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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 406 House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
THE WORK OF
MS LOUISE PERRETT MS LIN HOMER and MR BRODIE CLARK Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 157
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Home Affairs Committee on Members present Keith Vaz, in the Chair Mr James Clappison Mrs Ann Cryer David TC Davies Mrs Janet Dean Gwyn Prosser Bob Russell Mr David Winnick ________________ Witness: Ms Louise Perrett, gave evidence. Q1 Chairman: Could I welcome our witness, Louise Perrett. Could I also refer everyone present to the Register of Members' Interests where the interests of Members are noted. My wife is an immigration solicitor; I am a non-practising barrister. Ms Perrett, thank you very much for coming to give evidence to us on the work of the UKBA. You probably are not aware that from time to time we have the pleasure of taking evidence from the Chief Executive of the UKIB, and also BA, and also recently, since his appointment, the Independent Inspector of the UKBA, so that is part of that overall framework that we have called you to give evidence on. You were quoted in the Guardian newspaper and other media as making some very serious allegations about what was happening in Cardiff. Could you briefly tell us the background of what you were doing in the Cardiff office? What was your job? How long were you working there? Ms Perrett: I was employed as a casual case owner on a temporary work basis in the summer of 2009 in between university courses. I was employed for three and a half months, and I was a decision-maker as a case owner. That is it. Q2 Chairman: What was the nature of your concerns about what colleagues were saying and doing at that Cardiff office that led to what you have done? We are most grateful to you for coming here today to give evidence to this Committee. Ms Perrett:
When I arrived there was some misunderstanding within the office, they did
not realise that I and several other casual members of staff were going to
turn up that day, we were allocated our posts, it was split between HEO, case
owners, and the rest were executive officer, I am not sure what their
title was. Then we were allocated asylum
teams to sit in and shadow for two weeks until our training started. I was allocated to Asylum Team 3, and
there were pleasantries and introductions to the staff. I introduced myself, and I was
asking about the job, the pros, the cons, things like that, and I asked
about the claimants and their thoughts, and I was told, "If it was up to
me I would take them all outside and shoot them". I told her that I did not agree
that she should be saying things like that in the office and it was horrendous. I quickly explained my background and
career history, which has always been in the equalities field, working for the
Welsh Assembly and the voluntary sector in Q3 Chairman: Yes. You also made comments, reported in the Guardian, that people behaved in other offensive manners. Can you give us any other examples of the offensiveness? Was it a majority or a minority of members of staff? Ms Perrett: It was generic throughout the office. If somebody was not making the statements or saying things horrendously they were just allowing it to happen. That goes from the team leaders to the Grade 7 to the other case owners. It is constant, so much so that as an equalities person working for ten years I just did not know where to begin and how to address any of it. I would raise my concerns with team leaders or my trainer or the other case owners but I was always dismissed and laughed off. Q4 Bob Russell: Ms Perrett, four weeks have elapsed since the Guardian article. Was the Guardian article a fair and balanced report, from your perspective? Ms Perrett: Yes, it got my main points across. Because of word constraints it did not get across the culture of the organisation, which is my main concern, of why these things can happen and do happen. Q5 Bob Russell: Have there been any consequences in the past four weeks to that article? Ms Perrett: I have only had positive feedback so far. Q6 Bob Russell: You partly answered the Chairman's question of how your colleagues approach their work. I wonder if I could just press that, because I think it is important to know how widespread it was. Are we talking of three or four people? A dozen? Everybody? Ms Perrett: Well, a dozen that I spoke to, I did not like very many people there, I must admit, I did not agree with the things they were saying so I tried to avoid them. When I explained to the presenting officers, which is the legal department, where a lady was from and that a case owner was trying desperately to find a way to remove this family back to the DRC, when he asked me where the lady was from and I told him the Congo, he sang, "Umbongo, umbongo, they kill them in the Congo" - and that is the presenting officer. In Asylum Team 1 or 2, they were separate, they had a grant monkey in their team. I was not part of that team. Q7 Bob Russell: In the newspaper article it is referred to as a "stuffed gorilla". Ms Perrett: It was just a toy but it was known in the office as a "grant monkey". Q8 Bob Russell: Was everybody in the office involved in the grant monkey award? Ms Perrett: No, that was in just one team. The office is in an L-shape separated by a stairway, and it is Asylum Team 1, I think. Q9 Bob Russell: Would the people in ultimate charge be aware there was this stuffed monkey there? Ms Perrett: Yes. The team leader obviously, and the team leader sits with the case owners. Q10 Bob Russell: In summary are you saying the ethos of the whole office, every single employee, was of a nature that caused you serious concern, or was it just a few domineering people? Ms Perrett: There are good people there, do not get me wrong. Q11 