The Labour government has ruled out sending Syrians who fled the Assad regime home until the country is “safe”.
This comes despite Austria’s decision to deport its Syrian refugees – which number about 100,000 – now that despot Bashar al-Assad is no longer the country’s President.
Labour’s Border Security and Asylum minister Angela Eagle BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “it’s too early” to decide whether or not the Syrian refugees in Britain should be sent home.
She told the programme: “When people have leave to remain in this country it lasts for 5 years unless it is granted indefinitely and we review the country situations after five years.
“We will be able to look at how things have happened and think about whether we ask them to return, but it’s far too early for us to know or predict how this might work. We will not be deporting anybody back to Syria. We have to make sure that Syria is safe before anybody can go back.”
The Government have however said that the UK won’t be accepting any asylum claims while Syria is in a state of flux.
Ms Eagle, 63, told Times Radio: “We have suspended our consideration of the current asylum claims – about 6,500 – until we can see what emerges from the current situation.
“If people wish to go home we’d certainly like to facilitate that, but I think it’s too early to say what will emerge from the events that have happened in the last few days.”
The Austrian Government has gone much further than the UK, however. On Monday, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner told reporters: “I have instructed the ministry to prepare an orderly return and deportation program to Syria”.
In a statement the Interior Ministry said that “the political situation in Syria has changed fundamentally and, above all, rapidly in recent days”.
The country’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer said in a post on X that his government would “support all Syrians who have found refuge in Austria and want to return to their home country”.
He went on to say that the “security situation in Syria must also be reassessed in order to make deportations possible again in the future”.
