22 July 2005
The drive to remove failed asylum seekers from the UK needs to be coupled with a determined effort to get decisions right first time, refugee campaigners said this week.
Margaret Lally, deputy chief executive of the Refugee Council, said problems in the early stages of the asylum decision-making process were being felt at the removals end of the system.
Lally was commenting on a National Audit Office finding that as many as 283,500 failed asylum seekers could still be in the UK.
'The NAO points out that the longer people are in the country, the harder it is to remove them,' Lally said.
'The number of asylum decisions overturned at appeal remains very high. We feel that getting asylum decisions right first time is the single biggest step the Immigration and Nationality Directorate could take to speed up the asylum process.'
The July 19 report noted that, although the directorate had increased its capacity for deporting failed asylum seekers, the number of people removed or returning voluntarily each month was still less than the number of unsuccessful cases.
The NAO found that delays were exacerbated by several bottlenecks in the system, including problems with obtaining travel documents, poor co-ordination within the IND itself and weak service from the private companies contracted to escort failed applicants out of the country.
NAO head Sir John Bourn said: 'The integrity of the asylum system depends in part on returning failed applicants to their home country in a timely fashion.
'Detaining failed applicants increases the likelihood of successful removal, but it is expensive and more efficient use could be made of such facilities. Improvements in all these areas will be needed if the IND is to meet its target to achieve more removals than there are failed applicants in any given month and to start reducing the backlog.'
But the Home Office insisted it was on course to meet its removal target. Immigration minister Tony McNulty said borders had been strengthened and the application process tightened up at all points in the system.
'We are also committed to increasing voluntary returns, and have done so year on year,' he said.
PFjul2005
