'Mess' is surely too weak a word

The absurd situation -- branded a mess by Rossendale and Darwen MP Janet Anderson -- was exposed today by the case of Czech gypsies, mother and daughter Gabriela and Simona Cervenakova, located to Darwen by the government while their application for asylum was assessed.

It has been refused. Now, they want to return to their own country. And the Home Office has fixed a flight for them -- tomorrow from Stansted Airport in Essex.

Yet, because the government has refused to pay their bus fares to the airport -- costing £25 each -- the penniless pair face being stranded in Darwen.

But this amounts to more than an administrative hitch or bungle. For the upshot is that because these people have become exempt from any of the support asylum seekers receive -- food vouchers, accommodation, etc. -- in order to survive they will have to resort to begging or stealing or 'disappearing' into the community and living off the black economy as illegal low-wage slaves.

Yet, as we hear from lawyers handling the cases of numerous asylum seekers in East Lancashire, this is precisely what has happened in hundreds of instances already. Our community is having to absorb scores of desperate people who have been left stranded and have 'vanished', either to steal or be exploited in order to live.

A 'mess' is, surely, too weak a word to describe what amounts to an utter scandal -- when the government's failure to establish a proper system to ensure that homeward-bound asylum seekers get to their airport. If it can bus them around the country on arrival, it can surely see that they are bussed to their planes and leave when they are supposed to do.

It may be that the government is now tightening up procedures, proposing to curb the dispersal of asylum seekers and end the voucher system, but it needs to sort out this bus ticket bungling at once.