Bob Russell: That is what I am trying to get at. Ms Perrett: Those people act in a professional, courteous, caring manner. I do not want to tar everybody with the same brush. But the fact is the culture of the office does not permit those individuals to speak up and say "No, this is wrong". Q12 Chairman: What you are saying, leaving the issue of the monkey aside, is that those who grant asylum applications were in some way ridiculed, is that the issue? Ms Perrett: Yes. Initially, when I first started in the office I thought it was a positive thing. I thought to have the grant monkey on your desk was a celebration that you had helped somebody that day and to have the grant monkey was to be celebrated, but I quickly discovered no, it was not, it was ridicule, and that you had "let one through", in a sense; you had not done your job properly. I am sorry, what was the question again? Q13 Chairman: It was that people were ridiculed when they granted applications. Ms Perrett: Yes. Q14 Mrs Dean: Could you just remind us how long you worked there? Ms Perrett: I was employed for three and a half months. Q15 Mrs Dean: You completed the three and a half months? Ms Perrett: Yes. It was a rolling contract through Hays Specialist Recruitment. I was there for only three and a half months. Q16 Mrs Dean: You said how one of the members of staff there described how he interviewed people. Did you witness how people interviewed claimants? Ms Perrett: I did shadow people. I did not shadow that individual because he was a team leader and they tend only to interview the most difficult cases that need the most experience, so I did not witness him personally interviewing, but he was giving me tips as my line manager on how to conduct an interview. Q17 Mrs Dean: How did you find the interviews that you did witness? Ms Perrett: I witnessed one that was absolutely fantastic and she should be commended for her professionalism, it was brilliant, but they tended to be the more mature members of the staff who were not influenced so much by the culture of the office. They did not really care if they fitted in or not. The younger members of staff were very gung ho, very aggressive and rude from the moment you met an asylum seeker in the waiting room. Q18 Mrs Dean: You witnessed that rudeness? Ms Perrett: Yes. Q19 Mrs Dean: It was not just something you heard talked about, as wrong as that could be? You witnessed it? Ms Perrett: In the two weeks when we were shadowing that meant we were following individual case owners throughout the whole day. Q20 Mrs Dean: What sort of rudeness did you come across in those interviews? Ms Perrett: Just general hostility, not so much in the things they would say but their demeanour, abruptness, general intimidation that I thought as a government official was totally unnecessary, and we would not expect to be treated that way. Q21 Mr Clappison: Did you report your concerns to anybody? Ms Perrett: I continuously raised my concerns within the office to line managers in front of the group director, which is a Grade 7 level but, like I said, I was always laughed off as a woolly liberal. Q22 Mr Clappison: When you say you "raised" your concerns, what did you say specifically? Can you remember? Ms Perrett: That this was outrageous, that you cannot act like that in the office. You would walk in and people would be standing up screaming, swearing. I have worked in the Welsh Assembly so that is the only other Civil Service kind of scenario that I can compare it with. Q23 Mr Clappison: What was your job in the Welsh Assembly? Ms Perrett: Initially I was team support back in 2000. I worked my way up to be the equality and diversity co-ordinator for the Culture Directorate and then I was a researcher in 2008 for the public sector. Q24 Mr Clappison: Going back to your training and the way you approached it, were you trained that this was a factual exercise, gathering evidence to see if somebody was telling the truth or not? Whether they met the criteria for asylum? Ms Perrett: Yes. The trainer did a very good job in the five weeks that you have of training, in the limited space. She did her best to bring us up to speed in a proper manner. Q25 Mr Clappison: Did you find that your background in equalities and diversity was helpful in this or not? Ms Perrett: Yes, I could challenge and give an alternative. Again, from my two weeks I had already established myself as a bit of a pain really and a bit of a liberal. Q26 Mr Clappison: The job you had was not to be a liberal or to be offensive or anything else; it was to evaluate the facts and see whether somebody met the criteria? Ms Perrett: The Home Office set training itself I have no issue with. Obviously the length of time that you are given, five weeks to make a decision on somebody's asylum claim, but the contents, no, that is not my issue whatsoever. My issue is with the culture of the organisation and how the officials conduct themselves and how that affects the asylum seekers claiming asylum. It is not the training. Q27 David Davies: Ms Perrett, what percentage roughly of the staff that you were with were not white? Were there black and Asian staff there as well? Ms Perrett: A few. Q28 David Davies: So the black and Asian staff, white staff, were all taking part in these jokes, were they? Ms Perrett: Well, no. The one black employee that I had more dealings with was a Muslim, and when he heard staff members saying things that were factually incorrect about Islam and the Muslim beliefs and culture he would try and give the correct view from his point of view. Q29 David Davies: But what about the grant monkey that gets passed around the desks? Ms Perrett: He was in a different team. I never saw that gentleman in Asylum Team 1. David Davies: You will recognise this document as the monthly cohort snap shot from UKBA. Chairman: What does that mean? Q30 David Davies: This is a