British Airways has been condemned for cooperating with the removal of refused asylum seekers persecuted for their sexuality while sponsoring the UK’s biggest gay pride event.

A letter signed by LGBT rights campaigners, performers and businesses as well as several MPs calls on BA, a sponsor of Brighton Pride, to stop accepting contracts from the Home Office for immigration removals.

“The presence of companies that profit off deportations is an affront to the vision of freedom Pride represents,” the letter says. “It is an added insult that many of those deported on British Airways are LGBTQIA+ people who should be marching with us at the parade but instead are brutally rounded up and ejected from the UK to face poverty, persecution and in some cases death.”

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Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, said the Home Office accepted only a quarter of applications for asylum based on sexual orientation, “despite applications coming from some of the most homophobic regimes in the world”.

Abbott, one of the signatories of the letter, said: “Any airline that engages with the Home Office’s current regime is quite clearly putting their profits ahead of basic human rights.”

Other signatories include the Labour MPs David Lammy and Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Matt Beard, executive director of the global LGBT activist group All Out, Zita Holbourne, national chair of Barac UK, and Mike Jackson, a co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.

BA said it was proud to support Brighton Pride and it had a legal duty under the Immigration Act 1971 to remove individuals when asked to do so by the Home Office. “Not fulfilling this obligation amounts to breaking the law,” it said.

“We are not given any personal information about the individual being deported, including their sexuality or why they are being deported,” the airline said. “The process we follow is a full risk assessment with the Home Office, which considers the safety of the individual, our customers and crew on the flight.”



Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister, said captains and airlines who refused to carry out immigration removals could face criminal charges, but in practice it was likely that the government and airlines had more pragmatic arrangements. The Guardian understands that the Home Office has contracts with airlines to carry out removals.



Virgin Atlantic said last month it would no longer take involuntary deportees, after facing pressure from LGBT activists before London Pride. Asked to clarify Virgin’s position regarding the law, a spokeswoman told the Guardian this meant it had ended its “contractual agreement [with the Home Office] to fly involuntary deportees”.

However, she said, there were “certain circumstances” where the law required airlines to carry deportees. “We will always comply with the law and will continue to comply with this legislation,” the spokeswoman said.

A spokeswoman for the airline later said it had never been forced to fly any removals under the Immigration Act.

The Home Office would not answer questions about the exercise of its powers to force airlines to deport individuals, nor about its contractual agreements with airlines to fly immigration removals. It said the UK was a world leader in handling asylum claims based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and no one found to have been persecuted would be returned to their country of origin.

“However, where someone is found not to need international protection and has no other basis to remain in the UK, we do expect them to leave,” a spokesman said. “We work in collaboration with airlines to ensure any facilitated voluntary or enforced removals are carried out effectively, efficiently and with the welfare of returnees and other passengers at the heart of the process.”