Lib Dems Slam Government Plans to Force Landlords to Manage Asylum Checks

The BBC are reporting that the Government are planning to force landlords to monitor the asylum status of all tenants and will be expected to evict tenants who lose the right to live in England under new measures to clamp down on illegal immigration.

They will be able to end tenancies, sometimes without a court order, when asylum requests fail, ministers say. Landlords will also be required to check a migrant's status in advance of agreeing a lease. Repeat offenders could face up to five years in prison.

Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron MP said:

"If someone is living in this country illegally, we should pursue proper steps to ensure their removal from the UK.

"It is alarming that David Cameron wants Britain to become a country where landlords are doubling up as border staff, and could face prison for failing to check complex paperwork.

"It isn't a straightforward task - even government Ministers have in the past failed to properly check the immigration paperwork of people they are employing.

"In government we stopped the Tories introducing these plans as it creates bureaucracy for landlords, uncertainty for legitimate tenants and does little to tackle the problem of illegal immigration."