The Government has failed on its promise to back control of the borders, despite promising to deliver on its Brexit pledge, a political commentator has said.
Speaking to Tom Harwood on GB News, David Maddox, Political Editor of the Daily Express, said the country has “stopped believing” any government line on the issue, adding that “the degree of scepticism to migration control measures is huge.”
It comes as the Home Secretary admitted to failures, as she blamed migrants crossing the Channel for overcrowding at the Manston processing centre.
Gareth Fuller
Suella Braverman also struggled to explain the legal routes which asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution could use to come to the UK, prompting criticism that she was “out of her depth” and did not understand her own policies.
Speaking on The Briefing With Tom Harwood, Mr Maddox said the migrant crisis “feeds into a bigger picture of a government that’s just lost control of the borders issues.”
He said: “The Government that promised to take back control of our borders with Brexit has singularly failed to do so in any regard.
“People are numbed to it now. We’ve had 12 years of Conservative leaders and prime ministers promising to tackle illegal migration and bring down legal migration.
“People have stopped believing it.
“The degree of scepticism to migration control measures is huge.
“People want to stop hearing words and actual see some action instead of their local hotels jam-packed with illegal migrants.”
GB News
More than 140,000 asylum seekers are waiting for a decision on their claim after the backlog of applications soared by over 20,000 in three months.
Home Office figures for the year to September 2022 show there were 143,377 asylum applications which were yet to be determined, of which 97,717 had been waiting for over six months.
This is at least three times higher than the 45,255 applications awaiting an initial decision at the same period in 2019, when 26,125 had been waiting for more than six months.
Separate figures show decisions have been made on just 139 (2%) of applications from more than 35,000 migrants who crossed the Channel between October 2021 and August this year.