UK asylum up for review

Tensions are continuing to rise in some dispersal areas

The government is to review its dispersal policy for asylum seekers - those at the sharp end say it's not before time.

A decision to review the current system of dispersing asylum seekers around the country does not amount to an admission of failure by the government, said a Downing Street spokesman.

The review - dismissed as pointless by the Conservatives - was an opportunity for the government to "look at how the system is working", a spokesman for Number 10 said.

An asylum seeker's lottery

The review follows a murder in Scotland

While the Government prepares to embark on a review of the way asylum seekers are being dealt with under the controversial dispersal system, there are continuing complaints about the conditions in which such people are living while their fate is decided by the authorities.

Last autumn the Government ordered another review - into the practice of issuing asylum seekers with vouchers. But there are now concerns about the type of accommodation that they are being housed in while their applications are processed.

Since the start of the dispersal programme 30,000 asylum seekers and dependents have been allocated accommodation around the country.

They are the scum of the Earth...

Richard Kemp, Liverpool Council:

Liverpool has taken 1800, but Richard Kemp a Liberal Democrat member of the City Council complains that the system is a shambles.

The Government's strategy on asylum seekers is, in essence, to ensure the prompt removal of all those who applications finally fail.

The aim is to remove 30,000 by next march. About 500 are currently being held in prisons across the country as part of a policy which began in December last year.

An unavoidable consequence

Almost 30 of them who are in Cardiff prison have been staging a hunger strike in protest. Margaret Lally of the British Refugee Council thinks such demonstrations an unavoidable consequence of detaining asylum seekers in prisons.

The review, due to report in October, follows the murder of a Turkish refugee in Glasgow, a knife attack on an asylum seeker in Hull and protests over detention conditions in Cardiff.