breakdown of how many asylum seekers have been allocated to each region of the UK, how many have been granted asylum by staff like Ms Perrett. It contains various other topics as well but the interesting point for me is this. At the top you have the number of people who are granted asylum immediately by case workers like yourself. I have the figures from Cardiff and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the North East and Cardiff were granting far more claims than anyone else. Were you aware of that at the time? Ms Perrett: No. Q31 David Davies: 30 per cent were granted immediately in Cardiff as opposed to 24 per cent in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and just 20 per cent in the North East. Ms Perrett: I do not know the dates of those. Q32 David Davies: June 2009? Another whistleblower came out from the same office as you a few weeks later. Ms Perrett: Really? Q33 David Davies: And suggested that, notwithstanding what you have said, in Cardiff there is a real problem that so many cases have been granted without anyone looking at them, and that is why the figures are so much higher in Cardiff than elsewhere. Ms Perrett: Look, my issue is --- Q34 David Davies: --- more with the behaviour? Ms Perrett: The behaviour. I am not interested in how we are trained or the figures, I do not know if they are correct or incorrect, but the problem is how an organisation deals with its members of staff and acts on a professional basis and how we interact with people who are the most vulnerable people in our society, and how they meet with officials of the government, and what I saw was absolutely horrific and should never be accepted, or ignored. Q35 Mrs Cryer: Ms Perrett, what made you eventually decide to approach the Guardian, or did they approach you? Ms Perrett: I was approached by the media. I have not courted any media myself. Q36 Mrs Cryer: How did they know about you? Ms Perrett: I am
a student at Q37 Mrs Cryer: You talked about your concerns to this group? Ms Perrett: Yes. Q38 Mrs Cryer: And that story percolated through to the Guardian and they approached you? Ms Perrett: Yes. Q39 Mrs Cryer: Have any other newspapers or media outlets approached you since then? Ms Perrett: Not since then. Before the Guardian was the BBC World Service. They were the first people to contact me. Q40 Mrs Cryer: Do you feel you have achieved anything by going public? Ms Perrett: I am aware through contacts that the grant monkey no longer exists and that to me is an achievement, that is no longer in the office and, again, if that is all I achieve, that is great. Mrs Cryer: Thank you. Chairman: Ms Perrett, thank you for giving evidence. It is obviously very difficult to come before a Select Committee and it has been difficult for you to do what you have done, but we are extremely grateful to you for sharing your information with us. If there are other matters that we need to raise with you we will write to you. Thank you for coming in. We are most grateful. Witness: Mr John Vine, Independent Chief Inspector, UK Border Agency, gave evidence Q41 Chairman: Thank you for coming to give evidence to us. When you first came to see us Members of the Committee were concerned about the existence of your post and were worried about the benchmarks set by the Government. Can I begin by thanking you for the work that has been done so far? You have gone out of your way to keep this Select Committee informed with reports and letters and have done your best to make sure that you have kept the word "independent" before the words Chief Inspector. There remains concern about your workload because, of course, you combine two previous posts, the entry clearance tsar, if you like, and the new post of inspecting the UKBA, so thank you very much for doing that. We are most grateful to you for coming here to give evidence to us today. Your annual report is an excellent report, I think there are 17 photographs of you in it. Are you running for Parliament? Mr Vine: Not at the moment, Chair, no. There were very few members of my Inspectorate right at the start so I thought it was important to ensure that people knew who I was, knew that we were independent in the Inspectorate, and that we were quite distinct from the UK Border Agency itself. Q42 Chairman: Was this prepared internally or did you go to a public relations organisation? Mr Vine: It was produced professionally by the Central Office of Information, but we produced it internally. Q43 Chairman: As far as the public are concerned, because obviously you cannot give everybody a copy of this very glossy publication, is there a summary that can go to organisations about your work, or have you sent this out more widely to people so they understand what your role is? Mr Vine: We sent this proactively to all the major stakeholders in the asylum and immigration field. We have also published it on our website and made sure the website has an independent web address now as well, whereas it started off with the Home Office web address. We have done our best to circulate it and it is quite unique as an annual report because it includes the findings last year. This is a one-off annual report; the next one will have more opinion about the state of the Border Agency drawn from the series of inspections we have done. This includes recommendations from pilot inspections and others which I think most people who read it found very formative. Q44 Chairman: You are aware of the recent report into the UKBA, and of the damning criticisms of the UKBA by the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Does that match your concerns in the reports that you have published recently about these matters? Mr Vine: The
Parliamentary Ombudsman has conducted a recent inspection into complaints
and she deals obviously with individual complaints from the Border Agency
and other government departments.
