Yorkshire MP Dan Jarvis brands government immigration policy ‘extortionately expensive gimmick’

Dan Jarvis, Labour MP for Barnsley Central, told the debate on May 7 that the backlog of asylum claims yet to be processed is ‘certainly not being tackled’, and accused the government of downgrading the pay and seniority of asylum decision-makers, leading to 56,000 asylum seekers being stuck in hotels at a cost of £8m per day.

The Government says its plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda will deter people from crossing the English Channel in small boats. As of May 1, 8,278 people had crossed the Channel in 2024, which is more than the total for the same period in either 2023 or 2022.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in January that the asylum backlog had been cleared. However, he was referring to long-standing ‘legacy backlog’ cases which the government had pledged to clear by the end of 2023. As of 14 April 2024, there were 2,377 legacy backlog cases still to be resolved.

Standing in for Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock, Mr Jarvis called on the government to ‘face up to their failing policies’, which has left the asylum system ‘in chaos’.

He said: “The Prime Minister has failed to deliver on his pledge to stop the boats and the numbers are going up, not down. The public’s patience is wearing thin, and they see right through the Government’s rhetoric.”

Tom Pursglove, Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, defended the government’s Rwanda policy, telling the debate that it would ‘dramatically bring down that £8 million a day spend’, once operational.

He added that the government will also increase the number of court staff, hearing rooms and judicial capacity, in a bid to speed up the process of asylum applications. The judiciary has identified and trained about 150 experienced first-tier tribunal judges to sit in the upper tribunal to hear Illegal Migration Act appeals.

“The additional judges, if deployed, could provide more than 5,000 additional sitting days,” he added. “New judges will be appointed and trained and will start sitting from this summer. This should increase capacity in both the first-tier and upper tribunals to hear routine cases and, in due course, Illegal Migration Act cases.”