Portsmouth Candidates say Asylum Seekers Will be a Priority Issue

The candidates for the Portsmouth South constituency, just recently said that procedures on asylum seekers will be a priority issue they plan to tackle if they are elected. These hopefuls were giving their response to a report from a charity, saying mistakes by the UK Border Agency have contributed to a huge backlog of asylum cases.

Right now about 750,000 people are waiting to find out if they can stay in the UK or not. Refugee Action said that too many bad decisions are being made right now. This is resulting in appeals, which take years to process. The Portsmouth area manger for Refugee Action, Mike Brown, said that bad decisions end up costing the tax payers a fortune and also cause years of hardship for people who were already in desperate need. Refugee and Migrant Justice, another charity that works on behalf of asylum seekers in Portsmouth, said that one in three rejections were successfully overturned on appeal.

John Ferret, the Labour candidate for Portsmouth South, said that they have been living with a backlog for many years now. He continued that a huge amount of investment went into the emigration service, which is now the UK Border Agency, and he thinks that the budget that was around £250 million before 2000 quickly grew to over £2 billion. He said that he thinks, in terms of making sure that asylum numbers are down, the government has been very successful.

Asylum numbers peaked at 100,000 at the start of 2000. Number are now well down to about 30,000.