I liaised with the Parliamentary Ombudsman because I am also
in the process of producing inspection reports on customer handling and
complaints, and in her foreword she mentions our report. From her report she is identifying some
shortcomings in mainly the process of handling administrative issues in
relation to complaints. My inspection
report is going to look in depth at a number of cases and try and drill
down into complaints handling generally, both professional standards
complaints, complaints that are sometimes overseen by the Q45 Mrs Dean: Following on from that, according to the Ombudsman many of the UKBA's problems are politically driven being caused by sudden changes in priorities and switching of resources. If you came to the same conclusion as that, would you be able to speak out boldly to ministers, and would you expect them to respond positively? Mr Vine: I am trying in all my work to look at the performance of the Border Agency within the policy parameters it has been given. My job as an independent inspector is not to comment on public policy; policy on immigration is a matter for Parliament, and I am trying to look very closely at how the Border Agency is performing within those parameters. In the inspections that I have published so far, the ones contained in the annual report and the one that has recently received a lot of publicity on asylum, I am trying to get as close to commenting frankly, openly and transparently about what are the facts based on the evidence that I am finding, and I am trying to put that as frankly and openly into the public domain as I can. Where I am finding areas for improvement and evidence to support that, that is going in my reports. Equally, where I find good practice and people within the Border Agency working effectively, I am trying to ensure that is highlighted in the report as well, so there is a difficult balance to be achieved. I am hoping that by taking a very evidence-based approach I can make sure that I maintain that balance. Q46 Mrs Dean: Do you comment to ministers on the effect that policies might have had, or are having? Mr Vine: I am
sure we will come to the Asylum Report but if I can draw on that as an
example, where I am talking about targets being unachievable, there
I am talking about what I find at the moment in time of inspection
and making a judgment based on my experience about whether that sort of
thing is possible. I am not
commenting on immigration policy per se, but I am making
a judgment based on what I am finding about whether the
Border Agency is efficient and effective.
Efficiency and effectiveness is really at the heart of my role, looking
at whether this organisation is efficient and effective, where it can be
improved, and it is in all our interests to make sure we have a very
effective UK Border Agency in securing Q47 David Davies: Mr Vine, you are shortly going to be looking at Cardiff, I understand. Mr Vine: We
have been looking at Q48 David Davies: You will be aware of the whistleblower from Cardiff who has suggested there is a cover-up going on over the figures? It was reported in the Western Mail recently. Mr Vine: Yes. I listened to the evidence this morning, as well. Q49 David Davies: You will know what this is and this suggests that Cardiff are granting a huge number of cases immediately and only a handful of people are being removed - 3 per cent, 2 per cent, 2 per cent, very small. Out of over 100 people in one case only three were removed, and that is typical for the different areas of UKBA. Is this your experience, that only one or two out of every 100 people are removed? Mr Vine: As
part of the asylum scrutiny we have looked at files from across the UK Border
Agency including that region and all the other regions as well. We found in the report, and I report
upon it in here, that the mix of cases varies enormously depending on the
region that you are looking at.
For example, the Q50 David Davies: The highest figure I can find is 4 per cent. Do you know of anywhere where more than 4 per cent of asylum seekers in each cohort are being deported? Mr Vine: We have looked extensively at the figures and at the way the Border Agency are handling asylum. In the report what I am reporting on is that we find that, generally speaking, the case workers that the Border Agency has dealing with these cases, on the basis of what we have witnessed, are dealing with them effectively and within the rules. Q51 David Davies: So that 4 per cent is the highest we can expect? Mr Vine: If that is what the figures say at the moment, that will be the case. Q52 David Davies: Do you think we should have access to these figures? It is amazing that they had to be leaked. Would you agree - and this is not an aggressive question, forgive me if it sounds that way - that Members of the Home Affairs Select Committee should have access to the monthly cohort snapshot so we can see what is going on? Mr Vine: What I am trying to do is put as much information into the public domain as possible. Q53 Chairman: Mr Vine, Mr Davies asked a specific question. Do you think that that information should be left to a whistleblower to be given to Members of Parliament? Do you not think that that kind of information, which is important information, ought to be included in the letter that is sent to us by the Head of the Immigration Department? It is statistics, is it not? Mr Vine: If you would find, as a Committee, that information to be helpful in giving you an overview of the position in relation to asylum --- Q54 Chairman: You are the Chief Inspector, do you think this kind of information ought to be made available? Mr Vine: If you would find it helpful, then I would say make that request. You have to look beneath the bare statistics and the reasons behind the statistics as well, and that is what we have tried to do here. Q55 David Davies: At the moment I do not get statistics unless somebody decides to leak them to me, and I am looking at them and below them and what I find is absolutely horrifying, that about a third of all people who claim asylum are given it straight away by officials like Ms Perrett - and I am sure she did a very good job but others obviously did not - and even though the rest of them should not be here only a handful, maybe one or two per cent, are deported, and I find that absolutely horrifying. Mr Vine: You would have to make that request to the Chief Executive, but if you would find that helpful as a Committee I do not have any problem personally in relation to that. Q56 Mr Winnick: Mr Vine, we are constantly being told by the Chief Executive