Tories attack asylum boast
Tory home affairs spokesman David Davis has questioned the Government’s boast to have halved asylum applications.
Yesterday, the Government said it had honoured its pledge to halve the number of asylum between July and September this year.
According to official statistics, 4,225 asylum claims were registered in September this year, substantially down on the record 8,770 claims received in October 2002.
But Mr Davis said whilst he welcomed the drive to cut the number of asylum seekers, the Government’s figures should be treated with “a large amount of scepticism,” as the official figures were just the tip of the iceberg.
Mr Davis said: “How much of the fall can be explained by the vast increase in the number of work permits? How much of the fall can be explained by the Government turning a blind eye to illegal immigrants?
“Considering the Home Secretary’s own admission that he ‘does not have a clue’ how many illegal immigrants there are in Britain, we remain highly sceptical about the Government’s claims. The fall in the number of asylum seekers makes the Home Secretary’s plans to take the children of asylum seekers into care seem even more unjustified.”
Under a Conservatives administration, shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin said his Government would introduce “offshore” processing centres in a bid to slash asylum applications.
“The answer is to have the processing carried out overseas in a rapid way, and for people not to be able to come to this country unless and until they have been shown to be genuine refugees.”
Controversially, Home Secretary David Blunkett yesterday announced plans to take into custody the children of failed asylum seekers whose parents refuse a free flight home.
But The Tory leader Michael Howard said Mr Blair and Mr Blunkett had exceeded the bounds of a “civilised government.”
“It is one thing to clamp down on the misuse of benefits by those trying to claim asylum on false pretences – an approach we took in government and which the present government also adopted, however belatedly.
“But it is quite another threatening the break-up of families as an incentive for people to leave ‘voluntarily’. And to spin such suggestions in order to look tough on asylum is simply unacceptable.”
He added: “All these questions involve human beings and human feelings.
“We need a system that is fair and effective. And we need language that is measured and appropriate. Under this Government we have none of these things.
“It is, increasingly, a Government that has lost all sense of shame.”
