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1. More than a quarter of the people who crossed the English Channel in small boats to reach the United Kingdom in 2022 came from one country, Albania. Although the number of small boat crossings was expected to rise last year, the emergence of Albania as the primary source of those seeking to arrive by that route came as a surprise, not least since the vast majority of small boat arrivals make claims for asylum. Albania is a safe European country. It is not at war, and it is a signatory to European conventions relating to, among other things, human trafficking, and it is a candidate country to join the European Union. Several European countries recognise and accept few, if any, asylum applications from Albanian nationals, and the Government has argued that the UK should seek to return more people to Albania more swiftly than it presently does, possibly by effectively ruling asylum claims from Albanians arriving in small boats unfounded or inadmissible.1 Albania is a safe country and we have seen little evidence that its citizens should need to seek political asylum in the UK or elsewhere as a result of the actions of its Government. We saw no reason why the UK should routinely accept asylum applications from Albanian citizens, as is the case with many EU countries, other than in specific cases such as those that arise from trafficking.
2. Questions have been raised about whether the country is safe for all its citizens: a need for protection, including refugee status, may arise from threats to safety that a Government appears unable or unwilling to combat, such as organised crime, human trafficking or blood feuds, all of which are arguably threats to some individuals from Albania, and which appear to have been accepted as such by the UK authorities, given asylum grant rates at initial decision of up to 51% for Albanian claims.2 While claims for political asylum should not normally be entertained, there are unquestionably cases of Albanian citizens being trafficked to the UK, from within Albania or from within other European countries, where appropriate safeguards must be in place before they are returned to Albania.
3. Albania is also a comparatively poor country recently affected by the Covid pandemic and by a substantial earthquake. Before its emergence from communist rule in 1990, it was also almost entirely isolated from its European neighbours and from the wider world. The country’s official population of 2.8 million people makes it slightly smaller than Wales3, and average income is around £425 to £460 a month.4 During our visit to Albania in March 2023, we also heard that social support/benefit is as little as 50 Euros a month, with wages of around 300 Euros a month for factory or other basic work not unusual.
4. Just short of 46,000 people crossed the Channel by small boat last year. Officially, 12,301 were from Albania, and about 10,000 of those were single adult Albanian men (the Refugee Council has estimated a higher total at 15,569, with the substantial majority remaining adult men). Only about 800 Albanians had arrived by small boat in 2021, and the marked increase was both unexpected and unexplained.5 We saw a signal of this emerging trend when we visited Dover in June 2022: two small boats arrived containing 79 people, 72 of whom were young Albanian men.
5. The UK Government, by Christmas, had sought new deals with Albania to enable swifter return of Albanians “with no right to be here”. The Home Secretary announced on 19 December measures including:
assurances from Albania that they can offer the required protection, in line with our international obligations to genuine victims of modern slavery, embedding Border Force officers in Tirana Airport, establishing a unit to expedite Albanian claims with 400 specialised staff and new country guidance for our caseworkers making it clear that Albania is a safe country.6
6. The Government agreed further measures with the Albanian Government in March 2023, including a potential doubling of UK export finance support for Albania from £2bn to £4bn and work on ensuring that all eligible Albanian nationals in prison in the UK can be returned to Albania.
7. The United Kingdom is not a unique magnet for people seeking to move from Albania. An estimated 40% or more of the official population (around 1.2 million to 1.4 million people) has left the country since the fall of communism there in 1991, and about 42,000 people migrate from it each year on average.7 While an estimated 140,000 Albanians reside in the UK, there are four times as many in Greece and about 250,000 in Italy, with hundreds of thousands more living and working across Europe.8 Albanians can travel to EU countries for up to 90 days without requiring a visa within the Schengen area; travel to the UK does require a visa, at a cost of about $280 for a visit of up to 180 days. We were told several times during our visit to Albania in March 2023 that the expense of this process was off-putting; it is, however, considerably cheaper than the £3,000 to £5,000 routinely cited as the cost of a dangerous Channel crossing on a flimsy makeshift boat.
8. As His Excellency, the Albanian Ambassador to the UK, Mr Qirjako Qirko told us, Albanians living in the UK include doctors, lawyers, engineers and labourers of all sorts, paying taxes, making a contribution.9 The Home Secretary, Rt Hon. Suella Braverman MP, welcomes that contribution: “we do value our relationship with Albania and the Albanian community in the United Kingdom. We continue to welcome the Albanians who travel to the UK legally and who contribute significantly to British society”.10
9. Data-sharing arrangements focused on illegal migration have been in place between the two countries since 2014, and agreements on returning criminals from the UK to Albania and on information exchange were signed in 2021 and 2022 respectively. A Joint Migration Taskforce (JMT) has also been created to focus on action against illegal migration and people-smuggling gangs, and we heard during our visit to Albania in March 2023 that SPAK, a new anti-corruption agency created in Albania in 2019 involved in that JMT, has already played a part in the disruption of criminal activity in the UK, with arrests made and other investigations under way. SPAK is tasked with investigating corruption at both high and low levels and arrests and imprisonment have taken place of former politicians and civil servants. It is to be hoped that the organisation will reduce corruption within Albania, which is intended to encourage those who may wish, for example, to build a business within the country to remain there to do so.