and others that the backlog of cases is being cleared, but you are far from optimistic about that happening, are you not? Mr Vine: You are talking about the legacy case work, I presume? Q57 Mr Winnick: Indeed. Mr Vine: At the time we inspected this particular issue, we found that four and a half thousand cases a month were being concluded on the basis of an estimated 450,000 cases at the start of this whole process, and about 200,000 left. The Border Agency needs to be clearing far more per month than we found in our inspection report. That is why I recommended that the Border Agency should produce an action plan and present milestones to show how they are going to clear this backlog by the declared date of July 2011. In addition I made recommendation that it is likely that at the end of the legacy cases there are still going to be some that are outstanding, and there needs to be a very clear view and an action plan about how those continue to be taken forward, so I am far from confident and I express that very frankly in the report. Q58 Mr Winnick: We will have the Chief Executive in front of us very shortly but all Members of Parliament, myself included of course, received replies along predictable lines telling us in effect that they cannot resolve the particular case we have been writing about but all will be resolved by next year, so presumably we should not put too much faith in that. Now, you say that targets are set by top management without consultation with those doing the actual work. That is a rather serious accusation, is it not? Mr Vine: From my experience I have always found it useful to ask people on the front line, and I usually find that people on the front line tend to have a lot of opinions about how the job they are doing can be done more effectively. I have found a dearth of evidence of that happening and I would like to encourage the Border Agency to do that more, and that is why I made that recommendation in the report. Q59 Mr Winnick: One would expect that to happen in any organisation, that you could find out from the people doing the job how they are going about it and then make an assessment accordingly. You reached a conclusion that this is not being done in the organisation and obviously we will question the Chief Executive accordingly but, by and large, in your assessment, Mr Vine, we should remain pretty pessimistic about a backlog being cleared by next year? Mr Vine: What I am saying is that at the time of the inspection we did not find the rates to be as high as they should be in order to clear against that figure. Clearly, if more resources or different working methods are put in place that might change the position. What we did find on the positive side is that the leadership of the Case Resolution Directorate, as it is now called, was very good. We found people very clearly focused on the targets to achieve resolution of the legacy casework backlog, and I do say in the report, to give some credit to the Border Agency, that the underlying performance in relation to being driven by some of these targets is better than it has been, so there is some hope but I can only base my recommendations on what I find at that moment in time, and I am drawing, I suppose, your attention to that fact. I make the recommendation very clearly about an action plan. That would benefit everybody. Q60 Mr Clappison: You are telling us about the backlog of asylum cases. Originally you mentioned a figure of 400,000? Mr Vine: That is correct. Q61 Mr Clappison: Which all came to light in 2006? Mr Vine: Yes. Q62 Mr Clappison: Since then about 235,000 have been resolved through clearing up what is the reason for the backlog? Mr Vine: That is right. Q63 Mr Clappison: That was the backlog in 2006. Are you concerned that a new backlog has been building up since then of other asylum cases since 2006? Mr Vine: Yes, I am. At the time of the inspection we found that there were 29,474 cases that had been created around the new asylum model. The new asylum model was brought in in March 2007 as a new approach in handling asylum where a dedicated case worker related to each individual asylum case. The idea was to provide a rapport between the asylum seeker and the case worker but it was also designed as a system to speed up the removal of people who had no right to asylum, and it was also going to be a more cost effective and efficient method. What I am concerned about now is that some of the targets, for example, the 90 per cent of asylum cases to be achieved within six months, are driving behaviour which means that many of these new asylum model cases are being put to one side in order to concentrate on the cohort of cases that enables the Border Agency to achieve its target in the milestone month. Q64 Mr Clappison: Is that not exactly what happens to produce the original backlog of 400,000? That we have cases put to one side, filed away for years, which then come back to light? Mr Vine: I do not go back that many years. Q65 Mr Clappison: Some of us do. Mr Vine: Some of you do, but what concerns me is this is now a figure of around 30,000 cases. This is a mixture of cases where some cases have a general legal barrier to the return of the failed asylum seeker, but some of the cases are ones where no initial decision on asylum has been made within the six month period. That is regrettable, and what I would not want to see is this new cohort of cases growing beyond what we found in the inspection. It is almost a case of behaviour to achieve some unachievable targets creating perverse behaviour in another important area and having a knock-on effect. I make a recommendation in my report to say that the Border Agency should address this 30,000 group of cases with some urgency and ensure that it does not get any bigger than it is at the moment. Q66 Mr Clappison: These 30,000 have to be decided on normal legal principles, whereas the legacy cases are being dealt with on special criteria, are they not? Mr Vine: We looked at the criteria against which legacy case work was being concluded, and we found it was being concluded in accordance with those criteria. Q67 Mr Clappison: But those are not the criteria which normally apply to asylum work. It depends on how long somebody has been here, and not whether they have a meritorious case or fleeing persecution. Mr Vine: But these 30,000 cases are the new asylum model, and this is a new and good system which has been commended by the National Audit Office when they looked at asylum at the beginning of last year, and it is a system which should be supported and which will bode well