David Davis rages at Home Office over asylum laws interpretation

David Davis criticises Home Office’s interpretation

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David Davis hit out at the Home Office as he claimed its staff have been interpreting asylum laws incorrectly. Mr Davis insisted the legislation was created to ensure people could be protected in the event of state persecution rather than to escape crime in their country of origin. The former Brexit Secretary insisted the UK should stop issuing asylum permits to applicants coming in from nations considered to be “safe countries” to clamp down on growing immigration numbers.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Davis said: “What’s been happening is, if you turn into two groups, young men – which is the vast majority – and women and children, women and children are getting about 85 percent approval.

“That’s because the Home Office itself has not been interpreting the asylum laws correctly.

“At the end of the day, the blame lands with the Albanian gangs who bring them here, not the Albanians themselves.”

He continued: “But the simple truth is the Home Office is interpreting asylum laws to say if you are in Albania, not if the Government is oppressing you, as the asylum laws are like – you’ve been talking about China. 

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“If somebody came from China saying, ‘my Government is going to kill me,’ we give them asylum.

“But if they’re facing gangsters, criminal activity or so in their country, that is a misinterpretation of asylum laws, it was never designed for that.”

Express.co.uk has contacted the Home Office for comment.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has been facing mounting pressure as the latest net international migration data showed a 331,000 increase in the number of arrivals this year.

Albanian man films dinghy crossing on the English channel

The increase takes into consideration the arrival of Ukrainian refugees since the start of the war as well as the return of international students following the relaxation of Covid travel rules.

But the UK has also been experiencing a rise in illegal cross-Channel arrivals, with data showing a large number of migrants reaching British coasts have been coming in from Albania.

French officials have reported that Albanian gangs have been setting up specialised networks to help out fellow nationals into reaching British shores alongside the main channels of Iraqi and Kurdish smugglers.

An anonymous official told the BBC last month: “[The Albanian networks] are more efficient than the others.

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“Forty percent of those we intercept on this side of the Channel are Albanian, but they make up 60 percent of those who arrive on the other side.”

“Our hypothesis is that they’re a lot more experienced than the others in terms of criminal activity, and more used to organising themselves and avoiding the police.

“We find the prices are higher for Albanian networks than for the others.”

This week Ms Braverman has been presented with a letter signed by more than 50 Tory MPs demanding a change in modern slavery legislation to help clamp down on illegal immigration.

The MPs have suggested the change would help the UK return more easily people believed to be “bogus asylum seekers” to their country of origin

Signatories demand that “economic migrants” travelling from “safe countries” such as Albania are returned more quickly.

The group argue that “people claiming they have been unwilling victims of human trafficking or modern slavery” should be returned “to their homes in the villages from which they came from”.

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