Don't appease the racists, Mr Blunkett

The Home Secretary's plan to speed the deportation of failed asylum-seekers is an ill-conceived answer to a problem that will not be so easily solved – if it is a problem at all.

Certainly, there is a superficial attraction to the idea that failed asylum claimants should be deprived of the right to remain in Britain pending their appeal. The majority of appeals fail – so why not save the taxpayer the cost of maintaining them and instead fund the fare back to Britain for the minority whose appeals are upheld?

However, the lack of a just or stable legal system – or any legal system at all – is one reason why people seek to leave their own countries. Many governments criminalise those who flee. Once home, how are such people either to reach the foreign embassy of their choice, let alone conduct an appeal according to our laws?

In practice, it would be almost impossible to implement Mr Blunkett's proposals effectively or fairly. Many of those seeking asylum come from countries that are repressive or war-torn. Others come from countries that refuse to take back those who have left, or who demand proof of citizenship before doing so – proof (in the form of identity papers) that desperate refugees often, quite sensibly, destroy.

Mr Blunkett's fallback is to propose dispatching such people to the last, safe country they passed through – which would usually be France. Under the Schengen agreement, that would be the correct way to proceed. But Britain did not sign up to Schengen and the treaty has been only patchily applied elsewhere – which is why Tony Blair and others are now trying to devise a pan-European policy on asylum.

In the meantime, Mr Blunkett's proposal looks regrettably like a panic measure rushed out to placate racists and other opponents of even strictly regulated immigration. It was surely no coincidence that the announcement came on the same day that official figures showed the first rise in the number of asylum-seekers for more than a year. One reason why people seek asylum here is that they trust Britain's sense of justice and common decency. We should not let them down.