Downing Street Says » Special Envoy

» Monday, January 15, 2007

Special Envoy

Asked why the Prime Minister had appointed Lord Triesman as Special Envoy, the PMOS said that as people knew, returning people from abroad, and failed migrants, was one of the Government’s priorities, and what we wanted to encourage was other countries to accept these people. Therefore, what we needed was a Special Envoy to work in conjunction with the Home Office with foreign governments to significantly increase the number of people returned to countries who were in the UK illegally. We also wanted to open up new routes to countries from which the UK had experienced large numbers of failed asylum seekers and had not been able to return them. The Special Envoy would review the existing arrangements and try to ensure that they were efficient, effective and sustainable.

Asked which countries were the problem ones, and what did the new routes mean, the PMOS replied that what they meant was trying to get countries that in the past had not traditionally accepted people back to start accepting them back. In terms of detailed lists of "bad guys", the PMOS said it would not the best diplomatic way to proceed.

Asked if those countries would be offered any sort of financial incentive, the PMOS replied that was not part of the plan as he understood it.

Asked to confirm if Lord Triesman would remain a Foreign Office minister, the PMOS said that he would.

Asked if this was separate from the Memorandum of Understanding talks that were still ongoing, the PMOS replied that they were obviously a part of it all. We would continue to go down as many tracks as possible to try and achieve this objective.

Asked who was responsible for returning people, ie was the Home Office, or the Foreign Office, the PMOS said that it was one of those responsibilities which went in both directions, as there were different aspects of it. That was partly why Lord Triesman had been appointed to this role.

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