'Fagin' family can stay

A woman who runs one of Britain's most prolific gangs of pickpockets is to be given special leave to remain in the country. Dubbed "a modern Fagin", she uses her own children to steal from tourists outside Buckingham Palace and in the West End.

Her tactics mean she has yet to be charged with any offence - although her 12-year-old daughter alone is thought to be responsible for 800 pickpocketing offences as far afield as Cambridge and Maidenhead.

And even her nine-year-old daughter is pressed into service as a "dipper", escaping prosecution because she is under the age of criminal responsibility.

But now the woman - who cannot be named because of laws protecting her children's identity - is to be given leave to remain in this country indefinitely.

She is to benefit from Britain's biggest asylum amnesty, ordered by Home Secretary David Blunkett to help clear the massive backlog of cases.

Police are already powerless to deport her, and in five years' time she and her children will be able to apply for British citizenship despite their first asylum claim being bogus.

The family are from a povertystricken village in Romania that they left in 1998, travelling across Europe to Britain, where they claimed asylum telling officials they were from Bosnia.

Humfrey Malins, Tory spokesman on asylum, said: "It is scandalous and ludicrous to give asylum to people who are actually here damaging this country. Families like this should not be made welcome." Today police said the Government needed to examine how it deals with such cases. Detective Inspector Kevin Shanahan, who heads British Transport Police's pickpocketing unit, spoke of his officers' frustration at repeatedly picking up children such as the 12-year-old and her sister.

He said: "It's like a revolving door. We pick them up and they are out again." The 12-year-old is now under a year-long supervision order.

Mr Blunkett's asylum amnesty gives 15,000 families who arrived before October 2000 the right to indefinite leave to remain in Britain. The "Fagin" family meet the Blunkett critieria and, because the mother has no convictions, cannot have their leave to remain revoked.

A legal source said: "If the Home Office used the 12-year-old's convictions as grounds for refusing their leave to remain there would be very good grounds for a human rights case."