Symbol of hate: the Tory government doesn’t want any asylum-seekers to stay in the UK, so ministers are coming up with bizarre and cruel excuses to get rid of them. Bibby Stockholm – the cramped, firetrap, disease-ridden prison barge the Tories hired to house them at great expense – has become the symbol of this cruelty.

Oh look – the Conservative government is cooking the books; lying about the number of people who have arrived in the UK in search of asylum.

According to The Guardian, Stephen Kinnock of the Starmer Party accused the Conservatives of “artificially withdrawing claims” if someone misses an appointment.

“It doesn’t mean they’ve been processed, it just puts people into limbo. Then essentially people are just slipping into the underground economy,” Kinnock said.

More than 6,000 people have been wiped off the list without being fully assessed in just three months, for reasons such as failing to attend interviews or appointments, and not filling in new fast-track questionnaires.

Is this a revival of an old Tory trick – cutting off support with a false claim about the people they are affecting?

We can check this by asking a few questions: Do they even receive notification to attend these interviews? Do any of you remember when the Department for Work and Pensions was cancelling benefit claims by disabled people and those with long-term ilnesses, claiming that they had missed appointments – of which, it later transpired, they had never been informed?

I think the government would need to prove these people had been aware that an appointment had been made and that they needed to attend, before taking any action.

I wonder if anybody will bother to find out.

Then there’s this:

On this, at least, we have a little guidance on what will happen.

According to Bing‘s friendly AI: “The immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, has said that if you decline the accommodation that’s provided, such as a barge, then we will consider removing your asylum support and that individual will ultimately have to fend for themselves.”

What does this mean? “The government begins the process of removing the asylum seeker from the UK. Some are offered money to leave voluntarily.”

So in other words, if people refuse to board a ship that has been condemned as a firetrap by the Fire Brigades Union and has been found to be full of Legionnaire’s Disease, they will be deported – presumably back to France.

We knew that the aim of Tory policy is to clear anybody who seeks asylum in the UK out of this country, no matter what their reason for coming here.

The more we discover about their methods, the lower our opinion of them must fall.

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