Ministers accuse lawyers of abusing asylum system, as figures show 80 per cent of appeals fail

Ministers have accused immigration lawyers of "abusing" the asylum system and wasting courts time, as they revealed 80 per cent of last minute appeals against deportation are rejected by judges.

Internal home office figures show a record 73 per cent of immigration offenders lodged last minute appeals against their removal from the UK in 2019, up from 63 per cent in 2017.

Yet 80 per cent of the claims were unsuccessful, fuelling warnings that they are being used to delay and eventually “time out” illegal migrants’ removal from the UK.

The biggest increase has been in claims to be victims of modern slavery. Others include asylum on human rights grounds including risk of torture or loss of a family life.

Chris Philp, the immigration minister, said: “We know that our asylum system is open to abuse by those who have no right to remain the UK and these stark figures just demonstrate the difficulties we face when seeking to remove people.

“These last-minute claims waste the time of judges and our courts and delaying the process of assessing claims from the most vulnerable.

“This is why we will comprehensively overhaul our asylum system and build one which is fair but firm. This will allow us to better protect and support those genuinely in need but remove more easily from the UK those with no right to be here.”

It comes as the Government moves this week to curb asylum seekers’ rights to appeal in a bid to slash the number of spurious claims “without any merit” that clog up the courts.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) will raise the bar for appeals so they will only be allowed if there is an “exceptional public interest,” as revealed last November by The Telegraph.

It is the first legal move by the Government to shake up an asylum system that Home Secretary Priti Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson have claimed is “broken.”

Ministers have been frustrated by the number of legal appeals, often at the last minute, that have prevented the removal of failed asylum seekers or foreign criminals and have promised to overhaul the system to speed up their removal.

It came to a head when lawyers’ last minute appeals prevented the deportation of more than 40 of 57 convicted criminals including killers and rapists whom the Home Office wanted to deport on a flight to Jamaica.

The new figures provide a snapshot of all the people detained under immigration powers in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and what happened to them.

It shows that of the 11,367 detained within the UK for immigration offences, only a quarter (27 per cent or 3,016) did not lodge a legal appeal against their removal in 2019. This represented an increase of a third on the 37 per cent in 2017.

Just under half (47 per cent) or 5,302 were claims for asylum, the biggest group. The second largest were claims as victims of modern slavery which accounted for 1,767 or 16 per cent of the total.

About 80 per cent of all of the claims - followed through from 2017 to September 2020 to provide the most comprehensive picture - were refused. Five per cent were still awaiting a decision and just ten per cent were found to have some merit.

Other reforms expected to be unveiled within weeks will impose time limits on asylum seekers requiring them to “put everything on the table” from the start to prevent cases being “dragged out over years and years,” say Government sources.

They will also restrict the use of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, banning ‘torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’, which is often cited by foreign national criminals seeking to avoid being deported.

The moves come as the number of migrants reaching the UK by crossing the channel in small boats has doubled in the first three months of this year, following a record 8,713 last year.