Driving lessons for refugees granted asylum have cost taxpayers nearly £30,000 over three years, with over £20,000 spent in the past year alone by Kent County Council.
Locals and campaigners called the spending “disgraceful,” especially as council tax rises by 5% and Kent faces ongoing migrant arrivals. Critics argue it’s unfair for taxpayers to cover costs when working Britons pay for their own lessons.
Kent County Council said only asylum-approved refugees and care leavers aged 18 to 24 are eligible, to help them live independently.
Kevin O’Sullivan speaks with Folkestone resident, Liam T.
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Locals and campaigners called the spending “disgraceful,” especially as council tax rises by 5% and Kent faces ongoing migrant arrivals. Critics argue it’s unfair for taxpayers to cover costs when working Britons pay for their own lessons.
Kent County Council said only asylum-approved refugees and care leavers aged 18 to 24 are eligible, to help them live independently.
Kevin O’Sullivan speaks with Folkestone resident, Liam T.
Click here for more from Talk https://talk.tv
If you need any help visit: https://talk.tv/helplines
#news #muslim #ramadan #islam #refugees #uk #money #driving
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NewsTranscript
00:00Matt is it to his own hand, he lives in Folkestone, he lives in Folkestone and that is
00:09on the front line of the migrant crisis and he got sick of walking around his hometown and seeing
00:13loads and loads of migrants having driving lessons, so he put in a freedom of information
00:20request to Kent County Council, said how much you're spending on driving lessons, free driving
00:27lessons for asylum seekers and the Kent County Council said £20,143.86, that's last year,
00:37two years ago it's like £3,000, one year ago £5,000, last year £20,143, so it keeps going up.
00:46Kent County Council now says it's proud of this obvious waste of taxpayers money and that somehow
00:52or other it's legally obliged to provide this service, I bet it's not. Anyway so this is due
00:58to our loyal fan Liam from Folkestone, so I thought you know it's about time he came on
01:05the show and we had a chat with him, so welcome to the show Liam. Hello Kevin, how are you? Good to
01:11see you, now congratulations on your freedom of information request which absolutely gripped our
01:19audience, we got massive engagement on that on social media, thousands and thousands of retweets,
01:26people rightfully annoyed. Now you've subsequently heard from Kent County Council who are now saying
01:37that a it's their legal obligation to provide these lessons, absolutely no it isn't,
01:44something to do they say with children, children who come over here, and secondly they're saying
01:53which is interesting that the money they spend, the £20,000 or the more than £20,000, comes from
02:00central government. Now I wouldn't put anything past this mad government and this mad country,
02:07but in your freedom of information request, which I've got a copy of, you said how much are you
02:13spending, Kent County Council, on driving lessons for immigrants, for asylum seekers?
02:22They didn't say anything about, because if you think about it, if the central government
02:26was giving them that £20,143 a day just expense, then technically they didn't spend anything did
02:33they? Except I'm not quite sure that they're being entirely up front here, I think they're being
02:41economical with the truth, they're spending Kent County Council residents money on all of this
02:47aren't they? Yeah definitely, well I just had my council tax bill for the next financial year and
02:53it's gone up five percent, and nowhere on the council tax bill itself does it say services for
02:59asylum seekers or asylum seeking children. Now this is what really kind of got me really angry,
03:06I don't know about you, but I wouldn't class a 17 year old as a child, they're not, they're young
03:13adults if anything. So for them to double down on this and say it's not from central government,
03:19it's not from Kent County Council, it's from central government, is a nonsense in the first
03:24instance, but I'm really grateful for you for actually giving me the chance to break this on
03:31tour. Since then on my YouTube channel, it's just Liam T, it's had over 3,000 views, loads of
03:38comments, and the amount of outrage amongst my subscribers, you know, it's total insanity,
03:46that's a general feeling, you know, this is just a magnet, another magnet, given what other councils
03:53are spending on, such as, I don't know, DJ skills for example, or what else have we got?
