UK's asylum crisis is 'back to where we started...in fact it's got even worse

Warning as claims to stay top previous peak in 2002

- Michael Knowles

LABOUR'S asylum crisis is "worse" than when Tony Blair considered radical emergency plans to prevent the system collapsing, his former border chief warned.

The number of people claiming asylum in the UK hit 108,183 in the year to December - far higher than the previous peak of 84,132 recorded in 2002.

But former Border Force director general Tony Smith told the Daily Express that the Channel migrant crisis and people exploiting "weaknesses in our visa system" to "dupe" officials into letting them in should be triggering more alarm bells in Whitehall.

Mr Smith, the Head of Border Control in the UK Immigration Service between 2005 and 2007, said: "Notwithstanding measures by successive governments to reduce asylum intake, we are back where we started. In fact, it's got worse." Asylum seekers were in 2002 filmed climbing the Eurostar fences close to the Channel, getting into the freight areas to travel to the UK on or inside lorries and were seen sleeping in tents on beaches and on park benches.

In response, Sir Tony's advisers considered abolishing the asylum system, and drew up proposals to legislate for "incompatibly" with the European Convention on Human Rights.

This would have allowed ministers to deport thousands of migrants "regardless of the risk that they might suffer inhuman or degrading treatment", said papers released by the National Archives.

Documents from 2003 show Mr Blair was frustrated by the failure to deter people from coming and called for more "radical" ideas.