10. It is not clear why the number of Albanians seeking to reach the UK irregularly via the Channel rose so sharply in 2022, but five broad reasons are advanced as possible explanations:
11. Both the Home Secretary, Rt Hon. Suella Braverman MP, and the Minister for Immigration, Rt Hon. Robert Jenrick MP, have argued that most people coming from Albania to the UK irregularly are not refugees in search of asylum:
We should not be a harbour for those who are essentially economic migrants coming from safe countries such as Albania. We need to change that. [Robert Jenrick MP, House of Commons, 7 November 2022]
And:
Albania is not a war-torn country, and it is very difficult to see how claims for asylum can really be legitimate claims for asylum. [Suella Braverman, House of Commons, 31 October 2022]
12. The Albanian Ambassador to the UK accepts that a significant proportion of those seeking to reach this country do so for economic reasons: “People come here for the same reason that the Italians, the French and the Germans come to this country: just to see the better opportunity”.11 He said young Albanians were sometimes misled by social media, such as Tik Tok and Facebook, to believe setting up a business in the UK would be easy: “When they arrive, they see that the reality is different: you have to work hard; it is not how it is promoted in social media”.12 Swiss Contact, an NGO working in Albania, confirmed during our visit in March that misleading information on Tik Tok led young Albanians to believe that it would be easier to disappear into the grey or black economies in the UK and to earn high wages there. The organisation does substantial work in the Kukës region in northern Albania from which there is substantial migration to the UK because of family connections from previous migration from that area. Swiss Contact polled 1,800 households in Kukës, one of Albania’s poorest regions, and found that 59% of those who were personally interested in migrating wanted to move to the UK, with a substantial majority of those wishing to emigrate male.
13. Dr Andi Hoxhaj, Lecturer in Law at University College London, and himself Albanian, told us one third of Albanians live below the poverty line (it was about one fifth before the Covid pandemic) and that unemployment runs at about 60% for those aged 18 to 34. He estimates that about 40% of those leaving the country do so in search of economic opportunities.13 Albania loses both low-skilled and high-skilled workers to emigration, and not all its European neighbours are helpful in that respect. Albanian Deputy Interior Minister Romina Kuko, told us of a ‘brain drain’ to countries that needed labour to support their welfare and pensions systems. She cited Germany and Italy seeking doctors and other medical professionals. We were told by others that Germany, in particular, aggressively sought to recruit medical professionals.
14. We heard the same message consistently during our visit to Albania in March 2023. We heard it from well-educated activists. We heard it from NGOs working with victims of trafficking or on economic development of the poorer regions of the country. We heard it from young representatives of the main Albanian political parties. We heard it from working-class people who had emigrated irregularly to other European countries and been caught and returned to Albania and who, as soon as the travel bans imposed upon them have expired, intend to set off once more on an illegal journey towards what they see as a better life for them and for their children.
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Swiss Contact polling on desire to leave Albania During our visit to Albania, the international non-profit social and economic non-governmental organisation Swiss Contact briefed us on its work in Kukës, a northern county from which a substantial proportion of Albanian emigration to the United Kingdom occurs. This results from the fact that previous generations of families living in Kukës also moved to the UK and northern European countries, providing family connections and potential homes and employment connections on arrival in the UK. (Emigrants from more southern regions of Albania have frequently gone to southern European nations, principally Greece and Italy, for the same family-connection reasons). Swiss Contact promotes development in the area as well as conducting research into how poverty can be alleviated. Their research demonstrates the strong desire of a substantial proportion of Albania’s population to leave the country in search of economic opportunity. Among the findings presented to us were:
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15. The UK and Albanian Governments agree that Albania is a safe country, and it is recognised as such internationally. That makes it surprising that the UK has granted a significant number of claims for asylum made by Albanians in past years, and Albania’s Minister Kuko, diplomatically told us that the Albanian Government wanted to understand the reasons for that when we met her in March. It is, of course, not the case that no asylum claim made by a person from Albania can succeed: an individual may be a refugee because he or she may be fleeing repression in fear of harm or their life from non-governmental actors such as organised criminals or traffickers. In the case of Albania, such reasons and the existence of long-standing blood feuds are sometimes advanced as causes for leaving. None the less, it seems clear that the grounds for successful claims of political asylum from Albania are open to question, and the Home Office has, since December, altered its guidance to asylum decision-makers to stress Albania’s safety, with the intention of reducing the rate of successful claims.
16. Just under half of Albanian applicants for asylum have travelled here by small boat. More Albanians claimed asylum in the UK in the year ending September 2022 than people from any other country: the UK received 13,650 asylum applications from Albanian nationals, 6,624 of which originated from small boat arrivals.14 At 30 September 2022, there were 19,897 Albanian asylum cases pending an initial decision; 334 Albanian nationals had been granted asylum and 318 refused within the year.15
17. Some 85% of the 8,466 Albanians who arrived by small boats between 1 January and 30 September 2022 applied for asylum (7,219 people in 6,624 application). By February 2023, only 50 (under 1%) of those who arrived in the year to September 2022 had received an initial decision with the following outcomes: 13 were not considered on third country grounds and 37 refused for other reasons. None was granted refugee status or another type of leave.
18. The UK had until mid-2022 an unusually high rate of positive decisions for Albanian asylum applicants. Dr Peter Walsh, Senior Researcher at the Migration Observatory, told us the UK initial decision grant rate of 64% in the first nine months of 2022 was high: Italy’s was higher at 67% and Ireland’s comparable at 56%, but all other European countries had low grant rates, with Germany, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece and Denmark granting no Albanian asylum claim.16 Systems are not directly comparable, but the difference is striking, nonetheless. The Prime Minister told the House of Commons on 13 December that the Government would consider statutory action “to ensure that the UK’s treatment of Albanian arrivals is no different from that of Germany or France”.17 The Home Office should set out in its response to this Report why up to 51% of asylum claims from Albania were given positive initial grounds decisions up to June 2022 and why that rate was much higher than rates in most comparable European countries.
19. Aside from asylum, claims are also made for protection from trafficking of human beings, and here there may be more grounds for concern about safety. David Neale, a former barrister and legal researcher at Garden Court Chambers, told us that case law accepted that some trafficked women and girls would be at risk of re-trafficking on return to Albania and would not be adequately protected by the state against that.18 Esme Madill, a solicitor working with young Albanian victims of trafficking, pointed out that the UK Government’s own Country Policy Information Note on trafficking in Albania cites UNICEF concerns about the risk of trafficking and re-trafficking.19 The US State Department has cited similar concerns.20
20. There is a notable disparity between the UK grant rate for Albanian men (13%) and Albanian women (88%), with Dr Peter Walsh of Migration Observatory telling us the difference largely arises because women may have been trafficked: “they have been granted asylum because, in the estimation of the British Government, they would not be able to avail themselves of protection in Albania”.21 Dr Walsh also said it was hard to find out why countries comparable to the EU were not granting asylum similarly to women.22 The Home Office should explain in its response to this Report why the asylum grant rate for Albanian women is so much higher than the grant rate for men.
