UK Edition
Eight in 10 flights to deport illegal migrants blocked by human rights challenges
Twice as many migrants or criminals have avoided deportation from UK as have been sent back to home countries in past six months
Eight in 10 flights to deport hundreds of illegal migrants and foreign criminals from the UK have been disrupted or blocked by human rights challenges, internal Home Office figures reveal.
Twice as many migrants or criminals have avoided deportation as have been sent back to their home countries in the past six months under return agreements with nations including France, Germany, Spain and Albania.
Five of the 32 flights had to be abandoned entirely as lawyers lodged last-minute appeals to prevent their return to countries that had agreed to take them back.
The figures, revealed under freedom of information laws, will reignite Government criticism of "lefty lawyers" exploiting human rights laws to block the deportation of illegal migrants and criminals.
Home Office figures revealed this week that around 80 per cent of last minute appeals by illegal migrants against deportation failed even though the proportion challenging the decision had increased to 73 per cent.
A Home Office source said: "It is fair to say that for too long Government taxes have been wasted by meritless claims from people we have every right to deport and later turn out to be false. We will bring forward reforms to our asylum system to ensure this cannot happen and there is fairness for the taxpayer."
It came to a head when lawyers' last-minute appeals prevented the deportation of more than 40 of 57 convicted criminals including killers and rapists whom the Home Office wanted to deport on a flight to Jamaica.
The data shows that the Home Office was forced to remove migrants from or abandon 26 flights out of 32 in the nine months from April to December last year.
Only 18 migrants were taken off deportation flights up until August, but the number increased to 333 from August, out of a total of 495 earmarked for deportation or removal – giving the ratio of two to one who managed to delay their departure after legal challenges.
It comes as the Government moves this week to curb asylum seekers' rights to appeal in a bid to slash the number of spurious claims "without any merit" that clog up the courts. The Ministry of Justice will raise the bar for appeals so they will only be allowed if there is an "exceptional public interest", as revealed last November by The Telegraph.
It is the first legal move by the Government to shake up an asylum system that Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, and Boris Johnson have claimed is "broken".