Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress she has made in agreeing bilateral agreements with individual EU member states which would replace measures that existed under the Dublin III Regulation.

The UK is in discussions regarding the returns of asylum seekers to European Member States; it would not be appropriate to provide a running commentary on these negotiations.

We can confirm that work is underway to secure appropriate returns agreements with safe countries. Returns may also be agreed with partner countries on a case-by-case basis without formal agreements. This happened historically, outside of the former Dublin arrangements, and will continue to be part of the approach we apply.

Our inadmissibility provisions in the Immigration Rules give us the legal basis to declare an asylum claim as inadmissible where a person has a connection to or has passed through, a safe country. The first returns on inadmissible grounds have been successfully carried out.