ASYLUM seekers must not be kept waiting for years to learn if their appeals to stay in the UK have succeeded if a removals backlog is not to become even worse, a Kent MP says.

Ashford MP Damian Green, the Conservative shadow immigration spokesman, was speaking after the publication of a damning report into the government’s efforts to remove failed asylum seekers.

The report by MPs on the cross-party Public Accounts committee, said it would take between 10 and 18 years to clear the existing backlog and warned that those refused asylum ended up staying because they knew there was little chance of getting caught.

Mr Green said the report’s findings were worrying.

He said: "The Immigration and Nationality Directorate [the government agency responsible for asylum] is clearly not being run properly and the result is that we have hundreds of thousands of people that the Government knows are here but who should not be and no-one knows where they are."

The key to resolving the crisis and tackling the backlog was to make sure new arrivals were dealt with much more quickly to stop them being tempted to disappear, the MP said.

"We have to shorten the time that people have to wait to hear their appeals. I know from my own constituency cases that people have been waiting four to five years to go through the appeals process. That is unfair on them and the system," he added.

"If the authorities lose contact with people, it becomes a matter of luck whether they then are able to resume contact with them."

The MPs’ report also highlighted how around 400 criminals were among those asylum seekers who had effectively gone missing.