Rishi Sunak blocked my bid to hurry up asylum course of, says Priti Patel
A request for additional funding to hurry up the backlog of asylum purposes from migrants getting into the UK was flatly refused by Rishi Sunak when he was Chancellor, Priti Patel has claimed.
The former dwelling secretary stated that the person who’s now Prime Minister “completely rejected” her request for additional funding in 2021. At the time she had warned that failure to safe the cash would inevitably result in elevated delays in processing purposes to stay within the UK.
She informed the Inside Whitehall podcast that the money she wished would have gone on computerising a system that was “still very paper-based”. The Conservative MP for Witham, Essex, who now sits on the again benches within the Commons, stated: “We said, ‘If you don’t do this you’re going to end up spending more money basically, because it will take longer to process the cases’.”
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Responding to Ms Patel’s declare, a supply at No 10 stated: “As Chancellor, the PM put over £3billion into the UK’s asylum system, including an additional £85million per year to improve the case-working system and strengthening border security.”
Ms Patel’s declare got here simply as ministers have been bracing themselves for what is predicted to be record-breaking 2022 internet migration figures to be launched this week. Mr Sunak final week deserted a pledge to get the figures beneath 230,000, a transfer criticised by Tory backbencher Andrea Jenkyns, who steered the Prime Minister ought to give attention to the home agenda and do “less of the Presidential flying around”.
She stated: “I’m not saying he [Rishi Sunak] has socialist tendencies but clearly it feels at the moment that they are more left of the party than Thatcher-right conservatism which I support. I just think that as Conservatives we shouldn’t raise taxes and that we should deliver our manifesto commitments.
“It’s a tightrope at the moment and we don’t want to necessarily bring a leadership change because that will mean there will be a general election and we will end up with 100 seats, the way polling is going at the moment.
“We can’t do political suicide over this… this is one where we need to put pressure on the Prime Minister to get back to more conservative type policies. And we must really get these net migration figures down. It’s disappointing that the Prime Minister is not committing to the target that was set in the manifesto.”
Speaking in Japan, the Mr Sunak said: “I think the numbers are too high. And I’m committed to bringing them down.” He added: “We’re considering a range of options.”