04:03DJ skills, driving lessons, driving tests, trips to the local football stadium, trips to the zoo,
04:11trips to the cricket, just loads and loads of free stuff that we give them, 6.6 billion pounds in the
04:18last five years, something called the Asylum Support Scheme. Now, call me controversial, but
04:25I thought the kind of basic idea was you tried to set up deterrence to dissuade foreign migrants
04:33from illegally breaking into our country. Instead, what do we have? Just this cornucopia of enticements
04:42to come here. Exactly, it's like, for example, you can't, for every, look, I'm down here in
04:50Folkestone, I'm on the front line, okay, and so I see it every day, every day, the air sea rescue
04:56helicopters up at one o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning, we are on the front line
05:01down here in Kent, and, well, my mum, this is the only reason I started my YouTube channel,
05:06my mum was a social worker for Kent County Council with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children,
05:12and she was, she's not with us now, God rest her soul, she passed away three years ago, however,
05:18this is the reason why I started my YouTube channel, because she knew, and with two sons
05:23herself, many of these guys are blatantly not children, not under the age of 18, and so this is
05:29why I started my channel. But let's see, the thing is, for every migrant that comes across, that's
05:36one less GP appointment, one less dentist appointment, school places, houses, they get free gifts
05:43free food, free laundry services, they get given rides to the prairie, a mosque, etc., and now,
05:52like driving lessons, the main sentiment on my channel was that my kids pay, work on a Saturday
06:00job to pay for their driving lessons, what the hell's going on here, you know, there's just a
06:04sense of real outrage, and so all these free gifts and luxuries and presents and welcoming
06:10and rolling out the red carpet, until that stops, it's just going to keep going, Kev.
06:15Yeah, and there seems to be, I'm looking at this story from Kent Online, which is all about us,
06:20really, we're all in it, I'm in it and everything, they're talking about us breaking this story,
06:26thanks to you, you thanked me, I want to thank you for your excellent freedom of information
06:32request, which bore astonishing fruit, didn't it, to say the least. Now, I'm looking at this story
06:40on Kent Online, and Kent County Council seems to be sort of acting like it's its legal obligation
06:47to do this, to provide driving lessons to unaccompanied child migrants. Well, first of all,
06:56what do they mean by children? I mean, it's obviously a grey area when it comes to these
07:01migrants breaking into our countries, because a lot of them claim they're school kids, 15 years
07:06old, when they've got receding hairlines and beards, so it's a grey area anyway. But I can't
07:13imagine for a second that there is any legal obligation for any local council, or indeed
07:20central government, to provide free driving lessons to migrants, to asylum seekers. And by the way,
07:28Liam, while we're on the subject, you know, Liam, rather, Kent County Council made a big thing of
07:34saying to you in your freedom of information request response, nobody gets this facility,
07:40nobody gets free driving lessons or tests until they get official refugee status when they become
07:47asylum seekers. Asylum seekers is a temporary condition. Why would we give driving lessons to
07:53people who might be kicked out of the country? Is it that we just assume they're all going to be
07:58allowed to stay? Probably that, isn't it? Well, yeah, the majority do get to stay, don't they? But
08:05then you think, what, another kind of sentiment that came out from breaking this story is like,
08:10okay, right, so we as taxpayers pay for the lessons, we pay for the tests, then what? Then
08:16what is, what happens? Do they get a car? Do they get insured? Do they get petrol? You know,
08:21where does it end? It's just a, you know, we're just scratching at the surface here for the amount
08:26of freebies that are handed out, and quite rightly, people are annoyed. Absolutely, yeah, I've got the
08:33Kent County Council spokesman here who's saying, you know, under the immigration law, Kent County
08:38Council is responsible for the care of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, UAS children,
08:44they're called. Fair enough, fair enough. The courts have been very clear that we cannot treat
08:49UAS children differently from other looked-after children. All right, fine.
08:56And they are entitled to the same support as every other child in care nationally.
09:04We offer our care leavers... Then it goes on to say, then it just says arbitrarily,
09:11driving lessons are part of our offer of support for all care leavers, and all support for UAS
09:16children is fully funded by the government and not Kent County Council. So are we saying, then,
09:22that this £20,143.86 was all provided by the government, and on what basis does Kent County
09:33Council translate, interpret its obligation to underage or young asylum seekers?
09:43That obligation includes free driving lessons. On what basis do they say that must include free
09:50driving lessons? This is just their decision. And do you know what I find really depressing
09:55about this, Liam? Is that the Kent County Council is not only a Tory council, it's a Tory council
10:03with a vast majority. This is a Conservative county council, and it's acting like Green Lib
10:10Dems, or the Green Party, or Communists, or something. They're proud of this claptrap.
