Home Secretary David Blunkett has admitted that the government's manifesto commitment to remove 30,000 failed asylum seekers a year was "massively over-ambitious" and simply not achievable.

He said that his major mistake since becoming home secretary after the 2001 general election had been not admitting that the Home Office's targets would not be met because the system could not cope with the numbers.

I realised that the 30,000 removals target was not achievable during the financial year. I should have drawn stumps

David Blunkett

Last year just over 9,000 failed asylum seekers were deported from the UK.

At the time, the target set by his predecessor Jack Straw had been to remove 2,500 per month, a total of 30,000 by Spring 2002. The target was officially abandoned in August this year.

But Mr Blunkett told the Home Affairs Committee the monthly target would not even be met by March 2003.

He and other ministers were now working out a new target based on a starting point of 1,000 removals a month.

"The target was massively over-ambitious," said Mr Blunkett.

"We should not set targets which are not achievable. I made a mistake when I came into this office.

"I realised that the 30,000 removals target was not achievable during the financial year. I should have drawn stumps."

Yarl's Wood blow

The home secretary said that one of the major blows to the 30,000 target had been the burning down of the Yarl's Wood removal centre, Bedfordshire, in February this year.

Yarl's Wood fire slashed removal places

That fire alone, still under investigation, had cut the number of removal places by a quarter, and "finished" the target, he said.

Mr Blunkett said the UK's removal figures were the highest of any nation, but not high enough and that he was trying to put more emphasis on preventing people entering the country in the first place if they did not have legitimate reason to do so.

He attacked the removal process as being the "largest most prevaricating process that someone could have devised", saying that it was unacceptable that failed asylum seekers could attempt repeated judicial reviews to delay their deportation.

Latest figures

The latest figures on asylum applications, published in August, revealed there had been a 4% rise in entrants over the same period last year. In the same quarter, the number of removals reached a record 3,120 people including dependents.

MPs questioned Mr Blunkett and his junior minister Beverley Hughes on the numbers currently waiting removal after failed applications.

Ms Hughes conceded that an estimate that there are 97,000 failed asylum seekers within the UK "may well be correct".

But she rejected allegations from anti-immigration campaign group Migration Watch that failed asylum seekers only had a one in 10 chance of being removed.

Earlier in the hearing, MPs predicted that the government's proposals for large accommodation centres housing up to 750 asylum seekers at a time would take more than a year to open, further exacerbating pressures on the controversial and much-criticised national dispersal process.

But Ms Hughes said the government was also starting to look at trials of smaller centres in conjunction with refugee bodies.