BRITAIN’S immigration system is in “total chaos” according to former Conservative immigration minister Caroline Nokes.
Ms Nokes, immigration minister until 2019, was speaking in an interview with Gloria De Piero to be broadcast soon on GB News.
She said: “I am horrified and…this creates an absolute legal minefield for the government that is going to end up costing them more money, and there are some estimates that every single one of those migrants who has been kept in Manston for longer than is absolutely necessary could be entitled to £5-£6,000 worth of compensation, whether they are ultimately deemed to be an asylum seeker or not.
“So that’s going to be expensive for us, the taxpayer, and if the Government faces many, many cases of judicial review because of these, individual people could all bring a case of their own that they’ve been incorrectly kept at Manston.
“This begins to look like a system in absolute chaos. And ultimately it’s going to be the individual asylum seekers who suffer, the British taxpayer who suffers, and the Home Office’s reputation for dealing with people in a fair and even-handed manner is going to be absolutely in tatters.”
She added: “There is undoubtedly a real crisis with small boats coming across the channel. We saw 1,000 arrive on Saturday and what worries me is that this stokes tension and racial tension concerns from people who know that we have a cost of living crisis in this country.
“They look at the bills for hotel rooms for migrants and, I just think we need to be a lot more careful about the language we use when we’re talking about migration, when we are talking about asylum and refugees but there are no easy solutions.
“There is no one quick fix that’s going to stop small boats crossing the Channel. I think we have to work much, much harder with the French. We have to make sure that we’re smashing criminal gangs.
“We know that the going rate to be brought over in a small boat is about £5,000. We have to remove the access to fuel, the access to boats for the criminal gangs. I think that’s really important. But we also when people arrive here, we have to treat them like human beings.
“I’m appalled to hear of families living on rolled up mats in marquees for days and weeks on end and I think it’s absolutely imperative that the Government recognises it has an absolute duty to these individuals and starts looking after them properly.”
