THE latest official figures on the number of asylum seekers coming to Britain put the problem into some sort of perspective.

Nearly 111,000 applications, two-thirds of them rejected by the Home Office, represent numbers our nation should be capable of processing with relative ease.

And the fact that the largest number of applications came from Iraq and Zimbabwe seems to counter claims that only a relatively few asylum seekers are genuinely in fear of their lives.

These statistics suggest that Britain's perceived crisis over asylum seekers is not caused by the number of applications, but by the unwieldy system which processes them.

The root cause of the problem is the excessive amount of time people coming into this country have to wait until their application is considered.

It is this system which encourages economic migrants to come into our country, and which in turn creates unnecessary additional hardship and anxiety for people fleeing oppressive regimes.

It should not be beyond the realms of possibility for the Home Office to devise a screening system which can quickly gauge the merits of each application.

Surely it is preferable on humanitarian grounds to provide support for those in genuine need and to quickly remove those who clearly have no right to be here.