Border Agency to be quizzed over failed deportations

The head of the Government's Border Agency is to be quizzed by MPs after around 30 asylum seekers were forcibly deported to Baghdad, only to be refused entry and sent back to Britain.

Lin Homer, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency, will be asked to explain the incident by the influential Home Affairs Committee. Ms Homer is due to appear before the committee in the next few weeks. Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the committee, will be contacting the Home Office today to find out what steps were taken to ensure that the deportees would be accepted. He will also demand to know how much public money had been spent on the flights and security operation accompanying it.

He warned that the botched deportations had exposed the Government's immigration policy to ridicule, criticising last Thursday's flight – which saw about 30 out of 44 failed asylum-seekers being turned away by Iraqi authorities – as a "waste of time, money and credibility". He added that the Government had to "consider carefully" whether it was putting former asylum-seekers at risk. "At the moment, it would seem sensible not to remove people – as with countries such as Zimbabwe – unless you are quite certain that people are going back to a safe environment," he said.

The decision to press ahead with the flight despite an apparent lack of communication with the administration in Baghdad was also criticised by the Liberal Democrats. Chris Huhne, its home affairs spokesman, said the flight had been "a disgraceful way to treat people who have already experienced enormous hardship and tragedy.

"If the Government is going to return people to places as dangerous as Iraq it had better make every effort to ensure that this is possible and safe," he said. "We need an asylum system that is firm but fair – we have neither. Responsibility for it should be taken away from the Home Office and given to a Canadian-style independent agency."

The fiasco will also form part of a planned parliamentary inquiry into the Government's removals policy. "We will have to revisit this," Mr Vaz said. "Unless you have the support of the local administration in Iraq, you can never satisfactorily solve this problem." He added that a backlog in dealing with asylum applications is currently costing the taxpayer £650m, while also allowing people to settle in Britain. "From a position where they are reasonably settled, to be put on planes and then sent back is very, very difficult," Mr Vaz said.