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Deportations of illegal migrants to double as Dominic Raab lifts cap on appeals

Dominic Raab - ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Dominic Raab - ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Deportations of foreign criminals, Channel migrants and failed asylum seekers are to be doubled after Dominic Raab lifted the cap on appeals.

The Justice Secretary has told judges there will be no limit on the number of immigration and asylum tribunal appeals they can hear in an effort to clear a backlog of 25,000 cases.

It is expected to clear around 9,000 extra appeals by foreign criminals and migrants in the next three months, doubling the current annual total of nearly 8,000.

Mr Raab has set aside £8 million extra to fast track tribunal cases, of which £5 million has earmarked for immigration but also includes a backlog of employment cases.

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“This investment will allow judges to hear many more cases across our immigration and asylum tribunals over the next three months,” he said.

“It means decisions can be made more quickly, helping us tackle the backlog, ensure justice is served, and remove those who are not eligible.”

Move will impact criminals exploiting human rights laws

They will include foreign national criminals who have exploited human rights laws to claim that deportation denies them the right to a family life or that they have been victims of modern slavery.

Currently up to 70 per cent of foreign criminals who lodge deportation appeals do so under Article 8, claiming it will be a breach of their rights to return them to their home nation for reasons such as they have children in the UK.

Government sources cited a foreign criminal with convictions for firearms and drugs who made a last minute claim for asylum despite having been previously told to present reasons why they should not be deported. While on bail, he committed another offence for which he was jailed.

In a second case, a convicted sex offender was to be deported but made a last minute asylum claim, was granted a right to appeal and has so far successfully resisted removal from the UK.

Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, said: “Faster decisions will enable us to speed up the removal of those with no right to be here, strengthen deterrence against those seeking to abuse our system and focus our efforts on those in genuine need.”

The move comes as new figures show the Home Office is facing a record backlog of 117,400 outstanding asylum applications, involving 143,377 people. This represents a 74 per cent increase from last year with 97,717 of them having been waiting more than six months for a decision.

Backlog built up 'for reasons that are hard to explain'

Mr Jenrick told GB News: “This huge backlog built up over the pandemic for reasons that are hard to explain. I think it's a combination of poor management and very low productivity in the Home Office. We've got to tackle that.

“We've gone from having a Home Office decision-maker making four or five [asylum] decisions per person per week to one. We're going to be recruiting more people and getting better management in.

“We will not do an amnesty or compromise on security, like John Reid did when he was Home Secretary under the last Labour Government when the Home Office once again failed to tackle this issue and have a very high backlog.”

Ministers are expected to set new targets for processing the asylum applications within six months rather than the current average of 480 days and boost the numbers of asylum applications completed in a week from one per worker to three or four.

A trial in Leeds, where workers boosted productivity to four a week, is being rolled out nationally, while the Home Office aims to increase the number of asylum caseworkers from the current total of just over 1,000 to 1,800 by the middle of next year.