for the future. Having a queue of cases, however, relating to that particular model is concerning. Q68 Mr Clappison: We have been told about another backlog of non asylum cases which has come to light and is being dealt with by the UK Border Agency. Are you familiar with that? Mr Vine: Is this the 40,000? Q69 Mr Clappison: Exactly. We have not got details of them but they are longstanding, non asylum cases which have not been dealt with. Are you familiar with those? Mr Vine: I am familiar with the figure but we have not looked at that issue as an Inspectorate. At the moment obviously my focus has been on asylum and I am concerned about the cases that we are reporting on in this particular document. Q70 Chairman: Apart from asylum there is the issue of settlement cases and the general operation of the UK Border Agency. Every one of the Members sitting around this Committee will have written to Ms Homer on casework issues. Is there a mechanism by which you can look at the concerns of Members of Parliament over the way in which casework is being handled by the UKBA? We tend to get a standard letter saying "Come back in 2011" which quite irritates Members of Parliament and upsets constituents who come back every few months saying, "But it is the same letter you gave me a few months ago". Mr Vine: I understand that entirely, Chair. I held a surgery here in Portcullis House as part of the asylum scrutiny which I invited MPs to attend. We had 12 either MPs or their researchers represented at that meeting where I heard at first hand the views of MPs. As part of our scrutiny on complaints handling, which is being written up at the moment, I questionnaired all MPs. We had 120 responses from MPs to that particular scrutiny and their findings are going to be incorporated in the write-up of that report. Q71 Chairman: Did anyone praise the work of the UKBA? Mr Vine: The figures are being analysed at the moment, Chair, so it would be wrong of me to disclose any of the findings of the report before it is published, but obviously we will look at the findings very carefully. Q72 Chairman: Thank you. Mr Vine: I am making attempts to try and address that issue, and we make a recommendation in the Asylum Report to the Border Agency asking them to redouble their efforts to keep people informed. We also identify on the same issue that with case workers who take over, say, some of these 30,000 cases in the new asylum model, the asylum seeker is not made aware of the change of case worker, so we are urging the Border Agency to do more to identify to the asylum seekers and their representatives who is dealing with their case, in both the legacy casework and new asylum cases. Q73 Mrs Dean: Is there any evidence of a backlog of cases developing in any other area of the UK Border Agency's business other than asylum? Mr Vine: I will only be able to discover that once I inspect other parts of the business. I have no evidence to suggest that at the moment. Q74 Mrs Cryer: Your first annual report, which takes account of 15 months to September 2009, shows that UKBA have accepted the great majority of your recommendations so far. You started off with the more straightforward recommendations. As you get on to more complex recommendations, do you think the UKBA are likely to accept those as well? I have no idea what those are going to be. Mr Vine: I hope so. There is no point me making recommendations unless some action is going to be taken and things change. I intend to write to the Chief Executive of the Border Agency formally at the beginning of April to ask what has happened to the recommendations I have made from all the reports published thus far. I am going to ask her to tell me what has changed in terms of the working practice of the Border Agency in respect of the areas that I have inspected, and then I will have to decide whether I have to re-inspect certain parts of the Border Agency's work and what other action I am prepared to take. I have a range of things in mind to follow up. I have been very encouraged by the co-operation with the Border Agency at a senior level. There has been good co-operation on the ground. The vast majority, if not all, of the recommendations I have made have been accepted, so the next stage is to make sure things have changed. Q75 Chairman: Your inspection plan, Mr Vine, which you are going to be publishing very shortly will presumably look at the work you have planned for yourself over the next period, 2010/2011. You will have noted the tiny raised eyebrows of Members of this Committee that you chose to go to Rome for your first inspection and, following that, Singapore. Wonderful destinations but we wonder whether they are hotspots. We are much more keen on your visits to places like Islamabad and the important work you are doing here. This is a huge job, as we said in our report when you were appointed, and that is why we said to the Government that more resources needed to be given to you, and we worried about the entry clearance post being merged with yours. This is a very, very wide area. Are you satisfied that you have the resources to cope with this very huge area of work? Mr Vine: Yes,
I have, Chair. There was a little
bit of a misunderstanding about Q76 Chairman: At the end of the day, what concerns Members of this House and this Committee are the people who come to us who have been waiting for years for a decision from the UKBA, and all they want is a yes or a no. Mr Vine: I understand. Q77 Chairman: To keep it going for years and years and not reply to letters and then say "No" at the end is bound to cause trouble. It is obviously up to you to decide what you want to do, but one of the key features of the reports of this Committee over the last 20 years has been to look at the administration of the Immigration Department, now the UKBA. I know you have a very broad canvas to work from but this is an issue that really does concern us on a day-to-day basis. Mr Vine: I am speaking to a lot of people, they are telling me a great deal, and I am prioritising my work with MPs very much in mind. Q78 Chairman: We are very grateful for the work you have done, and you have made some very good progress over the last few months. Thank you for coming. Mr Vine: Thank you. Memorandum submitted by Examination of Witnesses Witnesses:
Ms Lin Homer, Chief
Executive, and Mr Brodie Clark, Head
of the Border Q79 Chairman: Thank for giving evidence to us, and thank you for your very
helpful letter. You have taken on board
our suggestion for it to be more pie charts and more graphs which make it
easier to look at progress.
