A ‘disgraceful’ new Labour scheme handing failed asylum seeker families £40,000 to leave Britain has been condemned as a ‘bribe’.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told MPs the hand-outs – unveiled last week – amounted to ‘more than most working people earn in a year’.
The Home Office last week informed 150 families of failed asylum seekers they were eligible for lump sums of £10,000 a head for up to four people if they agree to go voluntarily.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood sanctioned the huge pay-outs in a bid to save even larger sums of taxpayers’ money currently being spent on keeping the families in migrant hotels and other types of accommodation, which currently average £158,000 a year.
Raising an urgent question on the policy in the Commons, Mr Philp said: ‘The Government is now resorting to bribing illegal immigrants with £40,000 per family to leave.
‘That is more than most working people here earn in a year.
‘British workers should not have to pay record high taxes for this Government to give their money away to illegal immigrants.
‘It is, frankly, disgraceful.
Migrants depart from Gravelines beach in northern France last week on a UK-bound dinghy
‘Instead, the Government should now agree to our plan to leave the European Convention on Human Rights which would enable them to rapidly deport all illegal immigrants.
‘The crossings would then quickly stop, and there would be no need to bribe illegal immigrants to leave.’
Migrants were pictured sprinting across Gravelines beach in France last week to board a UK-bound smugglers’ dinghy
He added that since the general election 67,000 people have entered the UK illegally, a 45 per cent increase compared to the previous equivalent period, and that ‘many of those 67,000 have since committed serious crimes, including murder and rape’.
Asylum minister Alex Norris told the Commons: ‘He says the £158,000 that on average we spend on families in hotel accommodation who have no right now to be here because they have finished their way through the asylum system, that spending that money is better value than spending £40,000 in order for them to return home and to build their lives again.’
Mr Norris added: ‘The choice is between paying £158,000 for those families to live in hotels or £40,000 for those families to leave the country.
‘I think that is a good equation.’
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced new immigration policies, including the £40,000 hand-outs for failed asylum seeker families, last week
Families eligible for the hand-outs have had claims rejected by the Home Office and have then gone on to fail to win refugee status in the appeal system.
The scheme will only apply to people whose home countries are deemed safe.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp branded the pay-outs a ‘bribe’ in the Commons today
If they agree to leave, the money will be loaded onto electronic payment cards which can be accessed once the families reach their home country aboard taxpayer-funded flights.
Labour’s new scheme is significantly more generous than existing cash incentives offered to migrants to leave voluntarily, currently capped at £3,000 a head.
The programme could be expanded to thousands more families with no right to be in this country if the Home Office deems it success.
The £10,000 per head sum could also be increased – or lowered – depending on take-up of the pilot scheme, sources said last week.
There are currently thousands of failed asylum seeker families being supported by public funds, officials said, but the exact number is not known by the Home Office due to weaknesses in its data-gathering.
Labour scrapped the previous government’s Rwanda scheme, which would have seen adult asylum seekers compulsorily sent to east Africa to lodge claims there rather than here.
The Home Office confirmed 75 migrants reached Britain on Sunday, bringing the total over six consecutive days to 891.