing."

She later explained that Labour's policy would involve "controlled and managed but safe routes for children who have family in the UK".

Ms Cooper has also been setting out Labour's plans to end the use of hotels, barges and former military bases to house asylum seekers if it wins the next general election.

She said Labour would recruit 1,000 new caseworkers to clear the asylum backlog and set up temporary Nightingale Asylum Courts to speed up the decision-making process.

Labour is also promising to fast-track decisions on applications from "safe" countries, such as Albania and India.

The party claims that once the current asylum backlog is clear there will be no need for hotels, barges or former military bases, which Ms Cooper said are costing taxpayers more than £2bn a year.

Labour's plans have also come under attack from the left.

Matt Wrack, the president of the Trade Union Congress, told the Guardian Sir Keir was in "danger of pandering to right wing Tory rhetoric" on immigration.

Would the UK take 100,000 migrants a year from the EU under Labour?

The Conservatives' claim that Labour would let in 100,000 illegal migrants to the EU every year assumes Sir Keir's party would sign up to taking 13% of all asylum seekers who arrive in the EU.

They say this is because the EU has a policy of sharing asylum seekers between countries, based on population size. About one million arrive in the EU each year.

The UK's population is just under 13% of the EU's total, so this would mean taking well over 100,000 asylum seekers.

However, although the EU has been negotiating for years on how to share responsibility for refugees arriving via the Mediterranean, no deal based on population is in place.

In 2015, when refugee numbers peaked in Europe, the UK was still an EU member state, but did not take part in an EU-wide response as it had an opt-out.

Labour has now said it would not - and could not - sign up to an EU quota scheme because the UK is not a member state, so any agreement would have to be outside that.