Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Rishi Sunak promised to fix the UK’s ailing asylum system after conceding that “not enough” claims were being processed.
MPs were informed last week that out of the total number of asylum claimants who’d crossed the Channel in boats to reach the UK in 2021, just four per cent had seen their claims fully processed.
Sunak’s comments to resolve the situation come after home secretary Suella Braverman was pressed over recent chaos at the Manston processing centre in Kent.
Reports say that the centre is meant to house 1,600 people and that no one person to be kept there for more than 24 hours. However, the real number of individuals staying there is in excess of 4,000 with some having remained for more than a month.
On Sunday, more migrants had to be moved to Manston after a separate processing centre in Dover was petrol-bombed.
Braverman subsequently said in the Commons on Monday that illegal migration had spiralled “out of control” and the asylum system was “broken”. She has also faced criticism for use of inflammatory language after describing the scale of migrants arriving in the UK as an “invasion”.
In 2022 so far, almost 40,000 migrants are known to have made the perilous boat crossings over the Channel, the highest annual figure logged since records began in 2018.
During Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused the government of having been the ones who’d “lost control” and broken the asylum system.
He said: “If the asylum system is broken and his lot have been in power for 12 years - how can it be anyone's fault but theirs?”
The PM hit back by saying that Labour had no plan of their own to fix the problem, other than a “blank page”.
He also defended the government for having made more staff available at the Manston centre and increased the number of hotel beds available for arriving migrants.
He said: “These are significant steps that demonstrate we are getting a grip of this system.”
The Labour leader later called on the government to “scrap” what he called the Rwanda policy “gimmick”, which had cost ministers £140 million and led to none being deported.
Although put on hold by legal disputes, the government’s Rwanda policy first introduced under former home secretary Priti Patel is intended to alleviate some of the processing burden by sending some asylum seekers to the East African country for processing and will see them remain there in the event of a successful claim.
But Sir Keir said that the government ought to prioritise moves to “crack down on smuggling gangs, end the small boat crossings, speed up asylum claims and agree an international deal on refugees” instead.
Following the session, Number 10 announced that Sunak would be conducting a review of the pledges he made during his initial leadership campaign, to gauge whether they were still deliverable in the current economic climate.
Sunak lost his initial leadership campaign to Liz Truss, but would find himself in the top job anyway after winning a second, shortened leadership contest, following Truss' resignation. She held the premiership for a record short of 44 turbulent days, in which her mini-Budget brought significant ramifications for the economy.
Image by HM Treasury and The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP - OGL 3, on Wikimedia Commons