21. The Albanian Government is a signatory to the Council of Europe’s Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, which obliges it to provide protection against trafficking and modern slavery. The Home Secretary has said that “There is absolutely no reason in law why an Albanian national cannot claim modern slavery protection in Albania”, and “if those people are genuinely victims of modern slavery, they should be claiming that protection in Albania”.23 Albania’s Deputy Interior Minister Andi Mahilla told us during our visit to Albania in March that there was no evidence of organised criminal trafficking of human beings from Albania directly to the UK and that such trafficking was at ‘almost zero’. Deputy Minister Mahilla argued, however, that many of those Albanian nationals who travel to the UK do so from countries other than Albania, having left sometimes many months or years before their arrival in the UK. This, he said (and this was reflected during his oral evidence to us by Ambassador Qirko) means that the Albanian Government has little direct control over the movements of those people. Minister Mahilla told us his research suggested there was no evidence of organised criminal trafficking gangs working from within Albania, but that such gangs did operate from within other European countries and, therefore, beyond the Albanian Government’s jurisdiction. This assertion was contested by many of the non-governmental individuals and organisations we met during our visit in March.
22. We also heard, however, from non-governmental organisations in Albania that individual trafficking of young women, usually, but not exclusively, for sexual exploitation, and young men, usually, but not exclusively, for labour exploitation, were not uncommon in a country where incomes are low and unemployment high. Questions have also been raised about the capacity of the Albanian system to reintegrate very high numbers of people being returned to the country who may have been victims of trafficking: during our visit, we heard that social support payments are low, that provision of shelters is patchy, particularly outside the larger cities, and that that provision is provided by NGOs without significant Albanian Government financial assistance, although in some cases with UK public funding.
23. Dan Hobbs, the Home Office’s Director for Asylum, Protection and Enforcement, told us that nearly 3,000 Albanian nationals had been referred during 2022 (up to October) into the UK’s National Referral Mechanism (NRM), which examines whether individuals have been victims of modern slavery, and that around 90% of Albanians in the NRM have had a ‘reasonable grounds’ decision that they are a victim of modern slavery.24 (It should be noted that time lags in the system, to be discussed shortly, mean that that 90% figure does not relate to the cases resulting from the recent increase in crossings.)
24. We heard no evidence of organised human trafficking to the UK during our short March visit to Albania. We did hear typical stories of individual cases, involving, for example, young women promised marriage in another country or tricked by a ‘lover boy’ into leaving her home and family, or young men offered a job that turned out not to exist. In both types of case, people were trafficked, sometimes by relatives, using false papers that were destroyed on arrival in destination countries, such as Greece or Germany, before being trafficked on again to the UK with further false documentation.
25. Support for those who return, or are returned, to Albania after such cases appears patchy and largely provided by charities and NGOs, rather than by government. We saw an example of this during our March visit in Tirana: a shelter providing psychological, medical, educational and legal support, as well as training in work and life skills for those referred to it upon return from having been trafficked abroad. Reintegration into the communities people left behind can, however, be difficult, particularly in a population as small as Albania’s, with stigma often attached by families in particular to women who have been trafficked for sexual purposes. Albania’s Deputy Minister for the Interior, Romina Kuko, told us that trafficking figures were much lower than had been the case in the immediate post-communist period from 1990 to the early 2000s, but that it was an issue to keep on track.
26. The UK Government argues that cases of modern slavery - that is, people who have been trafficked to be exploited - should be dealt with by the Albanian Government if individuals are returned to Albania. More controversially, it argues that UK modern slavery legislation is being ‘abused’ in order to delay deportation, and proposed changes to that legislation are currently before Parliament.25 For example, the Home Secretary told us of the case of two Albanians who arrived by small boat in May 2022. They were detained for return to Albania but received positive reasonable grounds decisions on claims for asylum and referral as victims of modern slavery. The Government planned to remove them to Rwanda, but they were released on bail as no removals have taken place or are imminently to take place. By the time both received a positive conclusive grounds decision, they had clandestinely left the UK and were arrested in Belgium to face trafficking charges there.26
27. Individuals do not make claims to be victims of modern slavery, although they and their lawyers may seek to persuade the officials who refer people into the modern slavery mechanism that they have such a claim. References into the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) are made by officials under statutory guidance issued under section 49 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 where there is evidence that someone may have been trafficked or subject to offences of slavery.
28. Ministers have criticised ‘late’ referrals, arising after asylum applications have been refused, as an ‘abuse’ of the system. Former Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner Dame Sara Thornton dismissed that criticism: “The fact that disclosure is late does not in my view mean that it is unreliable”, she said, arguing that officers are making more referrals over time because they are better trained and more experienced than they were when the legislation was new.27 She also makes the point that since 90% of referrals result in a positive decision, there is little evidence of the system’s being abused (although that percentage does not relate to the most recent cases, since it takes 450 days on average for a final decision to be reached).
