'Get a grip' plea after Home Office spends £2.3m on migrants' SIM cards

SPLURGING taxpayers' cash on Channel migrants "must stop", critics warn after the Home Office spent £2.3million on mobile SIM cards.

- Michael Knowles

Smugglers are believed to be ordering their clients to either leave their phones in France to prevent them being tracked or to toss them in the water as they are being rescued.

This is to stop vital evidence being gathered on the smuggling gangs.

New arrivals have been recorded throwing mobiles and paperwork into the water. Home Office documents seen by the Daily Express - show the department spent £78,155 on SIM cards for asylum seekers in 2020.

This ballooned to £552,635 in 2021 as the small boats crisis intensified. The Home Office then spent £773,956 in 2022 when a record 45,000 migrants crossed the Channel - and last year it was £750,941.

Almost £160,000 has been spent this year, a Freedom of Information request shows.

Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said: "The Home Office proves that the priority of the Government, both Tory and Labour, has been to provide for the comfort of those who arrive here illegally.

"The British taxpayer is being screwed to the ground to pay billions on accommodation, millions on SIM cards, things that are often beyond the capacity of hard-pressed British citizens. This has to stop.