Foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers are being flown home at a very costly expense on half-empty private jets.
One special flight costing around £250,000 carried a lone Moroccan deportee.
Further ‘con air’ examples include the use of an entire airliner to return 11 Afghan illegals to Kabul and a 265-seat plane taking just 25 Nigerians home.
In the 18 months to June, the Home Office has spent £14million on the chartered planes. Scheduled flights for immigrants who agree to be deported are thought to have cost £30million more.
The figures – obtained under freedom of information laws – follow the revelation that a £3,000 Hummer stretch limousine was used to ferry refugees from Heathrow to their new home in Manchester.
At least 54 private jets were used to carry 2,892 deportees – an average of 53 per plane. The cost per passenger of nearly £5,000 would cover a first-class air ticket half way around the world.
The revelations prompted Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, to demand answers from immigration minister James Brokenshire.
Last October, a National Audit Office report revealed the £1billion-a-year failure by successive governments to police Britain’s borders and deport even the most dangerous foreign criminals.
It revealed that the Home Office had lost track of 760 of the 4,200 foreign criminals who had been freed back on to our streets by the end of March 2014 pending their removal.
The annual cost to the taxpayer of each foreign criminal is £70,000 – between £770million and £1.04billion a year.
Read More: £14m spent on private jets to deport asylum seekers in 18 months
