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Shabana Mahmood was meant to be one of the more sensible ministers in this Labour government. Since arriving at the Home Office last September, she has been applauded for bringing some semblance of effectiveness to a notoriously dysfunctional Whitehall department. But in light of her latest announcement I’m not so sure the praise was warranted.

The Home Secretary has announced she will introduce new "capped safe and legal" routes later this year for refugees to come to the UK. Organisations such as community groups, universities and businesses will be allowed to sponsor new arrivals and support them in finding housing and work.

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This is madness. More than 76,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in the UK by small boat since Labour came to power two years ago. But rather than saying enough is enough, the government’s plan seems to be to encourage these illegal migrants to become legal refugees as if that fixes the problem. What is more, it’s not clear how this scheme will even stop people trying to arrive by small boat – if they apply to be a refugee and their application is denied, they may well try their luck on a dinghy instead.

Mahmood has said the new system would protect "genuine refugees" while "closing loopholes” to create a system which is “fair, controlled, and not open to abuse”. The government has refused to say how many people would be let in, except to insist that there would be a cap. But inspiration has come from a similar scheme in Canada that has brought 400,000 refugees to that country since 1979.

Those are huge potential numbers. And this policy was not even in the Labour manifesto. Reform UK has said it would scrap the scheme if elected to government. And no wonder. The British people never voted or asked for this – and there is nothing controlled or fair about it.

The government said background checks would be conducted before letting anyone in. But, as we saw with the Peter Mandelson fiasco, the dysfunctional British state is barely able to properly vet the most sensitive government jobs, let alone tens of thousands of refugees with opaque backgrounds. The bigger problem is that we allow in far too many asylum seekers full stop. We have nowhere to put them so have resorted to ruinously expensive hotels funded, of course, by taxpayers. There is not adequate infrastructure or services for them – not least when many come with medical ailments having lived in developing countries and active warzones.

The public’s legitimate concern at the small boats is in part because it shows we have lost control. We have unvetted people arriving daily on our shores and can do absolutely nothing to stop them. But it’s also about the numbers themselves – whether or not new arrivals are vetted. We can barely provide functioning public services for the British people, let alone anyone else.

The government plans to work with the UN High Commission on Refugees to work out who is eligible. They intend to prioritise war-torn countries such as Sudan and Eritrea. But they will not consider cultural compatibility or the needs of our communities that will have to house them.

Needless to say, the NGO-complex in this country has already kicked into gear, exerting pressure on the government not to draw eligibility criteria too narrowly. The Community Sponsorship Alliance wants the government to let local people and communities decide who gets to come. That is a recipe for disaster. And there is something else: it’s precisely the war-torn countries that will be prioritised by this scheme that we should be most wary about. Surely individuals seeking to leave such places have been exposed to – and possibly desensitised to – shocking violence? They may have PTSD or other mental health afflictions.

My heart goes out to foreigners who have to see their countries torn apart in this way. But it would be naive not to admit that what these people have seen and experienced may make them more of a threat. At the very least, it is another risk to the safety of Britons that we must be honest about.

The British state increasingly resembles an irresponsible parent opening up the house to all and sundry – to eat, drink and crash for as long as they like, while their own children struggle for a meal and a bed. The British are a welcoming and tolerant people that always instinctively want to help those in need. But this is not the way to do it.