UK immigration - Blair defends cooperation with EU

31 January 2005

Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that the UK's cooperation with the European Union on immigration and asylum issues is justified, the Scotsman newspaper reports.

On January 31 a spokesman for Mr. Blair said that agreements on immigration and asylum made with the EU over the past few years were intended to stop "asylum shopping" and ensure that applicants are dealt with in the first European country they enter. According to the spokesman, this could only be done through a combination of measures, including collaboration with neighbouring European states.

This follows reconfirmation on January 30 from opposition leader Michael Howard that if elected the Conservative Party will try to withdraw from the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, and put a limit on the number of asylum seekers taken in by Britain. The European Commission has said such a move would be in breach of agreements the UK has concluded with Brussels.

Mr. Blair's spokesman said the UK retained the right not to sign up to EU asylum measures if it disagreed with them, but that the ones that it had joined were "interlocking" and had to be treated as a whole entity in order to stop asylum shopping. He further pointed out that pulling out of the UN refugee agreement would contravene British law, since it is integrated into the European Convention on Human Rights - separate from the EU - and is part of British law under the Human Rights Act.