Illegal migrants have been given free TV licences and trips to go trampolining, bowling and to the cinema funded by the taxpayer, a Reform UK ‘DOGE’ audit has found. The Telegraph has the story.

The Reform waste-busting team found that in 2022 at least £1,000 was spent by Kent County Council on paying small boat arrivals’ TV licence fees.

They were also funded for visits to go trampolining, bowling and to the cinema, according to an audit of the finances of the council which Reform now controls.

Reform estimates that the activities, alongside spending at JD Sports and PC World, have cost more than £24,000 of taxpayer cash.

It comes as the number of migrants crossing the Channel has passed 16,000, more than 50% above the same point last year. Some 1,500 have arrived so far this month, including the second highest daily total of 919 on Friday.

Zia Yusuf, Reform’s DOGE leader, said: “For too long, British citizens have been prosecuted for not paying for a TV licence, yet asylum seekers are having theirs paid for by taxpayers.

“The old Tory regime at Kent county council has a lot to answer for. Reform will fight for taxpayers.”

Reform won control of Kent county council and 11 others across the country from the Tories in May’s local elections.

Since then it has begun sending in auditors to identify and end waste in an Elon Musk-style cost-cutting drive.

Worth reading in full.

It comes as Starmer admits the obvious: that the small boats crisis in the Channel is getting worse, despite his pledge to ‘smash the gangs’. Maybe it’s time to copy Denmark (cut the benefits) and Australia (tow the boats, combined with offshore processing), rather than keeping on with half-hearted plans that repeatedly fail.