A system scandalously out of control 

Daily Mail COMMENT - April 14, 2005

Though the British people are slow to anger, there should be an outpouring of national rage over the senseless, savage murder of Detective Constable Stephen Oake. Everything in the death of this brave and honourable copper sums up the rottenness of our asylum and immigration shambles and the self-serving hypocrisy of the politicians who preside over it. 

New Labour's election manifesto boasts of a 'crackdown on abuse to ensure that we have a robust and fair immigration system'. But contrast that smug dishonesty with the price Stephen Oake has paid for the way Kamel Bourgass was allowed to make a mockery of our border 'controls'. 

This trained Algerian agent for Al Qaeda had one aim when he waltzed unchecked into Britain: to kill people on an industrial scale. An expert on poisons, he was up to his neck in a plot to manufacture ricin and other deadly substances. 

And what was to stop him? Certainly not this government's pitifully inept policies. Bourgass had no trouble getting into Britain. He managed to live here illegally for years, though his bogus applications for asylum were turned down twice. No attempt was made to deport him. 

Instead, he hung on untroubled by the authorities, claiming benefits under false identities, engaging in credit card fraud and planning mass murder. He would probably never have been caught at all, but for an intelligence tip-off. 

Then came the final, fatal confrontation with DC Oake. Labour claims things are getting better. But today we report on the long queues of asylum seekers at Calais, all being helpfully shepherded by the French police as they plan to make their way across the Channel to soft-touch Britain. 

We report too on the police search for three Chinese teenage asylum seekers who have disappeared amid fears they they have been kidnapped by Triad gangsters and forced into prostitution. 

These are symptoms of a system scandalously out of control. It is one thing to argue - as this paper frequently has - for a properly controlled system of economic immigration to provide Britain with the skilled workers it needs. 

And of course it is right that this country should give shelter to those genuinely fleeing persecution. But New Labour's approach is something else. It has lost control of our borders. It admits it doesn't have a clue how many illegal immigrants are arriving on these shores. It allows asylum-seekers to disappear before their cases can be heard and fails shamefully to deport those whose applications fail. 

And it massages the figures - for example by providing more work permits which artificially shorten the asylum queue - to pretend the problem is being resolved. 

This Government has not only presided over an explosion in immigration but is doing nothing to reverse it. According to the think-tank MigrationWatch - which has earned a reputation for its rigorously scrupulous figures - Britain's population will soar by 5.6 million in the next 30 years - and 85% of that will be because of immigration. 

The consequences are already obvious: pressure on social services, strains on the NHS, schools and housing. There are growing areas where community harmony is being steadily undermined. And that is to say nothing of the way Britain is left wide open to the threat of terrorism. 

Michael Howard is right to place immigration at the forefront of the Tory election campaign. The killing of Stephen Oake has once again exposed the appalling failings in the system.