With this Government it is always difficult to know whether the general chaos (which seems to transcend all branches of government) is by design or merely incompetence. Perhaps both. The level of “looniness” of the minster responsible and the chaos within his / her department also seems so closely aligned to suggest causation rather than just correlation. The most loony minsters always seem to preside over the most chaotic and ineffective departments. Some issues are very difficult to resolve. Asylum is not one of them. The number of applications is fairly consistent (about 75k applications for about 93k people a year). In terms of the number of asylum applications per head of population, the UK ranks only number 20th in Europe, with a fraction of the number of applications received by other countries (including some much smaller ones). But the UK is next to the bottom of the table in the number of applications processed – deciding only about a tenth of the number of applications that countries like Germany, France and Spain each decide each year. This is simply down to the inefficiency of the Home Office, and a lack of political will. There would be no, or only very limited, need for hotel accommodation if applications for asylum were processed promptly and efficiently, and asylum either granted or denied. It does seem that the government depends on aggravating (rather than dealing with) so called “wedge issues” as a distraction strategy.
T P Howell ● 543d