𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham has been urged to axe £5 billion worth of immigration grants to free up additional cash for the military. It comes as Sir Keir Starmer outlined spending plans to try and make the UK armed forces battle ready.

But Migration Watch UK say they have found an extra pot of money that can be made available at the stroke of a pen to give our troops the kit they need.

The watchdog has argued that grants handed out on migration and family life grounds just last year alone could be slashed with ease.

It would mean just over 34,000 recently arrived immigrants would lose their first-time in-country handouts, which campaigners say carry an average lifetime net cost of £141,000 to the taxpayer.

Such grants are given to people allowed to stay in the UK despite not meeting requirements such as the minimum income threshold and the English-language standard, and who are not selected on economic criteria.

Critics say that Mr Burnham has yet to make clear how he would fund the defence investment plan, which is several billion quid below what military chiefs reportedly asked for.

The likely next prime minister also declined to comment when approached by this paper.

Alp Mehmet, the Chairman of Migration Watch UK, demanded Mr Burnham be “honest with the British people.”

He added: “He can pay for vital defence spending at a stroke; all he needs to do is block the 2025 inflow of Article 8 migrants from accessing taxpayer-funded public services.”

Mr Mehmet argues that “this alone will in time save our country £5 billion, which can be invested in our armed forces instead.”

Speaking to the Daily Express the Conservative Party’s Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp slammed “vexatious legal challenges to asylum claims”.

Mr Philp claimed such challenges had made it “far too easy for immigrants to stay in the UK” and had hit taxpayers with an “immense cost”.

He warned that “tweaking and tinkering with article 8 of the ECHR is simply not enough” and demanded the country leave it fully.

This paper is campaigning for the country to leave the convention as part of our ‘Give Us A Proper Brexit’ campaign. Sources close to Mr Burnham have suggested the potential Prime Minister views the defence investment plan as “settled”.