MATT GOODWIN: Don’t be fooled …the Danish immigration crackdown that Labour wants to emulate has already been foiled by human rights judges

Tomorrow, Labor Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will announce that she has found the holy grail of immigration policy. He will unveil a series of initiatives that he will claim will greatly reduce illegal immigration without requiring the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

As The Mail on Sunday reported last week, inspiration comes from Denmark, where the center-left coalition has managed to reduce asylum applications to the lowest level in 40 years.

It looks like the Danes have been keeping this secret all along. But all is not as it seems in their impressive record on illegal immigration. And predictably, Keir Starmer’s incompetent Labor Government will try to replicate it as crispy as the nation’s pastries.

Ten years ago Denmark, like Britain now, was a magnet for asylum seekers. However, this number, which peaked at 37 asylum applications per 10,000 people in 2015, dropped to 4 per 10,000 people last year; This is only one fifth of the EU average.

How? Starting in 2016, Denmark introduced temporary residence permits, which allow refugees to stay in the country only for as long as their home country is deemed dangerous by the government.

A version of this will be unveiled by Mahmood tomorrow, but as the centerpiece of his grand plan, it will fail. Does he really think that immigrants won’t be tempted by the UK’s buffet of free accommodation, healthcare and a weekly allowance if they can only benefit from it during the years their country remains at war?

Any attempt to copy Denmark’s draconian ‘anti-ghetto’ laws will be out of Mahmood’s mouth. To assimilate the newcomers, the Danish government may rehouse immigrants away from estates where more than 50 percent of the population is non-Western.

They can also break up existing estates, resulting in what the Danes call ‘parallel communities’, where migrants live only among their own kind.

Migrants enter the sea to board a small boat in Gravelines on August 12, 2025

Given that Labor backbenchers need to smell salt every time the words ‘welfare’ and ‘reform’ are uttered, they are unlikely to approve a law that would allow the Government to raze council estates such as Birmingham, Bradford or London’s Tower Hamlets.

The party also does not approve of the confiscation of immigrants’ assets (horror); It does not cover their food and shelter expenses. Those who arrive in Denmark with personal belongings worth more than £1,200 are doing just that. Or at least it’s supposed to be that way; In six years, only 17 people have surrendered their valuables.

A much more effective deterrent factor for the Danes has been the requirement for immigrants and their dependents to learn Danish. Once you have settled in Denmark, if you want to bring a partner to the country, you must both pass a Danish language test.

Of course, while English has become the world’s ‘default’ language, Danish is not widely spoken, meaning Britain will struggle to deter asylum seekers in this way.

However, it should also be noted that, according to the latest census, there are still more than a million people in the UK who do not speak English well or at all.

Other obligations for spouses include that they must be over 24 years of age and that the principal immigrant has been living in Denmark without claiming benefits for at least three years and has no criminal convictions within the last ten years.

This is a high bar that I dare the Home Secretary to set, because the need for a fundamental transformation of the UK’s immigration policy could not be clearer.

The cost of housing asylum seekers and illegal immigrants in hotels has risen to £15.3bn over a decade, we have recently learned.

The claim that immigration helps boost our economy has been fatally undermined by figures revealing there are 1.2 million foreign-born claimants living on Universal Credit, at an annual cost to taxpayers of £7.5 billion.

Some nationalities, such as immigrants from Congo, Iraq and Afghanistan, are four times more likely to claim Universal Credit than UK nationals.

As we’ve seen on taxes and benefits, Starmer quickly backs down when Labor supporters threaten to rebel

Iranian Amin Abedi Mofrad, who came to England on a small boat, was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison for raping a 15-year-old girl in Oxford, where he was staying in an asylum hotel.

And it seems like every week we learn of a new crime committed by those to whom the country offers free housing; The last of these was 35-year-old Iranian Amin Abedi Mofrad, who was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison for raping a 15-year-old girl in Oxford, where he stayed in an asylum hotel after arriving in Britain on a small boat.

But it would be foolish to think that Labor actually has the courage to implement Denmark’s tougher policies.

Those in the background have already condemned Mahmood’s change of direction. According to Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome, Denmark’s policies are ‘undeniably racist’ and ‘more comfortable with the far right than any centre-left government’.

As we have seen on taxes and benefits, when Labor backbenchers threaten to rebel, Starmer quickly backs down.

Even if our own government could discover the will to implement Danish policies, that does not mean they would be as successful here as they are in Denmark. Copenhagen has reduced the number of asylum seekers, mostly by directing them to other European countries.

It is also wrong to think that the Danish system does not contradict the ECHR. When illegal immigrants appeal the decision, they often win, just as in Britain.

In 2022, the Danish government decided that the areas around Damascus, the Syrian capital, were safe enough for refugees to return and withdrew their permission to stay in Denmark.

Some went to seek asylum, in most cases to other European countries, but others remained in limbo. They are no longer allowed to work, rent a house or send their children to school in Denmark, but they continue to be supported by Danish taxpayers in ‘return centres’.

The ECHR also eased Denmark’s restrictions on asylum seekers bringing family members and blocked the deportation of foreign criminals, as it did in Britain. In one case, an Afghan who came to Denmark with his parents as a child was given a deportation order after being sentenced to two years in prison for violent crimes.

However, the ECHR blocked his deportation, partly on the grounds that he managed to impregnate a woman during his detention. The ‘right to family life’ rules are valid in Denmark, as in England.

Mahmood and Starmer may be tempted to think they can solve Britain’s acute illegal immigration problem without withdrawing from the ECHR, which is almost sacred to the Prime Minister, given his background as a human rights lawyer. But they are deceiving themselves.

This ‘Denmark’s light’ approach will be no more effective than the much-derided ‘One In, One Out’ agreement with France. It’s a gimmick that grabs the headlines but does nothing to move the dial.

If it were serious about reducing illegal immigration, Labor would withdraw from the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act and finally put Britons where they belong, which is the first.