29. Nor does a positive NRM decision necessarily result in settlement in the United Kingdom. Dame Sara Thornton told us an NRM referral was not a route to settlement. Dan Hobbs explained: “A conclusive-grounds finding of modern slavery does not bestow the right for an individual to stay in the UK. It requires us to ensure that their ongoing recovery needs can be met in the country to which you are returning them. In the case of Albania that may be possible”.28
30. Travel in small boats across the Channel is largely organised by criminal gangs. Dan O’Mahoney, the UK Channel Clandestine Threat Commander, told us that the sharp increase in the number of Albanians using the route was “in the main due to the fact that Albanian criminal gangs have gained a foothold in the north of France and have begun facilitating very large numbers of migrants”.29 He said:
I know from our intelligence that there certainly are flights going out of Albania and into Belgium, with the express purpose of the people getting off those flights and going straight to the north of France to get in a small boat. There is definitely a proportion of them coming directly from Albania: there may be people from a diaspora community in Europe that are choosing to make the journey as well, but I can certainly tell you that among those people that are arriving in small boats, there are people who have left Albania a matter of a couple of days before.30
31. Commander O’Mahoney linked the rise in small boat crossings to Albanian organised crime within the UK; “there is a huge amount of very harmful serious organised criminality within the UK committed by Albanian criminal gangs … drug smuggling, human trafficking, guns or prostitution”.31 Dr Andi Hoxhaj also identified organised criminal gangs within the UK as a source of the rise in irregular travel here, saying that young men in rural areas of extreme poverty with high unemployment rates could be lured by “a free ride to the UK in exchange for employment in cannabis farming or other illegal and criminal activities for 12–18 months”.32 In spite of the small size of its population, there were in January 2023 more foreign national offenders in prison in England and Wales from Albania than from any other country, with 1,336 in 2022.33
32. Commander O’Mahoney suggested some people were “gaming the system”.34 The asylum system may be open to abuse for the reason we identified last July in our report on Channel crossings, migration and asylum: the size of the backlog of asylum cases in the UK and what Dame Sara Thornton called the “sclerotic” rate of decision-making that means cases take more than a year or 18 months to clear. Dr Walsh told us the average time for an initial UK asylum decision in 2021 was 16.7 months; France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as broadly comparable countries, took about six months.35 He said: “of the Albanians who had received an initial Home Office decision on their asylum claim in 2021, two thirds had waited at least two years … and 35% had waited three years or longer”.36
33. Dame Sara put her finger on why this rate of decision-making works for those who wish to disappear into the UK: “because the asylum system is so slow … it gives people the opportunity to come here. … It seems to me that they are presumably being told that they can make the asylum claim and then they can disappear”.37 Dan O’Mahoney suggested many knew an asylum or modern slavery case would ensure they were not immediately removed from the UK: “We typically put them in a hotel for a couple of days, and then they will disappear. They work illegally in the UK for maybe six months or a year, they send the money home, and then they go back to Albania”.38 Some of the NGOs we met in Albania in March reported a widespread perception that those who arrived in the UK would be able to stay for a comparatively lengthy period before asylum claims were resolved.
34. Dr Walsh noted that the category of asylum claims ‘withdrawn’ was unusually high for Albanian applicants – the category includes both those who have actively withdrawn claims and those who have absconded: “7.5% of Albanians who applied in 2021 had withdrawn their claims by June 2022 … That is about twice the average … It does not say why they are absconding, but trafficking is thought to be one reason”.39 It is perfectly possible that Albanians travel irregularly to the UK intending to work on arrival, possibly illegally, but are then diverted, often because they need to repay the cost of getting here, to trafficking or crime; Esme Madill described how “young people who might have left for economic reasons, then end up in debt bondage, and that debt is sold on to criminal gangs. Then they are victims of trafficking”.40 This appears to be one of the potential abuses the Government is concerned about: Dan Hobbs, of the Home Office, had told us “the Government are seeking to avoid Albanian nationals using people smugglers to get to the UK to seek protection under the NRM”, the mechanism under which modern slavery claims are considered.41
35. Last year’s substantial increase in irregular Albanian arrivals in the UK may not be repeated this year: it is too early to tell whether a slight reduction in the number of Albanian arrivals between January and March heralds a longer-term reduction or whether the 2023 summer months will see a repeat of the 2022 spike in Albanian crossings. It is also conceivable that a similarly unexpected increase in arrivals from other countries could emerge.
36. The Albanian Ambassador to the UK acknowledged that there is a criminal element to Albanian migration to the UK: “If you would like to avoid, let us say, the involvement of criminal groups in this activity, I think there are two ways”. He proposed the creation of more visas to enable Albanians to work in the UK: “This country needs workers. There are more than 1,300,000 vacancies with 100,000 vacancies only in the NHS”.42 A group of cross-party Albanian MPs gave us much the same message at a private meeting in Westminster on 30 January, stressing, in particular, construction as a sector in which the skills of Albanian workers could fill vacancies. We heard the same during our visit to Albania in March from Ministers, MPs, NGOs and people who had sought to emigrate and been returned. During our visit to Albania, both charity groups and people who had returned to Albania (voluntarily and otherwise) told us that people would simply continue to try to reach the UK (and other countries) even if picked up on arrival and returned to Albania. We met a number of people who had travelled from Albania irregularly to other European countries, such as Germany and Sweden, and who, having been returned, had been given travel bans of at least three years, preventing their entering EU countries. All of them said they planned to leave Albania again as soon as their travel bans had expired.
37. Work visas in the UK are comparatively rare for Albanian applicants: in the first nine months of 2022, the UK received 24,102 visa applications from Albanian citizens and granted 16,084, of which 325 were work visas.43 Dr Hoxhaj also highlighted the part that the perceived difficulty of legal routes and of obtaining a visa plays in encouraging clandestine emigration from a comparatively poor country, adding that the UK had “a favourable reputation due to its low rates of racism in comparison to other nations such as Greece and Italy, where most Albanians reside”.44
38. The UK Government granted 325 work visas to Albanians in the first nine months of last year, and just over 600 the previous year. The long-term solution to migration from countries such as Albania where emigration is driven not by oppression or war but by absence of jobs and decent incomes lies in supporting such countries to become wealthier. There is no case for special treatment for Albania in provision of work visas: its citizens are as entitled as any others to apply for those available in the UK. There may, though, be a case for promoting more actively in Albania and elsewhere the provision of short-term work visas in sectors in which the UK needs workers—seasonal agriculture or construction, for example—with the specific aim of enabling some transfer of wealth to countries from which asylum applications should not normally be countenanced but from which substantial numbers of people seek opportunities elsewhere. Such a policy might be an investment to reduce emigration in the longer term from comparatively poor countries that would in turn reduce pressure on asylum systems designed to cope with refugees rather than the economic migrants who will always seek to improve their circumstances.
