Just one per cent of migrants who have reached the UK on small boats in the last three years have been returned to their home countries, new figures have revealed.
In a letter to MPs, Home Office permanent secretary Sir Matthew Rycroft said that since 2020, just 1,182 people who arrived on small boats across the Channel had been returned to their home country out of a total of more than 111,800.
The majority of those were Albanian – a country with which the UK has a returns agreement – while only 420 were sent back to other countries.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper slammed the figures as “shockingly low”.
“Today’s admissions from the Home Office show the truly appalling scale of Tory failure and chaos, including a disastrously low level of enforcement in the asylum system,” she said on Wednesday.
“Just one per cent of small boat arrivals since 2020 have been removed.
“Even for Albania, which is a designated safe country, only five per cent have been removed – which is a shockingly low figure.”
After the numbers were presented to the Home Affairs Committee, Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson asked: “Is that an acceptable figure?”
Illegal migration minister Michael Tomlinson told him: “I want to see those figures as high as possible… as far as I’m concerned the numbers need to be significantly higher than they are.”
Immigration delivery minister Tom Pursglove told MPs he was “confident” the Home Office would meet Rishi Sunak’s target to clear the backlog of so-called “legacy” asylum cases – applications made before June 28 2022 – by the end of the year.
“I believe we will fulfil it and I also believe we will see these grant rates come down”, he said.
It comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces dissent from within his own party over his controversial Rwanda Bill, which would see some asylum seekers deported to the African nation. The plan is a key plank of Mr Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats".
Sir Matthew's letter to the Home Affairs Committee also showed more than £22 million of taxpayers’ money is being spent on the controversial Bibby Stockholm asylum accommodation barge.
The vessel being used to house asylum seekers is moored in Portland Port, Dorset.
Sir Matthew, the Home Office's top official, said in his letter the “vessel accommodation services” portion of the contract with CTM, which relates to the barge, was £22,450,772.
He said the assessment of whether the vessel offered value for money was “currently being updated”.Ms Cooper described the figure as “eyewatering”, adding: “We can’t continue with this damaging and costly chaos”.
Dame Diana said she was “just flabbergasted that a value-for-money assessment was not carried out at the time that the contract was let”.
Immigration delivery minister Mr Pursglove told her it was being “updated”, and said the cost of the barge was “undoubtedly” lower than housing asylum seekers in hotels.
The figures emerged days after an asylum seeker was found dead on the vessel. The man is understood to have taken his own life, according to South Dorset MP Richard Drax, who described it as “tragedy born of an impossible situation”.
Home Secretary James Cleverly has promised an investigation into the death will be carried out.
