Another cost of immigration

New Labour regularly have to admit that they have lost immigrants, or that there are more here than they expected.

Less often are they prepared to admit that there is a cost to the lack of a strong policy. The numbers are so large, however, that they have to acknowledge that strains on placed on housing, education and health in particular by the large "invasion".

Recently, using the Freedom of Information Act, Conservatives managed to prise out something of the language costs. We are used to the large sums spent by local authorities in printing in many languages, or in having translators available for interviews, but the police are also spending large sums on translators.

The Conservatives approached all 43 police forces in England and Wales, and received replies from 37.

Collectively the 37 spent £24 million in 2006-07, which means £2740 for every hour for every day in the year. These figures represent an increase of over 64% on the previous year. The problem is not getting better!

The detail given by the forces varied, but Gwent, which had an increase of 250% on 2005-06, gave some breakdown. They spent ££6,900 on Vietnamese languages, £6,850 on Arabic and £4,350 on Urdu translation. Their increase was large, but there were faster increases, - police translation costs in Durham rose by 293% between the two years, and in Cumbria by as much as 386%.

There are a number of issues here:

The £24000 spending could have provided for another 200 police officers, which would have had some impact, even they spend most of their time doing paperwork!

The expenditure could have been largely avoided if immigration had been smaller, or the Government had required a minimum proficiency in English.

The Government has proposed an "entry tax" on immigrants to cover public service costs, but as usual it would be underfunded, since the £15 million would not even cover the police translations costs alone!

We are familiar with the costs of New Labour incompetence. This one, from failing to control immigration, is just one of a long line.