Honeymoon over for Rishi Sunak as furious Tories demand end to Channel migrant crossing ‘farce’

Ministers were told to end the ‘farce’ around Channel migrant crossings today amid fury at the cost of putting up asylum seekers for months while claims are processed.

Taxpayers are paying nearly £7million a day to house tens of thousands of people after the Home Office managed to complete just 4 per cent of asylum claims last year.  

Some 96 per cent of asylum applications submitted by migrants making the journey in 2021 are still outstanding, Dan O’Mahoney, Border Force clandestine threat commander, told the Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday. 

In the wake of the revelation, Labour tried to bring Home Secretary Suella Braverman to  the Commons to answer questions about conditions at one immigration site, Manston in Kent. 

But she sent Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick  – who has been in the job two days – to face MPs’ wrath instead. Conservative former minister Sir Christopher Chope asked: ‘What is the target date for ending this farce?’

And Sir Robert Syms, Conservative MP for Poole, said: ‘Most of my constituents, or many of them, go to France on holiday because it’s safe and a nice place to go and they are perplexed with these people coming in because they’re creating profits for criminal gangs and I think we do need to crackdown on this particular area.’

He asked if Mr Jenrick would visit his French counterpart soon, with the minister replying: ‘I will be going to France to meet my opposite number and to meet other elected officials both in Pas-de-Calais and in French government and I do think there is an opportunity afforded to us by the arrival of the new Prime Minister to improve relationships and see what further action we might be able to do together.’

In the wake of the revelation, Labour tried to bring Home Secretary Suella Braverman to the Commons to answer questions about conditions at one immigration site, Manston in Kent. But she sent Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick – who has been in the job two days – to face MPs’ wrath instead.

A total of 28,526 people tried to cross the Channel in small boats last year. Pictured are migrants on the beach of Gravelines, near Dunkirk, on October 12 

Migrants are brought to shore at Dungeness by the RNLI in two lifeboats on October 12 

Britain could offer Albanians a ‘bespoke route’ to have their immigration cases heard quicker in a bid to ‘grip’ the number of arrivals, the Government has said.

Mr Jenrick said the proposals under consideration could make it easier to return unsuccessful applicants to Albania, with talks expected with Tirana and the French to ease the ‘serious’ situation.

MPs previously heard that some 12,000 Albanians have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel so far this year, of whom 10,000 are single, adult men. This is compared with 50 in 2020.

Mr Jenrick said he will be ‘giving a lot of thought in the coming days’ on what can be done in conjunction with the Albanian authorities.

He told the Commons: ‘Around a quarter of those individuals who crossed the short strait this year alone have come from Albania. On some boats 80% of the individuals are coming from Albania.

‘Albania is quite clearly a safe country and those individuals have crossed through multiple other safe countries before arriving in the United Kingdom.

‘Some reports suggest that as much a 1% or even 2% of the adult male population of Albania either have attempted to leave the country in this manner or are contemplating doing so.

‘So this is a serious situation that we need to grip.

Lucy Moreton, spokeswoman for the Union for Borders, Immigration & Customs (ISU), said today that the UK has become a ‘draw’ for migrants who do not qualify for international protection.

Asked whether the asylum system is broken, Ms Moreton told BBC’s Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘It does take an inordinate amount of time for an initial decision and that’s damaging both for those who do qualify for international protection and for the UK acting as a draw for people who don’t qualify.’

Ms Moreton said, if it takes an average of 480 days for a first decision on a migrants case, this could build to an average to five to eight years before your claim is determined due to appeals.

She said this means there is a ‘huge pull to be here’.

‘There’s just no resourcing in the system, no resilience to be able to deal with claims in anything like a decent timeframe,’ she said.

Of the 4 per cent of cases completed, 85 per cent were granted refugee status or another protection status, MPs were told yesterday. 

They heard £5.6m a day was being spent on hotels for people who have arrived in the UK and have submitted a claim, with an additional £1.2m paid to house Afghan refugees who fled the Taliban takeover while long-term accommodation is sought.

The total £6.8m is over £2m more than the Government said it was spending in February (£4.7m). Asked by committee chairwoman Dame Diana Johnson if the cost was likely to go up again, Abi Tierney, director general of the passport office and UK visas and immigration, replied: ‘Yes.’ 

More than 38,000 people have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel in over 900 boats in 2022 to date, compared with 28,526 last year. 

Curbing the increase in migrants risking their lives by crossing the Channel will be one of the main priorities for Rishi Sunak as he begins his term as Prime Minister. 

In France migrants are not detained and processed after being caught attempting to cross the Channel. 

The Novotel hotel chain is also understood to have also reached lucrative agreements with the Home Office to house migrants (pictured: Novotel at Newcastle Airport)

Hotels that have been used to house migrants include four-star rated accommodation like the Royal Hotel in Hull

Suella Braverman was reinstalled as Home Secretary yesterday just six days after being forced out for breaking the Ministerial Code

In October alone, at least 5,000 have made the journey, according to provisional Government figures, but no crossings were recorded by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Monday or Tuesday.

Mr Sunak has committed to continuing the Government’s bid to send migrants who enter the UK illegally to Rwanda. But the £120million scheme has still yet to get going, amid a series of legal challenges, despite it being announced back in April.

Former Home Secretary Priti Patel unveiled the plans as a means of clamping down on the number of migrants making perilous journeys to Britain across the Channel.

Mr Sunak will have to decide how he will push forward with the scheme, including possibly overhauling Britain’s relationship with the European Convention on Human Rights.

And, if the scheme continues to stall, the PM will have decide on what further action to take to try to stem the number of migrants arriving in small boats.    

Mrs Braverman was reinstalled as Home Secretary on Tuesday just six days after being forced out for breaking the Ministerial Code. 

Earlier this month, she set out new plans which would ban migrants who cross the Channel from claiming asylum and said it was her ‘dream’ to see a  government flight deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.

‘We have to stop the boats crossing the Channel. This has gone on for far too long,’ Ms Braverman told the Conservative Party conference. 

‘I will pledge to you today that I will bring forward legislation to make it clear that the only route to the United Kingdom is through a safe and legal route.’

The new powers would go further than existing legislation and were designed to create a blanket ban on anyone who enters Britain illegally, including on small boats across the English Channel, from claiming refuge, a government source said.

Charity Care4Calais called the government’s proposals ‘barbaric, untruthful and unnecessary’ and said most asylum seekers who come to Britain are genuine refugees.