Asylum seekers face deportation

The deportation of asylum seekers will be speeded up

The UK's Immigration Service has announced plans to speed up the deportation of asylum seekers after their applications are rejected.

It aims to remove nearly 60,000 people a year by 2004, compared to 12,000 this year.

A key part of the new radical plan for change would see more detention centres built.

Labour is sensitive to repeated Conservative attacks over its policies on the issue of refugees and the new plan will be regarded as a bid to regain the political initiative on a sensitive subject.

Radical expansion

There are currently 900 detention spaces in the UK for asylum seekers but officials are proposing that 4,000 be created.

An estimated 8,000 asylum seekers who lost their claims were removed from the UK in the last year.

Discrepancies remain between the numbers refused asylum and those who were actually forced to leave the UK.

That can partly be explained by some people opting to abscond.

Tougher targets

Officials at the Immigration Service's enforcement directorate have confirmed that they are working to new, much tougher targets.

It is expected that 12,000 people would be removed from the UK this year, rising to 30,000 between 2001 and 2002, and to 37,000 the following year.

That total would be expected to rise to 57,000 by 2004.