HOME OFFICE ASYLUM 'FIDDLE'

THE Government is "fiddling" asylum figures in a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, Whitehall sources claimed today.

The Home Office is using different counting methods to work out how many people claim asylum and how many are deported when their cases fail.

It means that a family of six who claim asylum in the UK count in the official figures as only one person. But if they are removed from the country, they count as six when they leave.

A Whitehall source said: "It is obvious the Government is massaging or fiddling the figures to make them look better than they really are."

The difference has not been spelled out to Parliament and has amazed opposition MPs. Senior Tory and Liberal Democrats have now promised to ask questions in the Commons about the apparent attempt to put a favourable gloss on the Government's record.

Lib-Dem home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes said: "Jack Straw said one of the most important things for the Home Office to do was to make its statistics clear, honest and easily understandable.

"Now that David Blunkett has taken over, the Home Office cannot try to distort the true picture by claiming a much greater success rate on enforcing removals than is the reality.

"They have got to stop different counting and give Parliament and the country straight answers to straight questions. If we are going to judge whether policies are working, we need to know on the same basis how many people come and how many people go." A Home Office spokesman admitted that the counting method for removals had changed since April but denied any attempt had been made to hide the fact.

But Mr Hughes said MPs had not been told. "The Home Office must start the new period of Government telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," he added.

The controversy centres on new targets for removing failed asylum seekers, which were the main focus of Labour's election pledge to take a firmer line with less likely cases.

Three out of four asylum cases are rejected, but the immigration service's record on removing people when their cases reach the end of the line is poor.

There were only 8,975 removals last year and while the past six years have seen 276,000 asylum applications rejected, fewer than 39,000 people have definitely left the UK.

Chancellor Gordon Brown announced a tough new target of 30,000 removals a year when he provided an extra 400million for the immigration system last summer with the clear expectation that the service would raise its game on deporting people with unfounded claims.

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