Immigration Minister tells it like it is - then takes it all back (Wantage and Didcot Liberal Democrats)

Wantage and Didcot Liberal Democrats <info@wantagelibdems.org.uk>

Immigration Minister tells it like it is - then takes it all back

October 22, 2008 1:12 PM

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas

Newly appointed Immigration Minister Phil Woolas was caught out telling the truth on Monday, and within hours had to issue a statement "clarifying his remarks". He had admitted that the Labour Government's failure to return thousands of failed asylum seekers "had spread misery and despair", but later said that he had just been trying to put current successes in an "historical perspective".

Alan Armitage, parliamentary spokesman for the Lib Dems in Wantage constituency, said: "people are rightly worried about the number of illegal immigrants in Britain, and the effect this has on the amount of crime and fraud going on. The Government keeps tinkering with the law on immigration, but the truth is that they already have all the powers they need to get a grip on this problem. They prefer to excuse their miserable performance by blaming the appeal judges, or the lack of ID cards, instead of just getting on with sorting things out on the ground."

Added Mr Armitage: "It's a terrible reflection on our Government that it has to build prisons for asylum seekers - people who have committed no crime - because they can't get their own bureaucracy to process the cases quickly enough."

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas was taking part in a debate in London with the Dutch Justice Minister when he criticised his own Government's record on removing asylum seekers. He is quoted in The Times admitting that "... people didn't believe the authorities knew what they were doing and there's a very good reason for that - they didn't." Later on the same day he said that his criticism applied equally to Conservative Governments.

Mr Woolas's remarks come after he backtracked on a commitment to set a limit on migration, made in an interview in The Times just the day before.