THE Home Office instructed immigration officers not to deport foreign convicts because of fears that they would claim asylum, a senior Whitehall insider has alleged.

The policy was implemented more than two years ago as part of a wider, undisclosed strategy to reduce asylum claims so that the Home Office could meet Tony Blair’s target of driving down the number of applicants for refugee status.

This undermines claims by Blair and Charles Clarke, the home secretary, that a simple breakdown of communication between immigration and prison service officials was to blame for the fiasco.

The senior insider, who was a key figure in the Home Office’s Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), said that under the policy, immigration officers were told not to visit prisons to serve deportation papers on foreign criminals who were about to be released. The instruction reversed a long-standing policy under which immigration officials visited prisons every week to monitor the release of foreign convicts.

The source said: “There was an unwritten rule that immigration officers could not go to prisons because senior officials knew that most of the prisoners up for deportation would automatically claim asylum. This was one of several ‘creative’ solutions thought up by senior officials to please ministers.

“By not addressing the issue of people coming out of prison who were likely to claim asylum, the official figures would be reduced. That was definitely the bottom line.”

The insider said he was told of the policy in early 2004 by a senior IND director. It was understood to have been condoned by senior officials in the IND’s removals and enforcement directorate, responsible for deporting foreign criminals as directed by the courts.

His comments were reinforced by the emergence of a letter sent to Robert Wilson, MP for Reading East, last week by an immigration officer. The officer wrote that the government’s “crackdown” on asylum statistics meant that efforts were being made to avoid confronting potential claimants to keep the tally down.

His letter said: “Immigration officers have been forbidden from going out on operations, or to deal with immigration offenders arrested in police stations, unless they are failed asylum seekers.

“This is because offenders are likely to claim asylum which tips the scales the wrong way. Operations to arrest offenders are strictly forbidden unless they are to pick up failed asylum seekers.”

In February 2003, Blair caused consternation in the Home Office when he promised during a BBC interview to cut asylum applications by half in seven months. Officials were instructed by David Blunkett, then home secretary, to meet the target by September that year.

The Home Office acknowledged that the immigration service had focused on reducing asylum applications but denied that this had diverted attention from criminals who were illegal immigrants.

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