Failure to Deport Illegal Migrants to Cost UK £9 Billion in Next Three Years: Report

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - MARCH 18: Pro-migrant protesters gather in the Portland Place Str
Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The inability of the government to deport failed asylum seekers will cost the British taxpayer some £9 billion over the next three years during which time a quarter of a million illegal migrants will enter the country, a report from the Refugee Council has predicted.

The pro-mass migration Refugee Council has forecast that in the next three years, over 150,000 people will be denied asylum in Britain but will not be able to be deported from the country, costing the country £9 billion, as a result of the government’s Illegal Migration Bill, which has still yet to come into force.

Under the legislation, those who enter the country illegally would be prohibited from claiming asylum in the UK and therefore would be required to be removed to their home country or to another safe third-party country such as Rwanda, which has agreed to host failed asylum seekers for the British government.

However, with the Rwanda scheme still mired in legal proceedings in British courts and still facing further challenges at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in addition to the European Union, and France, in particular, so far refusing to come to a deal on migrant returns from the UK, it is questionable how many illegals the Home Office will actually be able to deport.

Unlike typical legislation, the Home Office has so far yet to publish an impact assessment for the illegal migration legislation, so the Refugee Council decided to publish one of its own, The Times of London reported.

The chief executive of the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon said: “All the evidence shows that the vast majority of those who come here by so-called irregular routes are refugees escaping bombs and bullets, violence and persecution. They take these dangerous journeys as no workable alternatives exist for them — unlike Ukrainians who were rightly able to come to the UK on a visa scheme.”

The report predicted that between 225,000 and 257,000 migrants would successfully enter the country via illegal routes, such as on a small boat in the English Channel or on the backs of lorries, over the next three years. It went on to predict that between 39,000 and 45,000 of these migrants would be minors.

At the culmination of the three-year period studied, the Refugee Council warned that between 160,000 and 192,000 migrants would have been denied asylum but would remain in taxpayer-funded accommodation, with the government unable to deport them. The cost of detaining and housing these migrants, the charity forecast, would cost the taxpayer between £8.7 billion and £9.6 billion over just the next three years.

This figure would largely fall in line with what the Home Office has already admitted that it will spend this year, with the government already admitting that it will cost the country £2.7 billion to house and provide for illegal migrants this year, alone.

However, the Home Office has denied the predictions for the three-year period laid out by the Refugee Council, arguing that its Illegal Migration Bill will act as a deterrent to further illegal immigration, and therefore bring costs down.

“The bill that the government has pledged to deliver, once enacted, will have a massive deterrent effect on small boat crossings,” they said. “People will not be getting into boats in northern France if they know they will be detained and swiftly removed.”

The government has also argued that the Rwanda scheme will act as a deterrent to illegal migrants. Yet, it is currently unclear as to when the plan will actually come into effect, given the current legal challenges in UK courts and the prospect of further legal action at the European level, given that the UK still remains bound by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as it is technically a separate body from the EU and therefore unaffected by Britain’s withdrawal from the bloc.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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