Yvette Cooper has made a lot of clearing the asylum backlog as pressure ramps up on Labour. The National Audit Office said yesterday that the cost to the taxpayer of providing asylum hotels has risen from £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion over ten years. Costs tripled to house 110,000 asylum seekers…
Guido can reveal the Home Office is demanding staff at the Passport Office move over prematurely to UK Visas and Immigration to help deal with the backlog. Cooper’s department is reassigning administrative officer-grade staff during the ‘passport peak period’ – Passport Office staff in Belfast, Durham, and Newport are being reassigned to deal with asylum claims since February. Redeployment usually takes place outside of the peak period – in September. Passport fees went up last month…
This reassignment is on top of the 300 ’emotionally resilient’ asylum decision makers now being hired by the government. Guido reached out to the Home Office and was told: “All decisions are based on careful modelling to ensure services remain unaffected, and our performance indicators and service standards for passports have confirmed that is the case.” Tell that to everyone waiting over ten weeks for their passport…
Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked John Healey: “Just finally, I mean Andy Burnham has been very clear he wants Britain back in the European Union in his lifetime. Do you?”
The Chancellor replied: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don’t expect to see that.”