After eight deaths in the Channel this weekend, and ahead of Starmer’s meeting on asylum with Italian Premier Georgia Meloni, Amnesty International UK’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Director, Steve Valdez-Symonds said:

“There should be no question of the UK doing deals to offload its responsibilities onto other countries - not Albania, Rwanda or anywhere else.

“After the Conservative government’s shameful attempt at this, the last thing needed is yet another government pursuing schemes to avoid fulfilling the UK’s comparatively modest refugee obligations rather than showing some leadership and taking responsibility.

“The Government should be trying to restore the UK’s battered reputation on refugee issues by repairing an asylum system that’s been deliberately sabotaged by successive home secretaries stretching back years.

“We need safe asylum routes to help end the exploitative practices of people smugglers, and we need a fair and efficient system for processing people’s asylum claims however they arrive.”