LONDON (Reuters) – The British government came under fire on Thursday after newspapers revealed it had been studying whether to send asylum seekers to remote locations, ranging from disused ferries and oil rigs to camps in Moldova or Papua New Guinea.

The main opposition Labour Party said the plans, revealed in leaked papers published by several newspapers, showed the government was “lurching from one inhumane and impractical idea to another” and had “lost control and all sense of compassion”.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office has so far declined to comment on the details, saying only that it was looking “at what a whole host of other countries do, in order to form a plan for the United Kingdom”.

The proposals, which newspapers said had been studied by Britain’s Home Office, or interior ministry, include building a camp for asylum seekers at Ascension Island, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic.

The top Home Office civil servant, Matthew Rycroft, who faced questions over the reports before a parliamentary committee, said discussions had taken place “in the realm of the brainstorming stage of a future policy”.

Immigration has been a hot issue for years in Britain, and one of the major drivers of the successful 2016 referendum campaign to leave the EU. But sending asylum seekers to a remote location would be a big departure for a European country.

The country best known for housing asylum seekers off shore is Australia, which has sent people intercepted at sea to camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea for processing since 2012, a practice condemned by rights groups and the United Nations.

British opposition politicians, who accuse Johnson’s government of botching the coronavirus crisis and Brexit talks, highlighted practical hurdles. Labour’s Meg Hillier, noting that Ascension Island has no functioning air strip, said the proposal was “in the realms of cloud cuckoo-land”.

British government ministers say they are searching for a solution to an increase in asylum seekers crossing the Channel from France in unsafe boats.

Human rights groups accuse the government of exaggerating the problem to win support from voters. They say the numbers reaching Britain by sea, about 5,000 this year, are tiny compared with migrant flows in many other places.

The Guardian newspaper reported that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Downing Street office was driving the discussion, and that it had asked officials to consider the option of sending asylum seekers to Moldova, Morocco or Papua New Guinea.

The Times said other ideas being considered included putting asylum seekers on disused ferries or oil rigs moored off the coast, or building a processing centre on a Scottish island – a suggestion rejected by Scotland’s devolved government.

“They can rest assured that any proposal to treat human beings like cattle in a holding pen will be met with the strongest possible opposition from me,” Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Twitter.

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Peter Graff)

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