Priti Patel’s ‘Unworkable’ Asylum Reforms Will Cost Taxpayer £2.7bn a Year

London: A report by Together With Refugees, a coalition whose members include the British Red Cross and the Refugee Council, calculates that the additional spending needed to pay for five major new components of the UK’s asylum under the Nationality and Borders Bill will cost £2.7bn annually. The controversial bill, which is currently going through the House of Lords, seeks to make significant changes to asylum policy in the UK, including blocking or criminalising all people seeking refugee protection who do not arrive under one of the Home Office’s pre-arranged resettlement routes.

Ministers are still pushing through the changes despite the High Court ruling in December that the government was wrong to claim such journeys were illegal. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has repeatedly said this is at odds with the UN Refugee Convention. Under the new plans, the government will also seek to place people in large accommodation centres, or potentially offshore processing hubs, while it assesses whether they can be returned to EU countries they have passed through en route to Britain.

Read more: May Bulman, Independent, https://rb.gy/uuqkog