The following has been issued today by Migrationwatch in response to a report by the National Audit Office and the latest asylum statistics. NAO Report produces unexpected bombshell…

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May 25, 2004

For several years the Government has claimed that, by increasing legal means of immigration, they will reduce asylum claims.

Today's NAO report has studied the major source countries of asylum and has come to the conclusion that there is no statistical evidence
of this.

Commenting Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch said:
'This blows out of the water a key element of the Government's case
for the massive increase of immigration which they have generated.'

As regards the original allegations concerning asylum applicants from Romania he said this issue has been buried in much larger numbers. The study considered 11 countries which accounted for a drop of 29,000 in asylum applications.

'Romania was included but only accounted for less than 700 of the reduction, there was thus no prospect of events in Romania having a statistically significant effect.'

Commenting on the latest asylum statistics Sir Andrew said that the further fall is welcome but there has been no improvement in the removal of failed asylum seekers. Only one in five failed asylum seekers were removed last year.

'This is a very poor result for an asylum process that costs £2bn a year,' he said.