39. We invite the Government to respond to the idea of actively promoting in those countries that have qualified unemployed workers in particular sectors time-limited or short-term visas for seasonal work, such as fruit-picking, or in sectors in which the UK lacks workers, such as construction, as a means of dispersing earned wealth to those countries to aid their long-term economic development.
40. It is inevitable that a sharp and unexpected increase in the number of people of any nationality seeking to reach the UK irregularly raises alarm and causes comment. Albania’s emergence as last year’s leading source of people making the dangerous Channel crossing has done so, leading to some tensions in the relationship between the two countries and for the significant Albanian population living and working entirely legally within the UK.
41. Esme Madill told us of the effect of negative comment about Albania on the children and young people her organisation represents: “on a practical level [it] causes them to experience discrimination and racism on a daily basis as they attend college, university and apply for jobs”.45 Ambassador Qirko detected a “campaign of discrimination” against Albanians in the UK:
I receive information on that every day, especially from the part of the media that is involved in this wave of activity against my people living here. I would like to do as much as possible to ensure that this kind of activity stops as soon as possible, because there are youngsters especially who are bullied at school just because they are Albanian.46
42. On 31 October 2022, in a statement to the House of Commons on asylum processing at Manston, the Home Secretary, Rt Hon. Suella Braverman MP, said that young, single men coming from Albania are either “part of organised criminal gangs” or “are coming here and partaking in criminal activity, particularly related to drugs—supply and otherwise”.47 Two days later, Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, urged UK ministers to stop targeting Albanians:
Albanians in the UK work hard and pay tax. UK should fight the crime gangs of all nationalities and stop discriminating [against] Albanians to excuse policy failures.48
43. On 17 January 2023, the Albanian Government summoned the UK ambassador, Alastair King-Smith, in response to a promotional video in which Robert Jenrick MP, the UK Immigration Minister, praised work to find and detain criminals from Albania.49 Work has since been done to repair relations: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Mr Rama concluded a new agreement in March, including the doubling of potential UK export finance in Albania. The number of Albanians being returned there, including foreign national offenders incarcerated in UK prisons, has increased, and that welcome trend relies on continuing to maintain and improve the relationship between the two countries.
44. In July 2021, the Government signed an agreement with Albania for the safe return of Albanian nationals.50 On 23 November 2022, the Home Office confirmed that “over 1,000 Albanian nationals” had been returned to Albania since the UK Albania Returns Agreement was signed, and the Home Office told us it had “enforced the return of more than 2,300 people to Albania since 2019”.51 The Home Secretary told us that despite the UK’s readmission agreement with Albania, the number of returns was small compared with the number of people arriving in the UK. She said the Home Office was finding it difficult to return Albanians owing to the requirement under the agreement to consider any pending legal claims, whether asylum or modern slavery.52 We very much welcome the returns agreement negotiated between the UK and Albania as a textbook example of how such arrangements between two sovereign countries can work. However, a frank conversation needs to take place about the fact that Albanian nationals represent the largest overseas contingent in UK jails, and closer joint working needs to take place between our respective Governments to investigate and alleviate this and to enable swift transfer of such Albanian nationals to their home country.
45. The increase in the number and proportion of Albanian nationals arriving in the UK in small boats in 2022 was both sharp and unexpected. It is inevitable that it would attract comment from politicians and others as explanations were sought. That comment has, regrettably, seemed sometimes to single out Albania as a unique cause of asylum and migration problems that go far wider than a single country. The Government in particular, should take care not to use language that may jeopardise the success of welcome recent agreements with the Government of Albania, including on co-operation over illegal migration and organised crime and on the return of irregular migrants and convicted criminals to Albania.
46. The Government has introduced the Illegal Migration Bill which passed through the House of Commons shortly after Easter 2023; it is now progressing through the House of Lords. It provides for removal of those who arrive irregularly in the UK, for their detention pre-removal, for making asylum claims inadmissible, for altering human rights provision, and for capping annual migration using safe and legal routes. It also proposes changes to the way in which modern slavery/trafficking claims are dealt with. Mr Jenrick told the House of Commons:
modern slavery laws, while important and well meant, are now being abused, particularly by males who are here for economic migration purposes. We have seen many cases in which young males from countries such as Albania … have their asylum claims processed. Those claims are rejected, quite rightly, so then they immediately make a claim under modern slavery laws. That is wrong, and we intend to review it … and make any changes that we need to make.53
47. During our visit to Albania, Swiss Contact told us that there was significant awareness in Kukës, in northern Albania, of the UK Government’s Migration and Economic Development Programme with Rwanda. Swiss Contact agreed that Albanians were unlikely to want to be removed from the UK to Rwanda, and that the UK Government intention to do so could therefore act as a deterrent.
48. The Government is also seeking to replace hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, currently costing around £6 million a day, with, among other ideas, former military bases and barges.
49. Under existing law (the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002), the Government has been able since 2014 to certify claims made by Albanians for asylum as ‘clearly unfounded’. Although claims still have to be considered, this does mean there is no right of appeal once a decision is made. The Government could alter Albania’s status further to enable the Home Secretary to declare all claims from Albania inadmissible, allowing instant dismissal of claims without their being considered. Schedule 3 to the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claims) Act 2004 lists safe third countries (and includes 31 countries, all in Europe). The Government could add Albania to that list, or could identify Albania by Order.