Mr Clark, on behalf of the Committee may I congratulate you on
being awarded a Mr Clark: Not yet. I am looking forward to the day. Q80 Chairman: Keep us informed. Ms Homer, before we get on to the evidence today, is the UKBA involved in any way in the current investigation which was announced by the Prime Minister into the fake passport issue in Dubai? Ms Homer: Not directly, Chairman. Obviously if there is any aid we can give in terms of understanding the use of forged passports we can make experts available, but it does not involve any of our processes directly. Q81 Chairman: Do you know who it does involve, if the UKBA is not involved and you have the expertise? Who is looking at this issue? Ms Homer: Others have the expertise. I do not have a full list of the organisations but obviously it relates to the use of British passports and those are issued by IPS, so that is what I mean by it not being our procedure. Q82 Chairman: But does IPS not come under you? Ms Homer: No. Under James Hall. Q83 Chairman: You are not aware of who is conducting this investigation? Ms Homer: I am sure I have read a document that tells me that, Chairman, but I do not have it at the forefront of my mind. Q84 Chairman: We will write to the Prime Minister and ask him. You have heard the evidence from Louise Perrett and we do not want to concentrate for the whole session on what she said but obviously it concerns us and those involved in this field. Mr Davies has, quite rightly, brought before you and this Committee information about the number of asylum applications that were granted. Ms Perrett in her evidence said she is not concerned with granting or not granting but with the issue of the culture that exists, which obviously worries us because we have to write to the UKBA on a daily basis. Does what she said worry you, whether what she said is right or wrong? Does it concern you this is the culture that may exist in some parts of your organisation? Ms Homer: I take very seriously any allegation that we have culture in any part of our organisation that would be disrespectful or racially prejudiced, and when this series of allegations came to my notice via the media I took the approach that I should investigate. That investigation is underway and you have an assurance from me that, as with all investigations in an area like this, if it generates a need for formal action or for cultural training picking up some of the themes of Louise - I was listening to her evidence this morning - we would see that as a very serious priority for the Agency. Q85 Chairman: Moving on to immigration cases - Mr Davies may well raise this again when he comes to ask about Cardiff - which have been a feature of all your evidence sessions - and this is probably the last evidence session before the General Election so you may see some of us here afterwards, you may not, I do not know whether that is a good thing or not for you - we did produce a report asking you to fast track these cases and complete the outstanding cases by this October rather than 2011 and you said "No". Why? Ms Homer: I did not think I said "No", Chairman -- Q86 Chairman: So they are going to be completed by October 2011? Ms Homer: No. I took a message from yourself and
directly from the Home Secretary that there would be support for us trying to
move faster on the Case Resolution Directorate cases and we have implemented
a new procedure, we have recruited 350 additional staff, and we have in
a sense re-engineered the front end of this process to see whether it is
possible to move faster. I resisted
creating a new date rather than the June 2011 date because it is
not really an exact science, so you have my assurance that we continue to be as
motivated as you to finish the Q87 Chairman: You cannot meet our deadline? Ms Homer: I did not think it was sensible to replace one date with another. We absolutely support your and the Home Secretary's encouragement to try and finish faster if we can. Q88 Mr Clappison: Can I ask you how you are getting on with 40,000 cases which you told us about last time you gave evidence to us? Can you throw any more light on what is happening? Ms Homer: I told
you fairly clearly, I hope, last time that what we have here is
a situation not of cases that we think have not been decided but of cases
similar to much of the Q89 Mr Clappison: It was the Case Resolution Directorate which was dealing with the backlog of asylum cases? Ms Homer: Yes, but our view is that the processes we set in place primed them to be in a good place to review these cases. What I tried to explain last time that we do not expect to find 40,000 cases that have had no decision. We expect to find, as we have within the overall cohort of cases, a number where everything may well have been concluded but the records are not well kept, or there is a duplicate file, or matters of that order. What we have done with the 40,000, as we do with all of the cases still in the Case Resolution Directorate, is we have checked for harm cases and active cases and are applying the same priorities as we do to the other cases. I expect them to be concluded within the same timescale. Q90 Mr Clappison: Where you have found real cases of people involved, and these are all non asylum cases we are talking about, have any grants of indefinite leave to remain been made for people? Ms Homer: Only a small number of those cases have been worked so far. In the main they are lower priority cases. We have already heard the Chairman and others talk about the need to try and continue to apply prioritisation to people who have waited a long time. Q91 Mr Clappison: How many have been dealt with and how many resulted in the grant of indefinite leave to remain? Ms Homer: Only a matter of a few hundred of these cases have been dealt with so far. The broad level of grant and removal for CRD cases remains as I have reported to you all the way through. Q92 Mr Clappison: You have told us some of these have been granted leave to remain. Can you tell us how many or, if you do not know, can you write to the Committee with the information? Ms Homer: I do not have