The Labour Party government in Britain is planning to increase the amount of taxpayer money given to lawyers to defend illegal migrants and supposed asylum seekers.
In what is being billed as a means of clearing the 100,000-plus asylum backlog and reducing the need to house migrants in hotels across Britain, Downing Street is reportedly looking to increase spending on immigration legal aid from £47 million per year to £61 million, or a thirty per cent increase.
The plans would include a ten per cent increase in taxpayer money being spent on migrant lawyer fees, The Telegraph reported.
Justice Minister Sarah Sackman said that the plans represent “a significant increase to the rates paid” to the legal aid industry for migrants, which she claimed “has been left neglected for years”.
“These proposals will make a real difference to helping support quicker access to justice for those who need it most,” she said.
Officials who drew up the plans claimed that boosting legal fees would be necessary to avoid shortages of willing law firms amid the Labour government’s “commitment to reduce the asylum backlog, end hotel use and increase returns.”
However, concerns have been raised that the increased taxpayer aid will assist illegal migrants gaming the system to remain in the UK. In recent weeks, a string of decisions by British judges siding against deportations against criminals have raised eyebrows.
In a case earlier this month, a convicted Pakistani paedophile avoided deportation after a judge ruled that it would be “unduly harsh” on his children to separate them from their father. This is despite the Pakistani man being barred from living with his children anyway, after he was convicted of attempting to rape three “barely pubescent” girls, for which he was jailed for 18 months.
In another recent case, an Albanian criminal was granted the ability to stay in the UK after convincing a judge that his son would suffer if they were sent back to their homeland because the 10-year-old boy did not like the “type of chicken nuggets that are available abroad”. A judge found that this would have breached the right to a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Despite having left the European Union, the United Kingdom is still bound by the ECHR and its associated court as it is technically a separate institution from the EU, even though the two bodies share the same anthem, flag, and even the same headquarters campus in Strasbourg, France.
Both Conservative governments and the incumbent Labour Party have so far refused to withdraw from the ECHR, preferring instead to leave control of Britain’s borders up to international judges.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has long argued that the only way to stem the tide of illegals crossing the English Channel and to increase removals of spurious asylum seekers, criminals and others would be for London to finally withdraw from the ECHR.
In response to the proposed increase in legal aid subsidies for migrants, Reform MP Rupert Lowe said: “British taxpayers should not be funding the desperate efforts of migrants to remain in the UK. Quite simply, it is not our problem.
“We need a fundamental rethink of all immigration spending – from taxi and laundry services for illegal migrants, to vast legal costs on the deportation appeal process.
“Do what is right for the British people. If the law prevents that from happening, change the law.”
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