The taxpayer is providing new clothes and shoes to illegal Channel migrants at a cost of more than £3,000 a day. The Telegraph has the story.
Men, women and children arriving at Dover have been handed the free clothes – including puffer coats, hats and gloves in winter and flip-flops in summer – at a total cost of almost £4 million over the past three years.
They are kept in a quayside store house, said by one former official to be as big as a Matalan or M&S store, with changing rooms to try the clothes on.
The Home Office stocks thousands of different sizes and shapes to replace all the migrants’ clothing, which it says is necessary because they are often soaked through with sea water and “occasionally” splashed with fuel, posing a health and safety risk.
Some are also offered free mobile phones to ensure that “ongoing contact” with immigration officials can be maintained, although the Home Office said this was rare and it could provide no figures on these costs.
The disclosure, revealed under freedom of information (FOI) laws, comes ahead of the Government unveiling its new border security legislation to deploy counter-terror-style powers to tackle people smuggling gangs. The Government has also confirmed it will repeal the Tories’ legislation that would have allowed migrants to be deported to Rwanda.
The figures have prompted calls for migrants to be required to reimburse the taxpayer if they are subsequently granted the right to remain in the UK as a refugee. About 66% of Channel migrants in the year to September 2024 were granted asylum.
Tony Smith, a former Director General of Border Force, said: “If they are allowed to stay, then they are going to be able to work and earn money. To me, that’s a chargeable deduction on our investment in them like universities, where you have to borrow £30,000 to get your child in to study.”
Two thirds of people entering illegally on small boats are given permission to stay, even though they came over from France? There’s the problem, right there.
Worth reading in full.
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