Keir Starmer has cracked open the door to sending migrants to Albania instead of Rwanda, saying he’s “interested” in Italy’s processing scheme. The Telegraphhas more.
Giorgia Meloni reached a deal last year to open two migrant processing centres in the Balkan nation where the claims of 36,000 migrants will be processed each year. The first of the migrant centres will open this autumn after several months’ delay.
Sir Keir said he was “interested” to see how the scheme would work, and said he wanted to discuss Ms. Meloni’s “strong opinions” on migration and how they could help the U.K. deal with its small boats crisis.
Over the past year, the number of illegal migrants arriving in Italy has fallen from 118,000 to 44,500, a decrease of 62%.
Under Italy’s scheme, migrants whose asylum claims are rejected will be returned to their home country while those accepted will be admitted into Italy. Under the Rwanda scheme, they would have been deported there. …
On Sunday night, he will fly out to Rome to meet Ms. Meloni for the second time since his election victory.
Asked about the Albanian scheme, Sir Keir said: “Let’s see. It’s in early days, I’m interested in how that works, I think everybody else is.”
He said he had already had a preliminary discussion with Ms. Meloni about “how we can work together on irregular migration”.
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