Official figures have revealed that public spending on the asylum system has quadrupled under this Conservative majority government, as Rishi Sunak prepares to discuss ways of reducing the number of people seeking asylum with other European leaders.
Figures have been unearthed showing the amount spent on the asylum system increased from £550m in 2012 to £2.1bn in 2021.
The Conservative Party has claimed a further substantial increase in 2022, as slower asylum decisions and Suella Braverman’s last-minute decision-making led to an increase in costly hotel use.
Asylum spending figures taken from the first financial year of the Tory-led coalition government in 2010 showed that £567,856,116 was spent processing asylum claims and accommodation. By 2021-22 that had risen to a breathtaking £2,115,584,829.
It is expected to increase further when the figures for 2022-23 are published, as recent estimates show that an additional £2.4bn from the overseas aid budget was used to support the asylum system on top of expected costs.
Last week, the government announced that the asylum backlog had reached a new record high of 173,000.
Over the past year, only 1% of small boat asylum cases have had a decision made. Since 2011, the productivity rate of Home Office caseworkers has fallen from fourteen decisions a month in 2011 and eighteen in 2016 to just five a month in the last financial year.
The figures have been released as the prime minister prepares to discuss border security at a gathering of leaders at the European Political Community (EPC) in Moldova.
Initially envisaged by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as a platform for unity across the wider European front, the EPC will bring together the leaders of the 27 EU member states, as well as 19 other countries, including the UK, Ukraine, Turkey and Moldova’s Balkan neighbours.
The prime minister will announce the start of negotiations on a new returns agreement with Moldova and confirm that a similar deal struck with Georgia has entered into force. Sunak will also announce a partnership with Bulgaria to help officials destroy the business model of people-smuggling gangs.
We will likely see no tangible results from yet another meeting of these European leaders. We hear a lot of talk and promises that lead to nothing but increasingly large numbers of migrants streaming across the EU’s borders, whereupon we see the knock-on effect on illegal migration to the UK.
The EU needs to stop the migrants before they enter the EU jurisdiction. The borders need a higher level of security, with anyone found to be attempting to breach that security immediately expelled back to where they have come from. Support for nations on the EU’s borders, such as Ukraine and Turkey, should be contingent on them taking back those who have falsely claimed asylum and used their countries as springboards to attempt to breach the borders of the EU.
The same should be done with foreign aid to the home countries of these economic migrants, with the aid linked to their willingness to take their citizens back.
We constantly see border patrol vessels from Frontex and EU countries’ navies and coastguards being used as taxis to pick up “migrants” in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas and take them to EU territory. This must stop, with those vessels instead being used to return these “migrants” to wherever they set off from. Agencies like Frontex need to expand their abilities to have dedicated facilities to transport illegal migrants immediately away from the EU’s borders.
The few genuine asylum seekers who need temporary protection should be set up on the EU borders and given temporary accommodation in EU-funded facilities. These facilities should not be within EU jurisdiction.
The amount of effort needed to achieve stability and security on the borders of the EU will likely be too much for the rubber-stamping bureaucrats in the European Parliament. The manpower and logistics combined with the required changes in EU law will also likely be impossible, given the lack of will and resolve from national and EU leadership.
Sadly, the results of this meeting will be nothing like what has been described here. The numbers of “migrants” arriving in the EU and the shores of the UK will only continue to grow and strain not only the already-pressurised public budget, but also social cohesion all across Europe.
