Small boat crossings now costing Britain £15m a day
THE Channel migrant crisis is now costing taxpayers £15million a day, estimates from the Treasury reveal.
The Home Office expects to spend £5.4billion on asylum accommodation and support this year – £4.3billion more than was budgeted for.
It has asked the Treasury for the extra cash, with most of the additional money – around £2.3billion – to be spent on hotel rooms.
Last night Labour accused the Government of blowing its £1.1billion budget by letting the asylum backlog “spiral out of control”. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “This lays bare the complete chaos the Tories have created in the asylum system.
“They are spending billions on hotel rooms because of their failure to clear the backlog of asylum applications.
“Despite promises of action from the Prime Minister, they have not delivered and now the Home Secretary has been forced to go to the Chancellor with a begging bowl because he’s bust his budget.
“Families across the country, struggling with the cost of living crisis, will rightly want to know why the Prime Minister and Home Secretary are spending millions of pounds every day on asylum accommodation rather than getting a grip of the problems they’ve created by letting the backlog spiral out of control.”
Sir Matthew Rycroft, the Home Office’s top civil servant, told the Home Affairs Select Committee in a letter published yesterday: “Both the Home Office and HM Treasury recognised that asylum was a volatile area to budget. As a result, both departments have worked together to manage additional costs.
“The Home Office has also been managing it through efficiency savings. Indeed, we are taking steps to ensure the asylum system delivers better value for money for the taxpayer, such as ending the costly use of hotels and looking at a range of alternative accommodation sites.”
Last night Minister of State for Countering Illegal Migration, Michael Tomlinson, said: “Labour have no plan to stop the boats and would take us back to square one, meaning unlimited, uncontrolled immigration.
“Whether it’s campaigning to keep violent foreign criminals on our streets, voting against tougher immigration laws dozens of times or planning to dump the Rwanda plan even when it works – Labour won’t control immigration. In fact, Sir Keir Starmer’s approach would mean an extra 250,000 migrants a year.”
THE cost of Britain’s broken asylum system has reached an eye-watering £5.4billion. It’s partly due to the number of people staying in the UK while their claims are processed, many housed in expensive hotels.
People struggling with the cost of living crisis will be shocked at the huge sums and Rishi Sunak must get to grips with this issue if he hopes to win the next election.
That means removing the incentive to come to the UK by getting flights to Rwanda off the ground, making it clear that people who arrive here illegally will not be allowed to stay.
But it also means dealing with asylum claims faster, and here the Tories are vulnerable to criticism from Labour that they have failed to ensure Home Office bureaucrats get the job done.
The cost of the asylum system is a scandal. Rishi needs to sort this out now.