50. A substantial number of EU states use accelerated asylum procedures for Albanian applicants because Albania has been included on their ‘safe’ lists (this is quicker, but individual risk assessments for each applicant are still required). There remains, though, that clear discrepancy between the UK Government view that Albania is safe and the fact that more than half of the asylum claims made by Albanians in the UK up to mid-2022 resulted in initial decision grants, which appears to be why the Home Secretary’s announcement of 29 December includes new guidance for Home Office caseworkers stressing Albania’s safety.
51. While changes to the law and guidance may have some effect specifically on the number of Albanians seeking to travel to the UK, they will have limited effect on the overall asylum system. The Prime Minister included stopping small boats as one of the five pledges on which he intends his Government to be judged come the next general election, but the central problem facing the asylum and immigration system is much larger than that. We entirely agree that no-one should travel to the UK across the Channel on a makeshift boat. But even as many as 46,000 people coming that way are a small proportion both of the annual net migration figure and of the number of cases stuck in an asylum decision-making process that is exceptionally slow in comparison with those of similar European states.
52. We recommended last July that the Home Office should make clearing the asylum backlog its highest priority; they replied in September that preventing illegal arrivals remained their priority, but we were pleased to hear an apparent shift in tone from the Prime Minister himself in December, when he pledged to clear outstanding cases by the end of 2023. The Prime Minister told the House of Commons Liaison Committee in March that around 4,000 cases had been cleared in the three months since he pledged to clear the backlog outstanding at 28 June last year. We invite the Home Office to set out how it plans rapidly to increase that rate of decision-making if it is not to break the Prime Minister’s promise to clear 92,601 cases by the end of 2023.
53. Dr Walsh outlined, as we did in July and as others have before us, persistent administrative failings of the Home Office in dealing with asylum and migration:
They include inadequate training; people coming into the decision-making role without any prior experience or knowledge of what is quite a complex asylum system; and fairly low morale, and therefore high staff turnover. High staff turnover is a real problem. It is thought that it takes anywhere between a year and a year and a half to gain the proficiency to make good, effective asylum decisions, but people are leaving before they accumulate that experience. There is also a reliance on antiquated IT systems.54
54. It is welcome that the Home Office is increasing the number of caseworkers and seeking to increase the number of decisions made each week. More detail is required on the 400 additional staff specifically being devoted to Albanian cases. It is to be hoped that the Home Office is finally beginning to get a grip on a system whose cost has grown to unmanageable levels, at around £1.4 billion in 2021, including up to £7 million a day on hotel accommodation for the people who are behind each asylum case and who, whether they will remain in the UK or be returned to another country, need swifter and more efficient treatment.
55. We have focused on Albania because of its unexpected emergence as the source of most people trying to cross the English Channel on small boats and the subsequent interest in why that should have happened so suddenly and unpredictably. Albania is not the cause of the UK’s current migration concerns. It should not be singled out as such or scapegoated for home-grown failure to process asylum applications quickly and to return to their own or other countries those who do not have a right to be in the UK. That said, the substantial number of Albanians arriving across the Channel last year unquestionably contributed to the overwhelming of the asylum system, and particularly to the overcrowding seen at Manston in October. A new focus on faster decision-making for Albanian and all other applicants is welcome, but we need clear evidence soon that the Home Office is getting a grip on a complex, expensive system.
56. We recommend that the Government report progress on clearing the asylum backlog to us on a quarterly basis (30 September, 31 December, 30 March and 30 June). The progress reports should include data on:
a) the number of pending claims in the backlog (both that to 28 June 2022 and to the nearest available date) including average decision waiting times;
b) how recruitment targets for new asylum decision makers are being met, including retention and attrition rates of current staff; and
c) what progress is being made against targets to triple the number of weekly asylum decisions, including the number of decisions made each week.
1. Albania is a safe country and we have seen little evidence that its citizens should need to seek political asylum in the UK or elsewhere as a result of the actions of its Government. We saw no reason why the UK should routinely accept asylum applications from Albanian citizens, as is the case with many EU countries, other than in specific cases such as those that arise from trafficking. (Paragraph 1)
2. While claims for political asylum should not normally be entertained, there are unquestionably cases of Albanian citizens being trafficked to the UK, from within Albania or from within other European countries, where appropriate safeguards must be in place before they are returned to Albania. (Paragraph 2)
3. The Home Office should set out in its response to this Report why up to 51% of asylum claims from Albania were given positive initial grounds decisions up to June 2022 and why that rate was much higher than rates in most comparable European countries. (Paragraph 18)
4. The Home Office should explain in its response to this Report why the asylum grant rate for Albanian women is so much higher than the grant rate for men. (Paragraph 20)
