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Sir Keir Starmer has confirmed the UK is talking to a number of countries about becoming “returns hubs” for asylum seekers who have had their claims rejected in the UK.
On a visit to Albania on Thursday, the prime minister said that using safe third countries could be an “effective” way to remove failed asylum seekers, days after he set out sweeping plans to cut immigration.
However, after meeting Starmer the Albanian prime minister Edi Rama said the idea only applied to “other countries in the region” and that Albania would not become a so-called return hub for Britain.
Chris Philp, Conservative shadow home secretary, said it was a “humiliation” that Starmer had announced his returns hub initiative in Albania, only for his host to say he wanted no part of it.
UK government officials did not deny that live talks included other countries in the Western Balkans.
The planned scheme would see Britain pay other countries to take people not eligible to remain in the country, in the hope that this might act as a deterrent to irregular migrants.
Starmer, speaking on a visit to the Albanian port of Durres, said: “They
need to be returned and we have to make sure they are returned effectively. We’ll do that — if we can — through returns hubs.”
Number 10 stressed Britain’s plan was different to the Conservatives’ Rwanda scheme, which would have seen irregular migrants sent immediately to the African state without having an asylum claim heard in the UK.
The “returns hubs” model would apply to individuals who have exhausted all legal routes to remain in the UK, speeding up removals, Downing Street said.
Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni — with whom Starmer has previously exchanged tactics to cut people smuggling — has also attempted to use Albania to help Italy tackle its irregular migration issue.
Rama, speaking alongside Starmer in a joint appearance, said on Thursday that the Italian deal was a “one off”.
The European Commission this year set out plans to allow EU member states to conclude bilateral deals with third countries to become returns hubs.
The UN refugee agency said last month that returns hubs could “appropriately be explored” provided human rights standards and international law was upheld.
Starmer admitted that a removals hub scheme was “not a silver bullet” in reducing net migration, but was part of “an armoury” of measures including arrests and agreements with other countries to tackle the flow of illicit migrants.
Downing Street said scoping work would continue in the coming months, but initial work suggested returns hubs met Britain’s legal obligations and were “cost effective, viable and meet our international obligations”.
Officials in Starmer’s government have been examining plans to set up returns hubs in Balkan countries for several months.
Under the returns hub scheme, unsuccessful asylum seekers from safe countries would be sent to processing centres in co-operating Balkan nations, which would in turn arrange for their return to their country or origin.
One UK government official said: “We are reducing opportunities for them to find further reasons to stay in the UK — such as quickly marrying someone or starting a family, which makes their removal harder.”
Starmer’s government has set out plans to speed up returns of migrants from Britain. The longer failed asylum seekers stay in Britain after their applications have been rejected, the easier it tends to be for them to mount successful legal challenges against being returned to their home country.
The Home Office returned 24,000 migrants between July of last year and March 2025, the highest number of any nine-month period since 2017.
But in spite of Starmer’s pledge to “smash the gangs” fuelling the transport of asylum seekers across the channel, 2025 has so far seen the highest levels of small boat crossings on record.
A total of 12,700 people have arrived on small boats so far this year, up 33 per cent on the same period last year.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage — whose party is ahead of Starmer’s Labour in the polls — asked the prime minister this week to declare the channel crossings a national emergency.
