The riot outside an asylum hotel underscores the urgency of a fair migration system

Nothing can justify the thuggish behaviour of a mob outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley, Merseyside, on Friday night. Demonstrators who threw missiles at police and set a police van on fire should be dealt with severely if caught, and further disturbances deterred by preventive policing in future.

At the same time, it has to be recognised that such disorder is likely to occur if the asylum system is failing to process applications quickly enough, leading to the housing of large numbers of applicants in temporary accommodation. While we should be grateful that there have been so few incidents of this kind, the riot in Knowsley underscores the urgency of getting to grips with a malfunctioning system.

This is not a problem that has come out of the blue. The numbers of people making the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats has been increasing for three years, while the government has been distracted by inhumane and unworkable plans from the hard work of processing applications promptly.

Priti Patel and her successor as home secretary, Suella Braverman, have been so caught up with the idea that they can solve the problem completely by deterring arrivals with the threat of instant deportation that they have overlooked the need for basic administration. Which meant that when Ms Patel’s schemes for offshore processing in faraway places came to nothing, and when her scheme for removal to Rwanda was snarled in legal thickets, the Home Office had failed to keep up with the rising number of asylum claims.

This first led to the crisis at Manston, a temporary holding centre of tents in a disused airfield in Kent which became dangerously and illegally overcrowded – as exposed by The Independent – and then to the emergency relocation of large numbers of asylum seekers to expensive hotel accommodation around the country.

By the end of last year, the situation had become so serious that Rishi Sunak had to intervene. Getting to grips with the asylum system is an urgent priority that will be directed from the prime minister’s office. In a statement to parliament before Christmas, Mr Sunak finally pledged to do all the things that his predecessors – and Ms Patel and Ms Braverman – should have been doing long ago. He promised to increase the number of asylum applications processed, and to remove more of those whose applications are refused.

The first part ought to be straightforward: the Home Office needs more officials working more productively to decide claims quickly and reduce the backlog (although there is also the puzzle of why British officials seem to allow claims from countries such as Albania, that would be rejected in any other European country).

The second part – removing asylum seekers whose claims have been refused – has always been much harder. The Home Office has recently made much of its success in sending several plane loads of failed asylum seekers back to Albania, but the overall numbers remain small in relation to an asylum backlog that now amounts to 150,000 people.

To be fair to Mr Sunak, he has staked his political future on speeding up the processing of asylum claims. We need a fair, humane and efficient system of processing claims for refugee status in this country. That would allow the opening up of legal routes to claim asylum; it would help to deter Channel crossings, if those making unfounded claims were not allowed to stay; and it would be the right way to fulfil our obligations to the oppressed and the persecuted of the world.

That it would also make disturbances such as Friday night’s in Merseyside less likely is not the reason for making the asylum system work better, but it would be a welcome component of an overall net positive.