ASYLUM SYSTEM NEEDS RULES AND INTEGRITY
On Monday, the closure is expected to start of the Calais “Jungle”, a place that has become a byword for human misery. Back in May, the British government pledged to give asylum to thousands of unaccompanied minors – a pledge that many would regard as decent and humane. But asylum policy has to be both compassionate and informed by common sense. The arrival in Britain of men who appear older than 18 has sounded alarm bells among the public.
The concern is justified. Home Office figures show that in the year to September 2015, nearly two thirds of child refugees whose ages were challenged by officials turned out to be over 18. This has profound consequences for everyone involved. It is the local taxpayers who foot the bill for schools and social care that, in some cases, may not be appropriate – and putting adults into places reserved for children is obviously full of risk.
Moreover, the Government has been warned about the potential problems on a number of occasions. Today, we reveal that the Local Government Association (LGA) offered to send some of its social workers – well trained in the metrics of age assessment – to examine child asylum claimants before they arrive in the UK. The LGA says the offer was ignored for three months. Only on Friday, far too late, the Home Office appears to have finally sought that help. And three years ago, in a damning report written by Border Force staff, ministers were told of adults posing as children.
The Government could have looked abroad to see the trouble coming, too. Sweden accepted 35,000 child asylum seekers in 2015. Schools have been overburdened; adults claiming to be children have committed terrible crimes. Now the Swedish migration agency has cast doubt on the ages of 70 per cent of those claiming to be aged 15 to 17, and Stockholm has begun the process of introducing rigorous and controversial age tests.
The British people want to see children who need asylum helped to settle in the UK. This is a tolerant, generous nation – as demonstrated in the vast sum we donate to help Syrian refugees in the Middle East. But the system of asylum has to have integrity. Exploitation leads to criminality and may turn popular opinion against a worthy endeavour. It is not unreasonable to raise questions about the process: it is the responsible thing to do. We hope that the Government learns from its mistakes.