Afghan exiles reject offer of cash to go home

Government hopes of helping tens of thousands of British-based Iraqi refugees to go home suffered a setback yesterday when it was revealed that their scheme to pay Afghan exiles to return had attracted just 39 people.

Home Office figures showed that only a tiny fraction of the 7,000 Afghan asylum-seekers had taken cash to go home. The "voluntary assisted returns" scheme was launched six months ago to tempt Afghans to leave by choice rather than be deported. Single people were to get £600 and families up to £2,500. A similar scheme was suggested for Iraqi refugees and Tony Blair and David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said they hoped exiles would go back in great numbers after the war.

The number of Iraqi asylum-seekers more than doubled in 2002 to 14,940, by far the largest number from a single country. Zimbabwe and Afghanistan come next with 7,000 claimants each. The payments scheme for Afghans was expected to attract at least 1,000 applicants and the Home Office set aside £800,000 to fund it in August.

At the time, Beverley Hughes, a Home Office minister, said: "The package will help people re-establish themselves in Afghanistan, help ensure their return is sustainable and enable them to play a part in rebuilding their country."

Last summer, the Home Office said Afghans would no longer win "exceptional leave" automatically because the political situation in the country had stabilised after the routing of the Taliban. A Home Office spokeswoman said yesterday that the voluntary scheme would continue alongside enforced proceedings to deport failed asylum-seekers, which began this month.

But Dominic Grieve, a Tory Home Affairs spokesman, said the figures made a mockery of the Government scheme. "It illustrates the complete failure of the Government's asylum policy, in ensuring the return to their own country of asylum-seekers, when the reasons for asylum have gone. The Government must demonstrate it has a viable policy that is enforceable and commands public confidence and respect."

In a separate move, lawyers for the extremist Muslim cleric Abu Hamza, said they had lodged an appeal against the Home Secretary's decision to strip him of UK citizenship. Mr Blunkett aims to use new immigration powers to deport the Egyptian-born cleric for encouraged Muslims to fight.

The cleric caused outrage by condemning the invasion of Iraq as a "war against Islam", claiming the 11 September attacks on the US were a Jewish plot and calling the space shuttle disaster a "punishment from Allah". The appeal is likely to take months.