5. The long-term solution to migration from countries such as Albania where emigration is driven not by oppression or war but by absence of jobs and decent incomes lies in supporting such countries to become wealthier. There is no case for special treatment for Albania in provision of work visas: its citizens are as entitled as any others to apply for those available in the UK. There may, though, be a case for promoting more actively in Albania and elsewhere the provision of short-term work visas in sectors in which the UK needs workers—seasonal agriculture or construction, for example—with the specific aim of enabling some transfer of wealth to countries from which asylum applications should not normally be countenanced but from which substantial numbers of people seek opportunities elsewhere. Such a policy might be an investment to reduce emigration in the longer term from comparatively poor countries that would in turn reduce pressure on asylum systems designed to cope with refugees rather than the economic migrants who will always seek to improve their circumstances.(Paragraph 38)
6. We invite the Government to respond to the idea of actively promoting in those countries that have qualified unemployed workers in particular sectors time-limited or short-term visas for seasonal work, such as fruit-picking, or in sectors in which the UK lacks workers, such as construction, as a means of dispersing earned wealth to those countries to aid their long-term economic development. (Paragraph 39)
7. The increase in the number and proportion of Albanian nationals arriving in the UK in small boats in 2022 was both sharp and unexpected. It is inevitable that it would attract comment from politicians and others as explanations were sought. That comment has, regrettably, seemed sometimes to single out Albania as a unique cause of asylum and migration problems that go far wider than a single country. The Government in particular should take care not to use language that may jeopardise the success of welcome recent agreements with the Government of Albania, including on co-operation over illegal migration and organised crime and on the return of irregular migrants and convicted criminals to Albania. (Paragraph 45)
8. The Prime Minister told the House of Commons Liaison Committee in March that around 4,000 cases had been cleared in the three months since he pledged to clear the backlog outstanding at 28 June last year. We invite the Home Office to set out how it plans rapidly to increase that rate of decision-making if it is not to break the Prime Minister’s promise to clear 92,601 cases by the end of 2023. (Paragraph 52)
9. We have focused on Albania because of its unexpected emergence as the source of most people trying to cross the English Channel on small boats and the subsequent interest in why that should have happened so suddenly and unpredictably. Albania is not the cause of the UK’s current migration concerns. It should not be singled out as such or scapegoated for home-grown failure to process asylum applications quickly and to return to their own or other countries those who do not have a right to be in the UK. That said, the substantial number of Albanians arriving across the Channel last year unquestionably contributed to the overwhelming of the asylum system, and particularly to the overcrowding seen at Manston in October. A new focus on faster decision-making for Albanian and all other applicants is welcome, but we need clear evidence soon that the Home Office is getting a grip on a complex, expensive system. (Paragraph 55)
10. We recommend that the Government report progress on clearing the asylum backlog to us on a quarterly basis (30 September, 31 December, 30 March and 30 June). The progress reports should include data on:
a) the number of pending claims in the backlog (both that to 28 June 2022 and to the nearest available date) including average decision waiting times;
b) how recruitment targets for new asylum decision makers are being met, including retention and attrition rates of current staff; and
c) what progress is being made against targets to triple the number of weekly asylum decisions, including the number of decisions made each week. (Paragraph 56)
Members present:
Dame Diana Johnson, in the Chair
Lee Anderson
James Daly
Simon Fell
Carolyn Harris
Tim Loughton
Marco Longhi
Alison Thewliss
Draft Report (Migration and asylum: Albania), proposed by the Chair, brought up and read.
Ordered, That the draft Report be read a second time, paragraph by paragraph.
Paragraphs 1 to 56 read and agreed to.
Text box (inserted after paragraph 14) agreed to.
Summary agreed to.
Resolved, That the Report be the second Report of the Committee to the House.
Ordered, That the Chair make the Report to the House.
Ordered, That embargoed copies of the Report be made available, in accordance with the provisions of Standing Order No. 134.
Adjourned till Tuesday 6 June at 9.00am.
The following witnesses gave evidence. Transcripts can be viewed on the inquiry publications page of the Committee’s website.
Tom Pursglove MP, Minister for Justice and Tackling Illegal Migration, Home Office; Dan Hobbs, Director, Asylum, Protection and Enforcement, Home OfficeQ1–123
David Neal, Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and ImmigrationQ124–209
Alison Pickup, Director, Asylum Aid; Theresa Schleicher, Casework Manager, Medical Justice; Enver Solomon, Chief Executive, Refugee CouncilQ210–276
Tony Smith CBE, former Director-General, UK Border Force; Rhys Clyne, Senior Researcher, Institute for Government; David Wood, former Director-General, Immigration EnforcementQ277–307
His Excellency Qirjako Qirko, Albanian Ambassador to the UKQ308–357
Dr Andi Hoxhaj, Lecturer in Law, Faculty of Laws, University College London; and Professor Dame Sara Thornton, Professor of Practice in Modern Slavery Policy, Rights Lab, University of NottinghamQ358–382
Esme Madill, Solicitor, Migrant and Refugee Children’s Legal Unit (MiCLU) at Islington Law Centre; Dr Peter William Walsh, Senior Researcher, The Migration ObservatoryQ383–399
The following written evidence was received and can be viewed on the inquiry publications page of the Committee’s website.
ASY numbers are generated by the evidence processing system and so may not be complete.
1 Asylum Aid (ASY0002)
2 Hoxhaj, Dr Andi (ASY0005)
3 Madill, Esme (ASY0006)
4 Medical Justice (ASY0001)
5 Neale, David (ASY0003)
6 Thornton, Professor Dame Sara (ASY0004)
All publications from the Committee are available on the publications page of the Committee’s website.
