Editorial: ​Public Accounts Committee report is fresh proof that the UK lost control of immigration

​The utter scandal of how Britain lost control of its borders has again been laid bare by an official report.

A cross-party committee of MPs has found that the asylum system is on the brink of collapse. The Public Accounts Committee said that the Home Office has focused on short-term fixes and has no strategy. It said it was “shocking” that ministers do not even know where all failed asylum seekers are in the country.

While this is a welcome cross-party denunciation of the current situation, it is always worth remembering the cross-party culpability for this crisis. It began with that naive purveyor of all things to all men, Tony Blair, who thought of himself as a new broom, coming into office in 1997 after the villainous Tories, and supporting things such as multiculturalism and faith schools and diversity. As is well chronicled, the Conservative-Lib Dem government after 2010 led to an even higher level of net migration into the UK, and particularly the Tory governments alone after 2015. Those latter Conservative administrations thought they proved their liberal credentials by accepting emerging radical theories on the need for large-scale migration, Net Zero and trans rights. Labour has made it all worse. Meanwhile, parties across the spectrum accepted ballooning in welfare dependency – above all in Northern Ireland.

Now it is almost too late on immigration. Countless asylum claims are bogus. The country has vast numbers of illegal migrants, and many millions of legal ones, tens of thousands of whom every month become eligible for Indefinite Leave to Remain (full access to benefits).

Labour has engaged in trickery, closing hotels but fast-tracking migrants into social housing, which makes it harder for established residents to get the same.

Labour mocked the Rwanda scheme, which introduced an essential – and still missing – element of deterrence.