Families of failed asylum seekers have been offered up to £40,000 to leave Britain voluntarily in a new pilot scheme from the Labour Government, with the Home Secretary saying it could “save money”. The Mail has more.

The Home Office today informed 150 families they are eligible for lump sums of £10,000 a head for up to four people if they agree to go.

The programme could be expanded to thousands more families if it proves successful.

It is significantly more generous than existing cash incentives to migrants who agree to leave voluntarily, which are currently capped at £3,000 a head.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has sanctioned the huge pay-outs in a bid to save even larger sums currently being spent on keeping the families in migrant hotels and other types of accommodation at the taxpayers’ expense.

Financial incentives are necessary because Labour scrapped the previous government’s Rwanda scheme, which would have seen adult asylum seekers compulsorily sent to east Africa to lodge claims there rather than here.

The pay-outs are also an attempt to overcome barriers faced by the Home Office when it attempts to remove failed asylum seekers, including last-minute human rights claims and problems obtaining travel documents from their home nations.

The scheme will only apply to people whose home countries are deemed safe – leading critics to question why they needed to be handed huge sums of taxpayers’ money to leave Britain.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp branded the scheme “an insult to the British taxpayer”.

The Home Office is planning to use physical force to remove failed asylum seeker families – including against children – if they reject the offer, it emerged.

It has launched a consultation with experts in the police, teaching and care work to determine what levels of force could be used against children in what officials said would be a “lawful, dignified and proper” way.

Mahmood, in a speech at the IPPR think-tank in central London today, said the “increased incentive payments” could bring a “significant saving” for the public purse.

Read More: Failed Asylum Seeker Families Offered Up to £40,000 to Leave Britain in New Labour Scheme