10:17Yeah, well, one of my subscribers, it's your namesake actually, his name's Kevin, he lives
10:21in Coventry, and he said Coventry as a Tory council were doing it 10 years ago. So, you know,
10:27how far back does this actually go? It's, you know, well worth investigating. Well, I'm just looking
10:34at myself in this story here. Host Kevin O'Sullivan said on the channel today, this would have been
10:40last week, we have to pay for our own driving lessons. Why don't they? Why are we paying for
10:46them? Why, when these people break into our country illegally, do we then shower them with
10:53gifts? It's crazy. And who is paying for it? Us, you, the British taxpayer. It's an outrage. I
10:59couldn't have put it better myself. In fact, I did put it that way myself last week. And that's
11:03what I'm quoted on Kent Online. My points still stand. Where did they get the idea that it's their
11:11job to give free driving lessons and driving tests to illegal migrants? Okay, you want to call them
11:17asylum seekers, they've got refugee status. Where did they get the idea that that's part of their
11:22obligation? It just isn't, is it? Yeah, there's no logic to it. I mean, there would be a logic
11:29to it if, for example, they're going into employment, which then says that they're going to
11:33stay anyway. But then it's just it's not been guaranteed that they are going to. It's just,
11:40it boggles my mind, Kevin, it really does. Tell me about Folkestone, because you said last, was it
11:46last week, you told me that you sort of saw all these migrants getting driving lessons. So around
11:53Folkestone, is it sort of palpable that the migrants are milling around the town?
11:59Well, yeah, well, we have. We wouldn't have ever asked this. I don't know, you might remember,
12:05or heard of Napier Barracks? Oh, yeah, I remember those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,
12:09there was a court fire at one point, didn't they? Yeah, it did. That was in the January journey,
12:14which they were there for a month. It happened in August of 2021, I think, 2020. And all of a
12:22sudden, 450 of these young chaps kind of descended upon into Napier Barracks. There's a big hoo-ha
12:30about it, that it's not fair, you know, because it's still got the razor wire, it reminds them
12:34of a prison, etc. It was set fire to in the January. And they kind of stayed there, allegedly,
12:42because from another Freedom of Information request I put into their home office this time,
12:48and about how many abscond, and they're only meant to stay there for 90 days,
12:54and they're free to come and go as they please. And if they go off-site, they have to give a
12:59contact number, and if they haven't heard from them in seven days, they're considered as absconded.
13:05So there were 19 last year that disappeared. But we've also got three hotels along the seafront,
13:11complaints of uninvited guests hanging outside of schools. The park opposite Napier Barracks itself
13:18is a play area, strewn with beer cans, barbecue, scorch marks, cigarette butts, whiskey bottles,
13:24vodka bottles. The rest is embers. The same, the Tesco, which is directly opposite Napier,
13:29which is only about, like, three, five minutes walk, constantly shoplifted from. I've got a
13:34friend that works there. I mean, I moved here in 2017, and in seven years, it's just changed.
13:41It's not the same place. I mean, like I said earlier on, you know, woken up night after night
13:47especially. It's worse in the summer. But it's a lovely town, you know.
13:50I know folks in Wales. I grew up fairly close to folks in near Dover, and it is a nice town.
13:57But being gentrified, I understand. But also, you're obviously being infested with migrants
14:03as well, which is the story of so many towns, particularly down there in Kent.
14:09Yeah, I know that Bournemouth is really suffering as well. It's one of them.
14:14But it's just, it seems no sign of stopping. It's not going to stop. Actually, with regard to the
14:19figures, if I may just say this, these are that we know about figures, official from the Home
14:25Office. It's in the same period from since Sarma was elected to, like, today, really, or yesterday,
14:3527,606. And in the same period for Rishi Sunak, 21,472. So it's a 29% increase over the same
14:46period. So smashing the gangs, I don't think that's worked. We've had 4,392 since January 1st.
14:54Yes. Smashing what gangs? They haven't smashed a single gang. Even if they did,
14:59wouldn't make any difference, Liam. Listen, Liam, you keep those freedom of information requests
15:04going in and you keep posting me about them. We'll get you on again. But thanks again for
15:10your great work. You have unearthed what I think is a major scandal. And as Liam pointed out to me
15:17last week, you know, you can rest assured there's 5,500 migrants staying in, living in Kent. That's
15:25one county. So if you extrapolate that across the country, we're spending out undoubtedly,
15:32you know, like a million quid a year, something like that, on free driving lessons and free
15:37driving tests for people who broke into our country illegally. They should be in jail.
15:43Instead, we're giving them free stuff, free driving lessons, free doctors, free dentists,
15:5145 quid a week, free food, free accommodation, free trips to the zoo, free trips to the cricket,
15:58free trips to the football. Does it strike you that this country has gone stark staring bonkers,
16:04stark staring mad? Let me know what you think.