Labour’s tough new policy on failed asylum seekers has seen 26 year old Vanda da Graca and her 4 year old daughter evicted from their home. Ms da Graca’s benefits have been stopped and she is not allowed to work. She and her daughter are currently staying with friends.

Rochdale council evicted her in compliance with section 9 of the 2004 Asylum and Immigration Act which, at the end of a five-stage process, deprives failed asylum seekers of benefits. This can also leave them homeless - in which case their children are taken into care by the local council.

The policy of eviction - and taking the children into care - conflicts with councils’ obligations to keep children with their parents. It may actually be cheaper for the council to leave the family in a council house - rent unpaid - than to put a child into care.

The councils are doing the Home Office’s dirty work:

In Bury, Greater Manchester, Vahid and Zoreh Khanali, an Iranian couple with children aged six and seven months, lost all benefits at the weekend, but Bury council has not moved to evict them.

“We are in a cleft stick,” councillor Tim Chamberlain told the Bury Times local newspaper. “If we act to do what the immigration authorities want, we would be in breach of our duty under the Children Act. We don’t feel that we are the right people to throw them out. The Home Office has washed its hands of the problem and passed it on to us.”

In nearby Bolton, the Sukula family, with six children, five of them under 18, has failed to return to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The family has lost benefits and is living on cash given by charities and supporters. But they have not been evicted.

“We are seeking to keep the family together in their home, pending legal clarifications,” said a Bolton council spokeswoman.

Michael Howard was ridiculed - and worse - for attempting to expose the disgrace of unknown hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers walking our streets free from the attentions of the authorities who should have been deporting them. In the end, the government was forced to admit - although only after the election - that there were about 500,000 illegals in this country.

The majority of British people, I believe, would support a clear, controlled asylum process which extended the hand of help and charity to fellow human beings fleeing imminent torture or death. A transparent procedure, honestly administered, which reflected this country’s peaceful and caring ideals in a manner that was sensitive to both the applicants’ needs and this country’s would be uncontroversial.

But because of ongoing government deceit and lies an ever-increasingly cynical, distrusting and disgusted public, despairing at the abuse of our hospitality by uncontrolled numbers of incomers, is having to be placated with ever-increasing ‘toughness’ - where, clearly, toughness is now a measure of what we’re prepared to deprive vulnerable people of.

I believe that applicants for asylum in this country must accept, as a condition of their being permitted to make their applications, that they will be housed in a comfortable but secure facility for the duration of the process. On completion of the application process - which the immigration service should be achieving within 3 months - they will either be escorted out of the country or handed over to their assigned local council.

This Labour government doesn’t look ‘tough’ to me. Even if Ms da Graca’s refusal to respect the conclusions of this country has led to her current plight our government looks stupid and cruel.

Blair’s opportunistic swings from stout defence of the asylum system as was and contempt for those questioning it to lying about it to pretend it worked to, eventually, overhauling it to the point that it is now damaging to everybody is the result of a populist and self-serving government making things up as it goes along.

Labour’s pandering to the tabloid mentality means that those of us on the right who remain attached to principles of fairness and decency on the one hand whilst wishing to take care of our nation’s own interests on the other see both principles taking a back-seat to a government-inspired knuckle-dragging loathing of all asylum applicants. Neither the previous nor the current asylum process serves our national interest. Unless fair, practical and considered conservative principles can be applied to this problem it will remain a festering and ugly sore on the national life with its only physician being a desperate, cynical and immoral Labour government.