FOND of touring Britain by campervan, Danish government minister Kaare Dybvad offers a simple solution to help end our asylum chaos.
“People who come to the UK illegally should be made to return to their country of origin,” he tells me. “It’s so important that you implement this.”
Liberal Denmark — known for its generous welfare state — manages to successfully remove 95 per cent of its rejected asylum seekers.
Along with a series of other radical — some have called them “cruel” — measures, it has helped this nation to slam its borders shut.
Just 1,490 people applied for asylum in the prosperous Scandinavian country in the first nine months of this year.
On September 6, 1,101 migrants crossed the English Channel in dinghies to Britain on that day alone.
Little wonder, perhaps, that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood this week announced a series of tough new migration plans based on the Danish model.
So how has the land of Carlsberg, Lego and Ozempic managed to turn its asylum tide — and could similar policies work in Britain?
Anglophile Employment Minister Dybvad — who also held the Immigration brief for more than three years — explains his nation’s uncompromising stance.
Speaking in the shadow of the Danish parliament, he said: “If you’re a refugee you can stay here until there is peace in your home country, then you need to return.
“If you want to come to work or study legally, you can do that. But if you are coming as an economic migrant, which is the majority of people arriving irregularly on boats in the Mediterranean, then you’re not allowed to stay. You’re told to leave.”
Assets seized
Those with rejected claims are sent to camps like the old Sjaelsmark Barracks, set in bleak farmland some half an hour’s drive north of the Danish capital Copenhagen.
Austere and surrounded by 10ft- high fencing, it no longer houses children after criticism that its conditions were like “an open prison”.
Minister Dybvad, 41, explains the removal process: “If you haven’t left within a few months you’re put in a return centre until you decide to leave the country.
“That means you can’t live a normal life. You can’t have a job, you can’t be part of the education system if you’re an adult.
“You can’t participate in normal society because we don’t want people to live here if they’re here illegally. If you don’t follow the rules decided in our parliament, then you need to go.”
Britain is hugely ineffective at such removals. In the year ending in June 2025, 58,000 asylum claims were refused but fewer than 11,000 people were removed from the UK in the same period.
Denmark — where hygge, or cosiness, is a national obsession — has also enacted policies that appear to discourage some migrants from coming in the first place.
If you haven’t left within a few months you’re put in a return centre until you decide to leave the country. That means you can’t live a normal life. You can’t have a job, you can’t be part of the education system if you’re an adult
Minister Dybvad, on the removal process
Asylum is temporary and regularly reviewed. Permanent residence can only be granted after someone has lived here for at least eight years.
Those applying must meet stringent criteria, including being able to speak Danish, have a job and not have a criminal conviction.
Refugees may have to wait more than three years before applying to bring their families to Denmark.
Asylum seekers are offered around £18,000 plus travel expenses to return home. The full-faced burqa is banned, while asylum seekers arriving in Denmark can have assets over around £1,200 seized to help pay their bills.
Threats that this might include personal valuables led to it being labelled the Jewellery Law. Meanwhile, social housing estates where more than 50 per cent of residents are deemed “non-Western migrants or their descendants” can be demolished or sold off by councils.
‘Parallel societies’
This so-called Ghetto Law is now seen as an attempt by the Danish government to prevent “parallel societies” developing.
The anti-asylum policies have been shepherded not by a far-right populist government but by a centre left-led coalition since 2019.
Indeed, Minister Dybvad — who has enjoyed trips to Yorkshire, Somerset and Dorset — believes his Social Democratic Party’s hardline rhetoric has seen off the far-right Danish People’s Party.
“I think that’s definitely why the far-right parties are so small in Denmark compared to most European countries,” he added.
“When centre-left parties side with affluent, well-educated people instead of working-class communities in migration debates, they’re fundamentally killing themselves.”
Mahmood hopes adopting some of Denmark’s hardline policies will help stop the challenge posed in Britain by Nigel Farage’s poll-leading Reform UK.
Just over three miles north of the bustling centre of Copenhagen is the Mjolnerparken estate, which has felt the brunt of the Government’s “parallel society” policy.
Once plagued by the violent Brothers And Soldiers gang, it was also the childhood home of jihadist Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, who murdered two innocents in Denmark in 2015.
The estate was placed on the “Ghetto List” of neighbourhoods where the government aims to bring “non-Western” populations below 50 per cent.
The policy has been deeply controversial.
We’re not given the same rights as everyone else only because we are born in non-Western countries and our kids have parents who are born in non-Western countries
Muhammad Aslam, is Chairman of the Mjolnerparken Residents Association
Muhammad Aslam, who is Chairman of the Mjolnerparken Residents Association, told me: “My father arrived in the Sixties, when the Danish government invited a lot of people to work here.
“In 1975 the rest of the family came and for 40 years we lived in these apartments before we were forced out.
‘Ghetto areas’
“We’re not given the same rights as everyone else only because we are born in non-Western countries and our kids have parents who are born in non-Western countries.”
Lawyer Eddie Khawaja, who is representing over a dozen residents taking action at the European Court of Justice, said Mjonerparken residents have been targeted based on “how people look, what religion they are and their ethnicity”.
Eddie added: “The government talks about ghetto areas and ghetto inhabitants, which stigmatises them.”
But Minister Dybvad called the parallel societies policy “a great success”. “Some of the areas have really improved to a large degree,” he added.
“We’ve seen a decline in crime. We’ve seen a large increase in people in these places who are working because you can only move there if you have a job or you’re a student.”
And he is also adamant that the widely labelled Jewellery Law is morally acceptable.
“Our system is based on the notion that if you have money then you should use it before you apply for public support,” he insisted.
“And that’s not only for foreigners, that’s also for people living in Denmark their whole life. There’s been no confiscation of jewellery in the nine years that this legislation has been in place. It’s fundamentally not about taking people’s valuables.
“But if you arrive here with, say, £10,000 in your hand, then I think it’s perfectly fair to tell people to use it first before they apply for money from public coffers.”
Some of the areas have really improved to a large degree
Minister Dybvad
Shabana Mahmood — seen by some as future PM material — did not include a Ghetto or Jewellery Law in her new Denmark-style policies.
Insisting that “illegal migration is tearing our country apart”, she did promise to make asylum temporary, initially for just 30 months.
Like in Denmark, applicants will be returned to their home countries if they become safe.
Those who arrive by dinghy or lorry will have to wait 20 years before they can apply for permanent residence.
And countries that refuse to take back failed applicants face visa bans for their nationals.
But will it be enough to see off Reform UK?
Respected commentator Christian Foldager, 37, from Danish newspaper Weekendavisen, warned: “There is a difference in the pull factor between the two countries.
“Britain is such a big society and you speak English, and no one in the world but us speaks Danish.
“So any migrant who wants to come to Europe to work will probably have Britain as their number one choice, simply because many know the language.”
But he believes that if Labour adopts much of the Danish asylum model, it will lead to a significant drop in numbers.
The question is will Labour — some of whose backbenchers are fiercely critical of the plan and have called it an attempt to “appease” angry voters — have the political will to see it through?