I know the Home Office is hiding the real costs of asylum

Telegraph

5 hours ago

Our immigration system sometimes feels like an organised conspiracy against the British people. For decades, the public have voted for drastic reductions in immigration, only to see the numbers go up and up. For years, they have demanded an end to the Channel crossings and the asylum crisis, only to see politicians refuse to do what is necessary.
When governments do move in the right direction, they are undermined by weak enforcement, litigious and often publicly-funded NGOs, activist judges who are often former claimant lawyers in the immigration tribunals, and human rights laws that make securing the border an impossible job. Not that governments should be let off the hook: ultimately our constitution allows Parliament to change the law.
The last Conservative government had the right idea to stop the Channel crossings. Deporting every migrant coming to Britain without permission – to their home country or a third country like Rwanda – is ultimately the only way to end this wave of illegal immigration. But the plan was never going to work unless we left the European Convention on Human Rights, and that government – with exceptions like Robert Jenrick, who resigned for this reason as immigration minister – was unwilling to go that far.
Immigration is the biggest single reason my party is in the predicament it is in, and we must be brutally honest about our record and radical in our solutions if we are ever to win back the trust of the British people.
Labour's approach, however, is even worse. They abandoned the policy of deporting migrants who cross the Channel and are now rushing illegal immigrants through the asylum system. Approvals are up, and once asylum is granted, the migrants are hidden in the social housing and welfare systems, where it is impossible to track their costs. The Office for Budget Responsibility calculates that the average 'low-wage migrant worker' arriving aged 25 will cost the British taxpayer over £400,000 by the time they reach 81.
Ministers muddy the waters by claiming they are deporting record numbers of people. But this is dishonest. First, the numbers they use include migrants who leave voluntarily. And second, only about three per cent of Channel crossers are ever removed.
It's no surprise that Channel crossings are up – by almost 50 per cent – under Labour. And the court injunction won by the Conservative council in Epping, which stops a local hotel being used to house migrants, throws the Government's policy into further chaos. But while the injunction is undoubtedly a clear victory for the local residents – vilified as 'far Right' by those who should know better – it may yet mean more trouble for communities affected by 'asylum dispersal'.
Those hoping for a policy of detention and deportation will soon be disappointed. Human rights laws can prevent deportation, and Labour reject automatic deportation for those who cross the Channel. So the migrants will still end up housed in towns and cities across the country.
There are already more than twice as many migrants in private housing, including houses of multiple occupancy, than in hotels. And accommodation like this may suit a government as cynical as this one better than hotels. Individual houses provide less of a focal point for protest than hotels, and the Home Office, working with Serco, has been building up its property portfolio for some time.
With 1.33 million people on local waiting lists for social housing, this is a serious breach of the fundamental deal offered by citizenship. Foreign nationals – who broke into our country knowing it was illegal – are being offered housing that is not available to British families in need. And the unfortunate residents who live nearby are very deliberately kept in the dark.
As an MP elected last year, I have been horrified by the secrecy with which ministers handle housing migrants. When I asked why MPs are not informed about migrants being moved into their constituencies, the immigration minister said we would only be told when it is 'lawful, proportional and necessary.' In other words: never.
After the disorder last year, we learnt from press leaks that an internal government paper had said asylum hotels had 'stoked community tensions' and were a 'critical factor behind the summer riots.' Yet when I used the Freedom of Information Act to request a copy of the paper, the Government said while the information was held, it would not be released because ministers needed a 'safe space' to think about policy.
The truth is that Labour's immigration policy means surrender and secrecy. The illegal immigrants crossing the Channel will keep on coming, Labour will keep granting them asylum, and ministers will do everything to keep the consequences – for housing, for crime, for the cost to the taxpayer – a secret from you.