Well yes, when they are constantly using the "cost" of housing and processing asylum seekers and refugees as a reason for denying asylum seekers and refugees whilst also trying to criminalise them and failing to provide simple, legal avenues of entry.
The Govt keep whinging about the cost of housing asylum seekers when they created the cost in the first place. They just spend millions on renting a barge which is unfit for human habitation when they *could* have recruited many people to actually process claims. They have spent millions on stupid plans to fly people to Rwanda - instead of hiring people to process claims.
There was a very interesting segment on the Newsagents podcast which shows the insanity of the government decisions - decisions which don't even benefit the very department making them...
Whilst Asylum applicants are waiting for a decision, the cost of housing them comes from the DFID budget, not the Home Office. This is due to the fact that the costs of managing asylum applicants is lawfully considered a cost relating to overseas development even if they are in the UK. The Home office backlog has been causing significant budget problems at DFID with around a 1/3 of their budget now finding its way into UK landlord pockets or private companies involved with the detention centres who are housing these applicants.
The latest legislation passed by this government allows the Home Office to classify those arriving as illegal immigrants if they didn't legally arrive in the UK via conventional means (eg. people arrive on small boats).
But here is the thing - paying for the detention accommodation costs of people designated as illegally migrants cannot lawfully be taken from the DFID budget - that cost will have to be taken by the Home Office.
The Home Office were told about this extra cost to their department continually by civil servants looking into the proposed legislation. It was ignored. Therefore the Home Office is facing a potential bill running into billions if they classify new arrivals as illegal immigrants under the legislation they passed. There are a few possibilities as to how this situation arose.
1) The government ministers are so epically stupid they didn't understand the cost implications that were completely obvious
2) They didn't care and assumed they would just take the money still from DFID unlawfully
3) The legislation is simply performance art aimed at shoring up the Tory core "hang 'em and flog 'em" support and they have no intention of using this legislation - asylum classification will still be used. Suella et al. assume correctly that these nuances will be lost on their core support and the Daily Mail won't run with such a story.
The third option seems most likely to me. Since the legislation was passed it hasn't been used on a single person to classify them as illegal immigrant instead of asylum claimant. So DFID are still footing the bill.
It is my opinion that the government immigration policy is designed solely to put the issue at the forefront and shore up core support who have been showing signs of wavering as the cost of living shoots up for them. Some circuses to make them forget the cost of bread is rising rapidly.
As the podcast concluded, the home office legislation could be the biggest boost to the DFID budget since the cut to 0.5% by Sunak.