|
Number |
Title |
Reference |
|
1st |
Channel crossings, migration and asylum |
HC 199 |
|
1st Special Report |
The Macpherson Report: twenty-two years on: Government Response to the Committee’s Third Report of Session 2021–22 |
HC 274 |
|
2nd Special Report |
Spiking: Government Response to the Committee’s Ninth Report of Session 2021–22 |
HC 508 |
|
3rd Special Report |
The investigation and prosecution of rape: Government Response to the Committee’s Eighth Report of Session 2021–22 |
HC 507 |
|
4th Special Report |
Channel crossings, migration and asylum: Government Response to the Committee’s First Report |
HC 706 |
|
Number |
Title |
Reference |
|
1st |
Violence and abuse towards retail workers |
HC 141 |
|
2nd |
The UK’s offer of visa and settlement routes for residents of Hong Kong |
HC 191 |
|
3rd |
The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on |
HC 139 |
|
4th |
Appointment of the Chair of the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority |
HC 814 |
|
5th |
The Windrush Compensation Scheme |
HC 204 |
|
6th |
Police Conduct and Complaints |
HC 140 |
|
7th |
Appointment of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary and Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Fire & Rescue Authorities in England |
HC 1071 |
|
8th |
Investigation and prosecution of rape |
HC 193 |
|
9th |
Spiking |
HC 967 |
|
1st Special Report |
Violence and abuse towards retail workers: Government Response to the Committee’s First Report |
HC 669 |
|
2nd Special Report |
The UK’s offer of visa and settlement routes for residents of Hong Kong: Government Response to the Committee’s Second Report |
HC 682 |
|
3rd Special Report |
The Windrush Compensation Scheme: Government Response to the Committee’s Fifth Report |
HC 1098 |
|
4th Special Report |
Police conduct and complaints: Government Response to the Committee’s Sixth Report |
HC 1264 |
|
Number |
Title |
Reference |
|
1st |
Home Office preparedness for Covid-19 (Coronavirus): Policing |
HC 232 |
|
2nd |
Home Office preparedness for Covid-19 (Coronavirus): domestic abuse and risks of harm within the home |
HC 321 |
|
3rd |
Home Office preparedness for Covid-19 (coronavirus): immigration and visas |
HC 362 |
|
4th |
Home Office preparedness for COVID-19 (Coronavirus): institutional accommodation |
HC 562 |
|
5th |
Home Office preparedness for COVID-19 (coronavirus): management of the borders |
HC 563 |
|
6th |
Appointment of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration |
HC 1024 |
|
1st Special Report |
Serious Youth Violence: Government Response to the Committee’s Sixteenth Report of Session 2017–2019 |
HC 57 |
|
2nd Special Report |
Home Office preparedness for Covid-19 (coronavirus): domestic abuse and risks of harm: Government Response to the Committee’s Second Report |
HC 661 |
|
3rd Special Report |
Home Office preparedness for Covid-19: coronavirus: policing: Government Response to the Committee’s First Report |
HC 660 |
|
4th Special Report |
Home Office preparedness for COVID-19 (coronavirus): immigration and visas: Government Response to the Committee’s Third Report |
HC 909 |
|
5th Special Report |
Home Office preparedness for COVID-19 (coronavirus): institutional accommodation: Government Response to the Committee’s Fourth Report |
HC 973 |
|
6th Special Report |
Home Office preparedness for COVID-19 (coronavirus): management of the borders: Government Response to the Committee’s Fifth Report |
HC 974 |
1 The Prime Minister’s statement to the House on 13 December 2022, Hansard col 885–912 sets out the Government’s ambition to consider the ‘vast majority of claims from Albania’ to be ‘clearly unfounded’.
2 This 51% figure relates to arrivals largely before the surge in small boat arrivals in 2021–22, so may not be replicated for claims made by that cohort of claimants. As noted elsewhere in this Report, it is also the case that more obviously vulnerable cases are dealt with most speedily, since approvals tend to be granted more quickly than refusals of applications can be processed.
3 This is an official population figure, but it is widely believed within Albania that the population may be significantly lower: the last census was conducted in 2009.
4 Andi Hoxhaj (ASY005) para 3.
5 Home Office Statistics (24 November 2022) Irregular migration to the UK, year ending September 2022 GOV.UK Accessed 24 November 2022.
6 HC Deb, 19 December 2022, col 21WS.
7 Andi Hoxhaj (ASY005) para 1.
8 Andi Hoxhaj (ASY005) para 4.
9 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197 Q308.
10 Oral evidence, taken on 23 November 2022, HC 201, Q429.
11 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197 Q315.
12 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197 Q338.
13 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197 Qq359, 381.
14 Home Office Statistics (24 November 2022)
15 HL Deb 13 December 2022, col 550
16 The figure given here of 64% relates to all applicants and dependents, so differs from the previously given figure of 51%. This figure is used here to compare more closely with other European country figures.
17 HC Deb, 13 December 2022, col. 888
18 David Neale, (ASY003) para 3.
19 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/albania-country-policy-and-information-notes
20 https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-trafficking-in-persons-report/albania/#:~:text=Traffickers%20exploit%20Albanian%20children%2C%20mainly,likely%20involved%20in%20drug%20trafficking
21 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197, Q390
22 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197, Q393
23 HC Deb 31 October 2022, col 654.
24 Home Affairs Committee, 26 October 2022, HC822, Q29.
25 HC Deb, 31 October 2022, col 638, HC Deb, 7 November 2022, col 45.
26 Home Secretary in letter to Home Affairs Committee, 27 March 2023, p.4
27 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197, Q362
28 Oral evidence, take on 26 October 2022, HC822, Q40
29 Oral evidence, taken on 26 October 2022, HC822, Q35
30 Oral evidence, taken on 26 October 2022, HC822, Q91
31 Ibid
32 Andi Hoxhaj (ASY005) para 4
33 https://www.statista.com/statistics/872023/leading-nationalities-of-foreign-prisoners-in-england-and-wales/accessed 31 January 2023
34 Oral evidence, taken on 26 October 2022, HC822, Q35
35 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197, Q391
36 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197, Q394
37 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197, Q372
38 Oral evidence, taken on 26 October 2022, HC822, Q35
39 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197, Q392
40 Ibid
41 Oral evidence, taken on 26 October 2022, HC822, Q30
42 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197, Q315
43 BBC News (13 December 2022) Albanian migrants: Why are they coming to the UK and how many have arrived? – BBC News Accessed 13 December 2022
44 Andi Hoxhaj (ASY005) para 4
45 Esme Madill, (ASY006) para 17
46 Oral evidence, taken on 7 December 2022, HC197, Q357
47 HC Deb, 31 October 2022, col 664
48 The Guardian (2 November 2022) Britain is targeting Albanians to excuse policy failures, says country’s PM Accessed 31 October 2022
49 Home Office (12 January 2023) https://twitter.com/ukhomeoffice/status/1613634647245656066 Accessed 12 January 2023. On 12 January 2023, the Home Office reported that the UK deported 43 people to Albania out of which 27 had committed criminal offences.
50 Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Albania on the Readmission of Persons Cm 591. September 2021. The Agreement between the United Kingdom and Albania on the Readmission of Persons entered into force on 12 May 2022.
51 Letter from Robert Jenrick MP to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee Rt Hon Dame Diana Johnson MP following officials appearance before the Home Affairs Committee on 26 October 2022. (22 November 2022) and Oral evidence taken on 23 November 2022, HC201, Q436.
52 Oral evidence, taken on 26 October 2022, HC822, Q442.