Proposals to fly migrants to Ascension Island would be resisted by the Ministry of Defence and the United States government, Whitehall sources have said.
A Home Office minister confirmed the revelation in The Times on Monday that Britain’s overseas territories, including Ascension Island, were being reconsidered as a migrant processing location as part of “additional measures” being explored to tackle the small boats crisis.
Sarah Dines told Times Radio that “times change” when asked why the plans had been resurrected after being dismissed as unviable by the government in 2021.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former cabinet minister who was previously part of discussions over the plans, revealed on Monday that the plans would have cost £1 million for every migrant sent to the island.
Presently the only way to fly to the remote volcanic island in the south Atlantic Ocean is on RAF flights that have 15 seats. A government source said: “The RAF will want nothing to do with it.”
Another source who worked on previous proposals to send migrants to the island said: “The second a migrant steps on to an RAF plane they are the legal responsibility of the RAF. Given all the demands they have on them, why are they going to take it on, especially when these people will be unwilling to go?”
An RAF source said that routine deportation flights by the Home Office were operated by private charter planes because they are significantly cheaper than paying for RAF aircraft.
They said the RAF has much higher priorities, such as transporting military aid, carrying out reconnaissance work and other supportive duties to help Ukraine in its war against Russia. “The Home Office normally charters private planes because we are quite expensive. We also have other priorities, such as Ukraine,” the source said.
The prospect of chartering private or commercial aircraft for migrant flights to Ascension has been rejected because of the difficulty of landing them at the only airport on the island, a military airfield jointly operated by the Royal Air Force and the US Space Force.
A government source said the US government was “very sensitive” about the prospect of regular flights of migrants to and from its base, which provides vital radar and telemetry tracking functions for rocket launches and is home to one of six GPS monitoring sites for the air force.
A government official who worked on the feasibility study for assessing Ascension Island previously said: “The US won’t have asylum seekers on or near its very sensitive base.”
Another source cited the US air force presence on the island as a hurdle to progressing the plans previously because of concerns that migrants would have freedom of movement around the island, without restrictions or curfews.
A Whitehall source who worked on the previous proposals said Ascension had been pursued as a location because Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, and Martin Reynolds, his principal private secretary, “kept pushing it”.
To progress with the RAF plan, the Home Office would need to submit a formal request for military assistance, known as a Military Aid, to the Civil Authorities request. It would be considered on its merit, cost, whether it was feasible and whether the necessary infrastructure was in place.
However, if the proposal was pushed by the Home Office, it would probably put the department on another collision course with the MoD. The departments were most recently at loggerheads over a request by Suella Braverman, the home secretary, for 750 troops to be deployed to plug gaps at Border Force during strike action this summer. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, was reportedly frustrated about other departments always relying on the armed forces to cover for them.
There were also tensions between the departments over plans to push back migrant boats in the Channel. The Royal Navy refused to implement the policy after it was put in charge of Channel operations last year.
Last summer the departments clashed over Home Office plans to repurpose RAF Linton-on-Ouse as a migrant accommodation camp, with Wallace eventually withdrawing the offer of the base when the plans took too long to materialise, saying it was needed for other purposes.
On his GB News show on Monday Rees-Mogg explained why proposals to fly migrants to Ascension Island had been dropped in 2021. “I was involved in some of the discussions looking at this while I was a member of the government and unfortunately it would cost at least a million pounds per person you sent there.
“You’ve got to send out Portakabin residences for your builders, then you’ve got builders who have to live there while they’re doing the building, then you have to build the premises for the migrants to live in, then you’ve got to persuade people that they want to go and live on Ascension Island for long periods to run the centre.
“And the costs just went up and up. That’s why, when I was involved in the discussions, it was just thought to be impossibly expensive to do.”
A charity representing the overseas territories in Britain also rejected their use as options to tackle the small boats crisis. A spokesman for the Friends of the British Overseas Territories said the infrastructure in the often-remote areas would not support the proposal.
“Ascension Island is not fit for use as an asylum centre,” he said. “Those who know it will know it has very limited facilities in terms of infrastructure. It is primarily used by GCHQ, the BBC and Nasa and having an asylum centre on it is inappropriate.”
