Sunak sets out hardline plan to tackle illegal immigration

Rishi Sunak has sparked outrage as he set out a hardline plan to deal with immigration if he becomes prime minister.

- ANDREW WOODCOCK

The package features a cap on annual refugee numbers and the withholding of aid from some of the world's poorest countries if they refuse to take back failed asylum seekers.

The former chancellor, who is trailing Liz Truss in polls of Conservative Party members in the current leadership election, said he would ramp up the controversial plan to operate deportation flights to Rwanda and that he would seek to establish similar schemes with other countries.

And he said he would bar anyone arriving by small boat across the Channel from remaining in the UK - despite the fact that the majority of unauthorised arrivals are currently awarded asylum status. His plans were branded "cruel" by aid charity Oxfam, whose head of government relations Sam Nadel said: "If anything, this shows that the heat of campaigning leads to bad policy. If the former chancellor wins this race, he will be more than a party leader, he will be prime minister and a world leader.

"To meet a world in desperate crisis - facing climate change, famine and conflict - with cruel policies such as these would not live up to the role. We need more aid and safe and legal routes to the UK." Mr Sunak, who admits he is the underdog in the race to succeed Boris Johnson, declared yesterday that illegal immigration was one of five national emergencies that would require him to put the UK on a "crisis footing" as soon as he took office.

His "10-point plan to stop illegal immigration" is significantly more hardline than the measures contained in the Nationality and Borders Act that was put into law by Priti el earlier this year. It will put him on course for a clash with the European Court of Human Rights by narrowing the definition of who qualifies for asylum in the UK, as well as giving authorities additional powers to tag, detain and monitor incomers.