The backlog in cases is caused by Home Office failures, not a surge in cases. Scapegoating irregular arrivals won’t help
Over a year into the pandemic, you might feel the government had enough on its plate. Yet it is cynically manufacturing another crisis, at the expense of vulnerable people who have arrived here seeking refuge. Its asylum proposals, published on Wednesday, will only stoke the populist anger which Nigel Farage and others have sought to create by seizing on images of boats of young men approaching the white cliffs of Dover.
Priti Patel’s claim that the system is “collapsing” under the burden of demand is nonsensical. The number of asylum applications in this country last year was well below half of its 2002 peak. Four out of five refugees globally have fled to neighbouring countries; Turkey hosts 3.6 million. For Ms Patel to snipe that EU countries must be “part of the solution” is rich when Germany has a refugee population of around 1.1 million, compared to the UK’s 133,000. Greece, France and Spain have also accepted far more asylum seekers in recent years.
