Ghana Rejects Offshore Plan To Process Channel Refugees

The government has been accused of having “no plan” to curb Channel crossings as it emerged that reports ministers were in talks with Ghana about creating an offshore processing hub in the country were false.

- May Bulman

Plans for the military to be put in charge of tackling the number of boats crossing the Channel were meanwhile attacked as “desperate”, with Tory MPs saying the move would fail to curb the number of people reaching UK shores and be an inappropriate use of military resources.

The Times reported on Monday that plans were being drawn up to send UK asylum seekers to countries such as Ghana and Rwanda as part of home secretary Priti Patel’s plans for “offshore processing”, and that the military would take over operations in the Channel, in an effort to save Boris Johnson’s premiership.

They were reportedly part of a series of policy announcements – dubbed Operation Red Meat – in an attempt to appease furious Conservative MPs who have been deluged with angry emails from constituents.

However, the alleged plans for an offshore processing site to be placed in Ghana were shot down yesterday when the Ghanaian government denied the claims, saying in a statement that it had “not engaged with the UK on any such plan and does not intend to consider any such operation in future”. Rwanda is yet to respond to a request for comment.

It is not the first time other countries have had to deny claims in the British press that the UK government is planning to offshore asylum seekers on their land.