Labour blasted over 'open invitation' plan to 'fast track' migrants from Afghanistan, Iran and Syria - 'The traffickers are laughing!'

He had been asked whether the Home Office would move to fast track claims from countries with "high grant" rates.

Those with the highest grant rates include Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, and Iran - which together account for over 35,000 asylum claims in the current 120,000-strong backlog, Refugee Council data says.

Nationals from the same countries were shown by GB News to be lying about their age to try and gain asylum in the UK earlier this year.

Either way, the Prime Minister announced a £75million spending drive on border security at the Interpol General Assembly in Glasgow today - as both he and Home Secretary pledged to "stamp out" criminal smuggling gang networks.

Part of that is set to go to dealing with "unprocessed claims", the PM said - but the plan has been slated as "effectively giving up on border control".

Speaking to GB News, Migration Watch UK chairman Alp Mehmet pointed to Labour's earlier claims that fast-tracking would "reduce the cost of accommodating migrants" - with tens of thousands being put up at Britons' expense to the tune of £4.2million every day.

But he said processing claims more quickly "does nothing of the sort" and simply "passes the burden onto local authorities and adds strength to the already-powerful magnet" pulling asylum seekers to the UK.

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"It's an open invitation for anyone claiming to be from these countries to make their way here," he said. "Starmer's speech today... effectively gives up on border control. Full of platitudinous waffle.

"He called on the world 'to wake up to the challenge of people smuggling' - if only he would wake up from his pipe-dream of smashing the gangs."

Mehmet called the £75million boost "peanuts", telling GB News: "While additional resources on tackling illegal Channel crossings is welcome, there's still no sign that the Government means business on small boats.

"Only making clear that illegal arrivals will not be permitted to stay will send the right message to traffickers and migrants.

"By binning the Rwanda plan and expanding the accommodation capacity the government has made clear it expects the flow of boats to continue.

"The traffickers are laughing and smashing the gangs is just a pipe-dream," he added.

Responding to a report on migrant hotels and the backlog last month, a Labour source told GB News: "We're working on clearing down the backlog they left behind after years of just doing nothing."

While Sir Keir Starmer said today: "I think we should move all the cases through the system much more quickly.

"One of the problems we've got is that the last Government didn’t process the claims. That left us in the worst of all worlds, which was unprocessed claims.

"More and more people being added to the list of people who need to be processed, all of them being housed in hotels, and you got into this complete fundamental problem.

"We do need to process claims. Obviously, we can triage them in terms of what can be done when we've got to get claims sorted out.

"We've got to get appeals sorted out, and we need to get removing people," he vowed.