Shabana Mahmood hits back at Andy Burnham in Brexit small boats blame game: ‘We hardly returned anyone!’

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has hit back at Andy Burnham's claim that Brexit caused the small boats crisis after the UK lost access to the European Union's returns agreement.

Ms Mahmood, who voted to remain in the 2016 referendum, told GB News that Brussels is still struggling to adopt a workable returns accord.

The Prime Minister had suggested the UK's departure from the Dublin Convention negatively impacted Britain's ability to curb Channel crossings.

"The reason the small boats crisis has arisen is because we can't return people, and people know we can't do that in the same way that we used to be able to do," Mr Burnham said last month.

Speaking to The People's Channel last night, Ms Mahmood distanced herself from Mr Burnham's remarks by admitting the UK "hardly returned anyone" as an EU member.

She said: "Under the Dublin Convention, we didn't return very many people either.

"Most EU states don't return people from within the European Union [because] pretty much everyone's in the same boat.

"We all want to remove people from our territory [and] nobody really wants to receive people into their territory.

"That's something that the EU is still working on as well, because that system of returns within the EU isn't up and running or working, and it's not something that was available to us even under the Dublin regulation."

Home Office data released in the final years of the UK's membership of the EU shows 3,830 migrants were transferred into Britain, while just 1,253 were removed.

The figures appear worse than the now-defunct "one-in, one-out" deal, which returned around 1,500 small boat migrants to France and accepted around 1,500 asylum seekers with links to Britain.

Despite the data showing the UK's ability to remove migrants remained limited as an EU member, Mr Burnham opted to borrow Sir Keir Starmer's Brexit-bashing assessment in his first conference speech as Labour leader.

The Prime Minister also used his Brexit warning to point out the UK no longer has access to the EU's migration data-sharing processes.

Eurodac, to which the UK had full access before leaving the EU, stores the fingerprints of asylum seekers and certain irregular migrants, allowing authorities to identify previous asylum applications in other member states.

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Ms Mahmood appeared to agree with the Prime Minister's assessment on cross-continent data-sharing.

She told GB News: "There is no doubt, and the Prime Minister is right about this, that losing access to those databases across the European Union has had an impact on our ability."

The Home Secretary and Prime Minister have both discussed pursuing a more collaborative data-sharing relationship.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Burnham said: "One of the most positive aspects of my meeting with President von der Leyen in New York was her openness to the conversation about restoring data sharing on immigration across Europe."

Meanwhile, Ms Mahmood said: "One of the things I talked to my EU counterparts about is having more collaboration and data sharing so that we can also track the same people when they're coming into our country."

However, Ms Mahmood argued the EU is still struggling to implement a successful cross-bloc returns agreement.

"We're watching their EU Asylum Pact that they have between them with interest," the Home Secretary said.

"But, at the moment, there are no meaningful returns at scale between EU countries."

A row between No10 and the Home Office has been brewing since February, when Ms Mahmood defied Sir Keir during an appearance at the Home Affairs Select Committee.

She said: “Is Brexit responsible for the boats? I don’t think that’s true.”

The Home Secretary made a similar intervention just hours after Mr Burnham pointed to the Dublin Convention last week.

She said: "Whilst there is greater cooperation on data sharing and so on, the position is that everyone wants to remove people from their countries, but nobody actually wants to receive them."

The split between the Home Office and No10 has divided Labour MPs.

Labour’s sole Brexit-backing MP, Graham Stringer, previously told GB News that Ms Mahmood was right on the EU's botched returns agreement.

However, a Labour minister insisted there was no difference between the pair on the issue.

More than 10,000 small boat migrants have crossed the Channel since Mr Burnham became Prime Minister, GB News revealed over the weekend.

Mr Burnham’s total now stands at 10,139, an average of 97.5 a day.

Labour’s overall tally since the 2024 General Election has reached 87,322, around the same size as Grimsby or Guildford.

Despite Labour's daily average sitting at almost double the Tories', Ms Mahmood’s record compares favourably.

Some 35,077 have crossed since she became Home Secretary in September 2025, an average of 83 a day.

That is 32 per cent lower than under Yvette Cooper, 21 per cent lower than under now-Reform UK MP Suella Braverman and 5 per cent lower than during Grant Shapps’s six-day stint

However, it is 24 per cent higher than under James Cleverly and 44 per cent higher than under Priti Patel.

Small boat arrivals remain almost 40 per cent lower in 2026 so far compared to the same point in 2025.

A No10 spokesman said: "Brexit has weakened our ability to address the small boats issue and made things easier for the criminal gangs... The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister are in lockstep on tackling illegal migration."

When asked about what the UK missed out on by leaving the EU, the Prime Minister's official spokesman added: "We lost access to the fingerprint database, and we lost access to the returns deal.

"Losing those tools has weakened our control at the border, but we are making progress in tackling small boat crossings."