MPs: Taxpayers pay price for asylum amnesty

A home affairs committee report chaired by Keith Vaz questions the performance of the UK Border Agency:

“We understand that ministers would have been unwilling to announce an amnesty for the applicants caught up in this backlog, not least because this might be interpreted as meaning that the UK was prepared more generally to relax its approach towards migration; but we consider that in practice an amnesty has taken place, at considerable cost to the taxpayer.”