A Conservative government would cut the number of asylum seekers arriving in Britain to a provisional 20,000 a year, Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin said yesterday.
Mr Letwin told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the huge reduction - there were nearly 111,000 new applications from asylum seekers last year - would be triggered by radical changes to the way refugees were processed.
Asylum seekers arriving in the UK would be deported within 24 hours to offshore camps, possibly in Albania but certainly outside the EU, to have their applications decided, he said.
The proposals could save at least £1bn of the current £1.8bn cost of supporting and processing asylum claims, he added.
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