UK Inquiry Tracker

Immigration Enforcement

Public Accounts Committee Closed Inquiry

Opened: 15 Jun 2020 Closed: 2 Dec 2020 Parliament page

The Home Office is responsible for preventing abuse of immigration rules, tracking immigration offenders and increasing compliance with immigration law. A series of NAO reports have identified some of the long-standing challenges it faces in managing enforcement activity, removing foreign national offenders and overseeing the immigration detention system and facilities. … Read more The Home Office is responsible for preventing abuse of immigration rules, tracking immigration offenders and increasing compliance with immigration law. A series of NAO reports have identified some of the long-standing challenges it faces in managing enforcement activity, removing foreign national offenders and overseeing the immigration detention system and facilities. The Immigration Enforcement directorate also depends on effective collaboration with other parts of the wider border and immigration system, as well as law enforcement and international partners. The NAO’s report ‘Immigration enforcement’ examines whether the Department is achieving its aim to reduce the size of the illegal population and the harm it causes, and doing so in a way that delivers value for money. It finds that the Home Office does not know how many people currently reside in the UK illegally: its last estimate, made 15 years ago in 2005, was around 430,000 people. More recent estimates from other organisations suggest that number might have doubled. While the Home Office collects a large amount of performance data on its activities, these do not allow it to demonstrate the impact of its work or policies. For example, the NAO found that the Home Office is unable to assess whether its measures to prevent people from accessing government funded services – the “No Recourse to Public Funds” policy that is a central plank of the “hostile environment” - have any meaningful impact on how likely a person is to return to their country of origin. The Home Office is stopping increasing numbers of people from entering the country illegally, but it doesn’t know if this is because it’s catching more of these attempts or there are simply more attempts. The Home Office returned, or helped to return, just over 13,100 people without leave to remain in the year to November 2019, of which 5,600 people returned voluntarily: although the numbers returning voluntarily have dropped from an average of 1,200 a month in 2015 to approximately 460 a month in 2019. The other 7,400 were enforced removals, of which 5,000 were foreign national offenders, but that was less than half - 48% -of the planned enforced removals for that period, often as a result of late legal challenges to removal. As a result, the Home Office released 14,900, or 62%, of immigration detainees from immigration removal centres last year. It believes many of these late legal challenges are used to delay removal but did not provide any evidence that it has tried to actively understand and manage these challenges. The Home Office is currently considering its response to the Windrush review and has commissioned a review of the wider border and immigration system. The NAO argues that these reviews give the Home Office an opportunity to address many of the issues identified in its report. On Monday 13 July the Committee will question officials from the Home Office on the performance of its core immigration enforcement activity, to establish what progress the Department has made in dealing with these enduring, ongoing challenges. If you have evidence on the questions raised in this inquiry please submit it here by 5.30pm on Thursday 9 July 2020. Show less

5 Recommendations

18 Conclusions

1 Report

1 Oral session

4 Letters

1 Event

Activity timeline 7 events

22 Mar
2021

Correspondence

Correspondence from Matthew Rycroft CBE, Permanent Secretary Home Office, re Recommendation 4, Immigration Enforcement, dated 15 March 2021

16 Mar
2021

Correspondence

Correspondence from Matthew Rycroft CBE, Permanent Secretary Home Office, re Immigration Enforcement, dated 10 March 2021

13 Jan
2021

Correspondence

Correspondence from Sir Philip Barton, Permanent Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, re Windrush Compensa…

13 Jan
2021

Correspondence

Correspondence from Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Secretary, re Immigration enforcement, dated 17 December 2020

18 Nov
2020

Report published

Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Seventeenth report from Session 2019-21

18 Sep
2020

Report published

Seventeenth Report - Immigration enforcement

13 Jul
2020

Oral evidence

Immigration Enforcement

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

13 Jul 2020

View on parliament.uk

Immigration Enforcement

Matthew Rycroft CBE · Home Office Shona Dunn · Home Office Tyson Hepple · Home Office

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Title	HC No.	Published	Items	Response
Seventeenth Report - Immigration enforcement	HC 407	18 Sep 2020	23	Responded

Recommendations & Conclusions

2 results

6 Recommendation Not Addressed

Seventeenth Report - Immigration e…

We are not convinced that the Department is sufficiently prepared to safeguard the status of...

We are not convinced that the Department is sufficiently prepared to safeguard the status of individuals while also implementing a new immigration system and managing its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department faces several challenges in the immediate future. … Read more We are not convinced that the Department is sufficiently prepared to safeguard the status of individuals while also implementing a new immigration system and managing its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department faces several challenges in the immediate future. The extension of visas during the COVID-19 pandemic raises concerns that mistakes in case and data management could affect an individual’s future immigration status. The Immigration Enforcement directorate also needs to adapt to the updated vision and values the Department sets out for the UK’s future immigration system from January 2021. The Department committed again to implementing the recommendations of the Windrush lessons learned review and contacting all those who were affected, not only those from the Caribbean. Whilst we are pleased that this is the Home Office’s policy now, we note that the Department initially rejected the recommendation made by our predecessor Committee in March 2019 that the Department should extend its historical reviews beyond Caribbean Commonwealth nationals to include nationals from other Commonwealth countries. Tackling these challenges will require significant change. The Department pins its hopes on its ongoing programme of digitisation and automation to support its response to these challenges, including its implementation of Atlas, but its history of delivering such projects is patchy at best. Recommendation: Within six weeks of this report, the Department should write to this committee to explain its priorities while implementing these significant changes. Specifically, it should set out: 8 Immigration enforcement • How it will balance risks to delivery against the risk that these changes will unfairly affect the lives and rights of individuals; • What practical steps the Department has taken and will take to achieve this balance; and • What testing it has conducted to ensure that its information systems can fully support these steps. Immigration enforcement 9 Show less

Government Response

The government's response does not address the recommendation to explain its priorities for balancing risks and safeguarding individuals during immigration system changes, instead discussing the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Programme.

HM Treasury

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1 Conclusion Not Addressed

Seventeenth Report - Immigration e…

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence...

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Home Office (the Department) about immigration enforcement activities in the UK.1

Government Response

The government's response does not address the committee's introductory statement about taking evidence from the Home Office on immigration enforcement activities, instead listing unrelated NHS and social care topics.

HM Treasury

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Government Response AI assessment · 23 of 5 classified

Accepted 18

Not Addressed 2

Rejected 3

Total 5 recs + 18 conclusions

Correspondence 4 letters

22 Mar 2021 Correspondence from Matthew Rycroft CBE, Permanent Secretary Home Office, re Recommendation 4, Immigration Enforcement, dated 15 March 2021

Parliament page

16 Mar 2021 Correspondence from Matthew Rycroft CBE, Permanent Secretary Home Office, re Immigration Enforcement, dated 10 March 2021

Parliament page

13 Jan 2021 Correspondence from Sir Philip Barton, Permanent Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, re Windrush Compensation Scheme, dated 17 December 2020

Parliament page

13 Jan 2021 Correspondence from Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Secretary, re Immigration enforcement, dated 17 December 2020

Parliament page