Countries which refuse to ‘play ball’ and take back their migrants could face curtailed access to visas, new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced. It means citizens seeking to travel legally could be penalised if their governments fail to co-operate with deportations from Britain and other major economies. Members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance – the UK, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – were meeting in London today to discuss the plan.

Ms Mahmood said: ‘For countries that do not play ball, we’ve been talking about how we can take much more co-ordinated action between the Five Eyes countries. ‘For us, that means including possibly the cutting of visas in the future, just to say we do expect countries to play ball, play by the rules, and if one of your citizens has no right to be in our country, you do need to take them back.’ She added that the proposal was an ‘interesting space for collaboration, particularly on how we deal with countries who do not take their citizens back’.

Vowing to do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop small boat crossings, she added: ‘This is a Labour Government with Labour policy and Labour proposals. ‘We’ve been looking at this for some time. ‘It’s been discussed already across the Government and I’m very clear that there has to be a strong approach to maintaining our border, and that does mean saying to countries who do not take their citizens back that we’re not simply going to allow our laws to remain unenforced.’

However, the proposal is likely to rely on measures first announced by Tory home secretary Dame Priti Patel in 2021 , who went on to introduce legislation the following year. The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 created powers for the home secretary to introduce a ‘visa penalty provision’ against another country. It would apply if ‘the government of the country is not co-operating in relation to the return to the country from the United Kingdom of any of its nationals’, the law states.

Today’s announcement is the first outlined by Ms Mahmood whose predecessor at the Home Office, Yvette Cooper, was moved sideways to become Foreign Secretary last week, after failing to get a grip on the small boats crisis. Exact details of the proposals have yet to be announced. It remains unclear whether it will be a reciprocal deal under which citizens of a third country which failed to co-operate with Britain would also face visa restrictions to the other Five Eyes nations.

The ministers agreed a joint statement setting out how there will be ‘clear obligations for countries to accept the return of individuals who have no legal right to remain’. It comes after the number of small boat crossings reached more than 30,000 so far this year, including 1,097 on Saturday alone. Arrivals are up 37 per cent on the same point last year. Ministers are examining using military bases to house asylum seekers as PM Sir Keir Starmer struggles to get a grip on the migrant crisis.

Defence minister Luke Pollard indicated today that previously-scrapped plans to accommodate migrants at the historic Dambusters base at RAF Scampton could be back on the cards. Under the previous Conservative government almost £50million was spent on plans to turn the disused Lincolnshire site into an asylum camp. But Labour canned the project in September 2024 saying that it would not provide ‘value for money’. But today Mr Pollard said MoD military planners were reviewing all sites including Scampton as part of a new government push to close down migrant hotels.

He said: ‘The Home Office has looked at accommodation, has decided against accommodation that the Ministry of Defence offered in the past. ‘But we’re looking at all of them again at the moment. ‘We’re looking at all the military sites that the MoD has. ‘Some of those have been visited by the Home Office in the past, both under this Government and especially under the previous administration.’