Yvette Cooper defends Italy’s migration processing deal with Albania

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Yvette Cooper has defended an Italian deal which will let the country process some asylum claims offshore in Albania, describing it as “very, very different” from Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan.

The home secretary said the arrangement is not comparable to the previous government’s plans to deport some migrants to the east African nation, stressing that the Albanian scheme involves processing.

Under the Conservatives’ scheme, which Labour scrapped immediately after the general election, asylum seekers would have been permanently deported to Rwanda.

By contrast, Tirana will accept asylum seekers on Italy’s behalf while their claims are processed. Failed asylum seekers from safe countries will then be returned to those countries, while those whose asylum claims are successful, expected to be a small minority, will be brought to Italy.

Ahead of a visit to Rome to meet Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, Sir Keir Starmer said he is “interested” in Italy’s deal with Albania.

Asked whether he would consider seeking a similar agreement, the prime minister said: “Let’s see.

“It’s early days, I’m interested in how that works, I think everybody else is. It’s very, very early days.” During his visit to Rome, Sir Keir appeared to downplay Britain’s interest in replicating the scheme, instead saying Italy’s success reducing the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean appears to be due to “upstream work that's been done in some of the countries where people are coming from”.

A key aspect of the Italian PM’s approach to migrants crossing the Mediterranean into Italy is financial deals with countries such as Tunisia and Libya to stop boats setting off from north Africa.

Downing Street praised Ms Meloni ahead of Sir Keir’s trip to Italy, telling journalists the PM would discuss her country’s success in tackling illegal immigration. The country has seen a 60 per cent drop in boat crossings in the past year.

Sir Keir told broadcasters: “I've long believed, by the way, that prevention and stopping people travelling in the first place is one of the best ways to deal with this particular issue.

"So I am very interested to know how that upstream work went, looking, of course, at other schemes, looking forward to my bilateral with the prime minister this afternoon, but we've already got a shared intent to work together on this trade, this vile trade, of pushing people across borders."

But, pressed on whether Labour would consider such a scheme, Ms Cooper told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “It’s very, very different. So the arrangement that they have in place - and look, it’s not working yet, so we don’t know how it will play out - but it is a very, very different approach.

"First of all, this is Italian processing taking place in Albania. It has UNHCR oversight, so it is being monitored to make sure that it meets international standards.

"It’s being done in cooperation between those two countries, and what they’re actually doing is looking at those people who arrive in Italy, who have come from predominantly safe countries, and they’re using it as a way to try and fast-track decisions and returns.

"Now we think there is another way we can fast-track decisions and returns for people who arrive from predominantly safer countries.

"We should be fast-tracking those cases. We should be making sure you don’t have people spending years in the asylum system, which ends up being hugely costly, hugely chaotic. That’s the system we’ve inherited."

It came after eight people died while attempting to cross the English Channel on Sunday morning.

Sir Keir has been urged by Labour MPs to distance himself from far-right Ms Meloni’s approach on immigration.

Left-wing Labour MP Kim Johnson told The Guardian: “Meloni’s approach to Albanian migration has been described as a ‘model of mismanagement and a blueprint for abuse’ by Human Rights Watch. It is disturbing that Starmer is seeking to learn lessons from a neo-fascist government – particularly after the anti-refugee riots and far-right racist terrorism that swept Britain this summer.

“Have we learned nothing from the Tories’ failures?”