Visa scams 'used to cut asylum'

Blair says public confidence in the asylum system must be restored

The immigration system may be being used to help meet asylum seeker targets, the Tories have claimed.

Shadow home secretary David Davis told the BBC's Politics Show the government had lost control of immigration.

He said there was a belief that asylum seekers were being encouraged to enter the UK on working visas.

But the Home Office denied ministers have been asking immigration services to hold back operations to prevent asylum claims.

'Cross-government assault'

Tony Blair is expected to meet ministers on Tuesday to root out abuse of the system.

The proposed summit with Home Secretary David Blunkett and Department of Work and Pensions and Foreign Office ministers would kick-start a "cross-government assault" to tackle abuse of the immigration system, a Downing Street spokeswoman said.

Whenever governments hit a major problem with a key policy, they try to solve it by calling a summit BBC political correspondent Paul Wilenius Blair gambles on asylum

Security services representatives responsible for dealing with organised crime will also attend what is being dubbed a 'stock take'.

The spokeswoman said Mr Blair was determined not to allow abuses in the system to poison the idea of managed migration, which had brought numerous benefits to the UK.

She said: "The prime minister does not accept that the immigration system is in crisis.

"However, he does believe that there has been a decline in public confidence in the integrity of the processes.

"That has to be addressed and rooting out abuse is vital."

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "Our priority has been to remove illegal asylum seekers but ministers never asked the immigration service to hold back on other operations in order to prevent asylum claims.

"If they had, we would not have been able to remove 12,000 non-asylum illegals and over stayers last year - this is a record figure.

"Ministers have in fact been asking for more general enforcement operations and these have increased over the last year," she added.

But both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have called for an independent inquiry into the whole issue.

Scams

Mr Davis said the issue of asylum seekers and immigration had been confused over recent weeks as a number of scams have been revealed.

"We don't know what is going on, we have suspicions it is being driven by Downing Street.

"What is becoming more apparent however is that there is at least a belief in the immigration service, and we don't know yet whether it is real, that this is actually being driven deliberately as a way of reducing the asylum seeker target."

He claimed the government may have achieved its target of halving the number of asylum seekers using "a tactic of diversion" - by letting people in by other ways.

He also suggested it could have been achieved by simply stopping the immigration service doing its job and arresting illegal immigrants.

"That has all sorts of dreadful possible outcomes," he added.

Beverley Hughes was forced to resign over fraudulent visa issues

Mr Davis was speaking after the Sunday Telegraph claimed a deal had been struck with Romania to relax migration controls in return for helping the prime minister meet asylum seeker targets.

According to the newspaper, Mr Blair promised to lift all visa requirements by spring of this year.

Downing Street said the government was working with Romania to remove the need for visas but denied it was a trade-off to cut asylum seeker numbers.

Immigration Minister Beverley Hughes was forced to resign last week over the issue of Romanians and Bulgarians using forged documents to enter the UK.

Ms Hughes admitted she "unwittingly" misled people about her knowledge of a suspected visa scam, after the Tories had accused the Home Office of approving visa claims from eastern Europe despite warnings they were backed by forged documents.

Meanwhile, an opinion poll on Saturday suggested 80% of voters believed the government was too soft on immigration policy.

The YouGov survey also indicated two-thirds either did not trust Mr Blair very much or did not trust him at all, to bring the issue under control.