Asylum Rejects Cost Taxpayers £300M (UK)

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 7-19-2005 | Philip Johnston

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Asylum rejects cost taxpayer £300m

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
(Filed: 19/07/2005)

The taxpayer picked up a bill of more than £300 million last year to support failed asylum seekers who should have been removed from the country, spending watchdogs report today.

The National Audit Office says most of this sum was spent looking after an estimated 18,500 families with dependent children who are entitled to continuing support until they leave the country.

A further £285 million was spent to support the voluntary repatriation of some failed asylum seekers or to enforce the deportation of others.

The number removed is running at less than half the total number of unsuccessful applications for political asylum despite a Government pledge that removals should exceed rejections.

Last year, 12,100 principal applicants were sent home yet the number of failed applications over the 12-month period was 25,800.

An analysis by the NAO suggests that as many as 283,500 failed asylum seekers who should have been repatriated remain in the country because of the slow pace of removals. In many cases, these are now impossible because families have put down roots, their home countries will not have them back or they are from countries that now belong to the EU.

Between 1994 and May 2004 a maximum of 363,000 applications for asylum were unsuccessful but over the same period only 79,500 failed asylum applicants were removed.

Recently, a study commissioned by the Home Office estimated that between 310,000 and 570,000 illegal immigrants may be in the country. These included failed asylum seekers, clandestine arrivals and visa overstayers. Although ministers sought to maintain this was simply ''a guess'' the NAO analysis indicates that a figure of around 500,000 is about right - and does not include hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers whose applications are still being processed, many of which will be turned down.

The NAO says accurate estimates of the numbers involved are difficult to obtain because the Home Office does not keep proper records of who has left. Ministers have often maintained that many failed asylum seekers may have gone home voluntarily but today's report finds little evidence that this is so. It also finds that the option of encouraging asylum seekers to return home by offering financial assistance has not been championed with sufficient enthusiasm.

The report says: ''Increasing the number of voluntary departures by, for example, better promoting the options available to those due for removal and by establishing better contacts with community groups, could lead to savings of nearly £10 million for every additional 1,000 asylum applicants choosing to return voluntarily.''