UN should ‘butt out’ of Tory plans on asylum
TORY MPs have warned the United Nations’ refugee agency must “butt out” of the UK’s asylum system.
It follows a UN report that claimed to find significant failings.
The UNHCR said it had either seen or been informed about “numerous risks to the welfare of asylum seekers”, with trafficking cases overlooked and victims of torture being detained.
Lee Anderson MP, deputy chairman of the Conservatives, said: “If the UNHCR are so concerned about the welfare of people then maybe they should be doing more to stop the Channel crossings and encourage the illegal migrants to stay in one of the six or seven safe countries they have travelled through.
Errors
“Settling in Rwanda is much safer than crossing the Channel.”
The UNHCR’s report said rules to make an individual’s asylum claim “inadmissible” if they came through a safe third country and the plan to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda made the reliability and fairness of the screening system more important.
It warned that making decisions on who is sent to Rwanda using the same screening process “will lead to errors, causing distress to individuals, delays, and well-founded litigation”.
Jonathan Gullis, Tory MP, said: “The UNHCR needs to butt out of this.
“Stopping smuggling gangs profiteering off human lives is crucial and to do that we need to deter people from choosing to make this dangerous and unnecessary journey from France.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “This report is based on an audit that took place in 2021 and early 2022.
“Since then, significant improvements have been made to the processing of small boats arrivals.”