Nigel Farage has pledged to cancel the gold-plated pensions of civil servants deemed responsible for allowing sex-offender migrants into the country.
The Reform UK leader made the vow in the wake of reports that Home Office officials have waved through claims regardless of the background of the applicants, to whittle down a 150,000-strong asylum backlog.
Under the plans, if Mr Farage becomes Prime Minister, any individual civil servant found responsible for allowing a foreign national into the country who then went on to rape or sexually assault a British citizen, could be prosecuted and have their Government pension forfeited – with the proceeds donated to victims’ charities.
Official figures show that convictions of foreign nationals for sexual offences including rape have risen by 62 per cent in four years, with one in seven of the crimes now committed by non-Britons. There has been a rash of high-profile cases this month, including two 17-year-old Afghan asylum seekers who pleaded guilty to the brutal rape of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa.
Mr Farage told The Mail on Sunday that a Reform administration would focus on members of the Civil Service ‘blob’ that failed to weed out dangerous asylum-seekers.
He said: ‘Any civil servant who wilfully allows migrants to enter the UK when they know that they pose a risk will be held accountable for their actions.
‘I will not allow the safety of our women and girls to be sacrificed on the altar of misguided liberalism.’
Reform UK sources highlighted figures that show, for example, that Afghan nationals are more than 20 times more likely to be convicted of sexual offences than British citizens.
Mr Farage told The Mail on Sunday that a Reform administration would focus on members of the Civil Service ‘blob’ that failed to weed out dangerous asylum-seekers
Small boat migrant Amin Abedi Mofrad, 35, who raped a 15-year-old in an alleyway on Valentine’s Day
One source claimed that both Conservative and Labour governments had ‘betrayed the British people by wilfully concealing sex offences’.
Last month, an experienced case worker in the UK’s asylum system was quoted as saying: ‘I think it’s inevitable that one day I will turn on the TV news and there will be some man I have granted asylum to and he will have raped or murdered a young girl just like my girls.’
She pointed the finger firmly at the system, rather than individual officials, for allowing dangerous asylum seekers into the country, describing it as a ‘crazy carousel’ in which tens of thousands of applicants – or ‘customers’ – were often assessed without any identity documents.
The case worker said: ‘Most people I assess are lying. Even if they eventually get a deportation order, it’s mainly voluntary. Very few of them ever get sent home – the Home Office hasn’t the resources or the willpower to do it. They just disappear.’
This month, the rape in Leamington Spa had a reporting restriction placed on the case, because a defence lawyer said a video the victim took of the attack was so harrowing that it risked disorder if the public saw it. In addition, Sultani Bakatash, also an Afghan national, was charged with the rape of two teenage girls in Bolton and Dawajan Ahmadzai, another Afghan national, was found guilty of two counts of sexual assault of a child.
One senior Home Office case worker was disciplined for refusing to approve an Afghan man’s application because he had been arrested several times for indecently exposing himself in a children’s play area.
A Reform UK source said: ‘It is unlawful to give individuals who pose a danger to the United Kingdom refugee status under the immigration rules.
‘However, under huge pressure from the Labour Government, Home Office case workers are approving asylum claims even where individuals have been charged with crimes. A Reform government will hold accountable Home Office case workers and managers.
A Reform government will create a new criminal offence of “dishonestly determining an asylum claim”, punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment. We will stop their civil service pension payments and ultimately strip pensions in the most egregious cases, donating employer contributions to victims charities.’
A government spokesman said: ‘Civil servants do vital work securing UK borders and processing returns. We have removed nearly 50,000 people with no right to be on British soil and asylum-related returns are up 27 per cent compared to the previous year. We will not allow foreign criminals and illegal migrants to exploit our laws.
‘We are reforming human rights laws and replacing the broken appeals system so we can scale up deportations.’
