Amnesty for 120,000 migrants

'Amnesty' for 120,000 migrants


The UK Border Agency made virtually no effort to trace more than 120,000 asylum seekers and migrants, a damning report will say today.








A Home Office spokesman admitted regular security checks were not carried out Photo: REX FEATURES





By Wesley Johnson, Home Affairs Correspondent

12:01AM GMT 22 Nov 2012




The agency incorrectly reassured MPs that “extensive checks” were regularly being carried out, John Vine, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, said.


Because the agency said it could not find the individuals, it was able to move the cases into an archive and therefore clear its backlog before a deadline last year. The failures have led to asylum seekers and migrants who would otherwise have faced removal from the country gaining rights to remain in the UK, Mr Vine said.


Some 37,500 applicants whose cases were effectively written off as there was no apparent trace of them are now expected to be located after a review.


The agency was so overwhelmed with work that at one point more than 150 boxes of post, including letters from applicants, MPs and their legal representatives, simply lay unopened in a room in Liverpool, the report found.


Keith Vaz, chairman of the home affairs select committee, which was given misleading information by the agency’s then-acting chief executive, Jonathan Sedgwick, said it was a “devastating” report which showed the agency was “in danger of overseeing an effective amnesty” for asylum seekers.



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Calling for Mr Sedgwick to hand back bonuses of up to £10,000 a year, Mr Vaz added that misleading the committee was “an extremely serious matter”.

The agency’s current chief executive, Rob Whiteman, will also be asked to “check every fact and figure that he has given the committee over the last two years”, Mr Vaz said.

In July 2006, John Reid, home secretary at the time, pledged to clear the backlog of cases within five years or less and a unit was set up to consider the applications the following year.

In February 2007, it emerged that the backlog consisted of up to 450,000 cases. The agency told MPs in March last year that it was on track to complete the work by the summer, adding that it was setting up a separate small unit to work on the outstanding cases.

Today’s report said the unit’s resources failed to match the amount of work remaining.

The problems were compounded by the “ever-increasing amounts of correspondence from MPs and legal representatives” generated, at least in part, by the agency’s claims that the work was almost completed.

A parliamentary committee found earlier this month that it was still struggling to deal with more than 300,000 unresolved cases, a figure equivalent to the population of Iceland.

Whitehall’s spending watchdog has also warned that the agency’s staff were cut too fast, given delays in bringing in automated systems. It had laid off 1,000 more staff than intended and had to hire extra people and increase overtime just to meet its workload, the National Audit Office said in July.

It also faced stringent criticism last year when its borders chief, Brodie Clark, quit after it emerged that security checks were being unofficially relaxed at airports.

Chris Bryant, the shadow immigration minister, said the report was “utterly damning” and called for Theresa May, the Home Secretary, to explain why officials provided MPs with incorrect information. “She must also explain why her staff have been so slapdash in their attempts to track down failed asylum seekers,” he said.

“She cannot hide behind others. This has happened on her watch.

“The Tory-led Government made big promises on immigration and changing the UKBA. But quite simply the UKBA and the split-off Border Force are getting worse and worse.”

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the Migration Watch UK campaign group, added it was “another chapter in a sorry tale” and the fundamental problem was that the “seriously under-resourced” agency was “reduced to sticking fingers in the dyke”.

In the report, Mr Vine said: “On the evidence I found, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that cases were placed in the archive after only very minimal work in order to fulfil the pledge to conclude this work by the summer of 2011.”

Security checks which the agency claimed were being done “had not been undertaken routinely or consistently since April 2011” and checks to trace applicants were not made with other government departments or financial institutions until April this year, he said.

Asylum cases placed in the archive did not receive the regular six-month checks against either the Police National Computer or the Home Office warnings index watchlist which the agency had promised to carry out, the inspectors found.

The evidence showed the reality was “inconsistent with the information provided by the agency”, inspectors said.

The agency has since checked all cases left in the controlled archive against information held by both the Department for Work and Pensions and a credit reference agency.

Some 31,000 applicants in asylum cases were found, along with 6,500 migration cases, but the agency still has “insufficient resources” to carry out further work on these cases immediately, the inspectors warned.

Both Mr Sedgwick, now the agency’s director of international operations and visas, and Mr Whiteman have written to the committee to apologise for the errors, the Home Office confirmed.

A Home Office spokesman admitted regular security checks were not carried out, but said all cases were checked against the Police National Computer and the Home Office watchlist before being put in the archive.

All cases in the controlled archive have now been reviewed as part of a process validated independently by Deloitte, the accountants, the spokesman added.

He went on: “We have known for some time that UKBA is a troubled organisation with a poor record of delivery.

“Turning the agency around will take time, but we are making progress.”

He added: “The agency has accepted and is implementing every recommendation from the report.”

Mrs May will also invite the chief inspector to assess the agency’s audit and assurance mechanisms and ask whether he needs further resources “to make sure he can bring greater transparency to the work of UKBA”, the Home Office said.

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Iv'e got a good idea, let some of the Royal Navy and Army Personnel due to lose their jobs in the New Year be employed

in monitoring beaches where it is known illegal immigrants come ashore and replace the Border Agency staff and instead be employed by the Government at far less cost.