the figures in front of me, but they are small numbers and there is no difference in the overall approach to these cases. You mentioned earlier in talking to John Vine special criteria, that is not the case. All of the cases are dealt with under the immigration rules. There are no special rules for the older case. Q93 Mr Clappison: Would the cases of people who have been granted leave to remain include people who have been dealt with in the past and refused leave to remain? Ms Homer: They will not, in the main, tend to be cases like that. I tried to give you some examples last time but they might, for instance, be a student who applied for another period of study who was refused but there is not evidence on the file as to whether we received further information from them subsequently. Q94 Mr Clappison: Does it include people who have overstayed? Ms Homer: There may be some overstayers, but as the Chairman knows we have a category of application around overstayers which we have been dealing with and that is largely now completed. Q95 Mr Clappison: Will you write to us and give us the figures for this breakdown? Ms Homer: I am happy to do that. Q96 Mrs Dean: Can I turn to the backlog of asylum cases? I understand that whilst 22,500 cases were completed between July and October, only 15,500 have been completed in the last three months. What is reason for that? Ms Homer: There are two reasons. One I have already mentioned, that we have re-engineered really the front end of the process. We have brought in a range of staff to do the administrative work to try and allow the decision makers to focus on a ready, provided file but it is in the nature of re-organisation that in a sense it slows you down before it speeds you up. The 350 extra staff are now in place, they are preparing the files for the decision makers. We are now providing the decision makers with 3,000 prepared cases a week, so we believe we will start to see an uplift very quickly. The second reason links back to earlier discussions with your Committee. As you say, Chairman, we have talked a lot about these topics, and in the middle of last year and earlier in the year NAO also advised us that we had to consider not only the speed with which we concluded cases but the cost to the taxpayer and harm cases, and so the Case Resolution Directorate focused in the last half of last year, particularly, on cases still being supported by the public purse. Those tend to be more complex. They have slowed our rate down for a while, but we think for good reason. Q97 Mrs Dean: Has the transfer of experienced staff to live casework affected your ability to carry out as many cases of the backlog? Ms Homer: No, we certainly have not
moved any people from Q98 Mr Winnick: Leaving aside the substance which I and other colleagues are questioning you about today, when we write letters and receive the usual predictable reply - we could almost write them ourselves: "To be resolved by 2011" et cetera - I notice that not only do you not sign the letter - and no-one expects you to write it - but, increasingly, it is the most sort of junior official you could find who signs letters from Members of Parliament, whereas ministers sign, as you probably know. What percentage of these letters from Members of Parliament do you yourself see? Ms Homer: I sign between 25 and 50 MPs' letters a day. Q99 Mr Winnick: From Members of Parliament. Ms Homer: Yes, absolutely. You are right, those do not include all of the ones addressed to me, although I do do a proportion of the ones addressed to me because I think it is very important that I see the content of those letters. I also speak directly to MPs on cases where I perceive the correspondence to generate an issue that I need to understand better. I do try within, as you say, the confines of time limitations to take a very direct interest. Q100 Mr Winnick: You feel some responsibility to make sure that those who sign the letters to us, even though the letters are predictable, as I have already mentioned and the rest of it, should be signed by someone pretty senior in the hierarchy? Ms Homer: Absolutely. You can ask Brodie the question later, but my board would, I think, endorse the fact that this is a topic I discuss with them directly very regularly. I review the quality and timeliness statistics of all the units on a monthly basis, but we do get 60,000 letters a year from MPs. I am not complaining about that; it is part of the historic lack of confidence in us. If those were signed only by me and the board members, there would not be much time to do anything else, so we have to take a judgment about the level. We do, however, really try to put emphasis on quality. Q101 Mr Winnick: I have complained once or twice - and I am not going to go into that - about the manner in which the letter was written, not the signature but the content. Coming to the substance of the matter, as I have already said, the replies are always along the same lines, about 2011, but today the Independent Chief Inspector has given us a somewhat different picture. He says the targets are unrealistic and, moreover, there is not enough realistic assessment with the operational staff. What would be your response to that? Ms Homer: I think the Chief Inspector's
encouragement to involve frontline staff in our business is absolutely
right. Again, we do try to do that. For a big organisation like ours to have the
view of an independent inspector and, in a sense, to be reminded of good
practice is always good. I do think our
frontline staff have a huge impact on the business and I think it is right to
say that they should. I think the Chief
Inspector made two different comments.
On the asylum model, he did use the word "unachievable" around our final
target. My own view on that is that the
new asylum model remains a world-beating model.
I do not think anybody else in the world is even setting themselves a
conclusion target. It has been clear to
us throughout that we keep having to change our system to be able to deliver
these targets. For instance, we have
just made a major change in the Tribunal Service. In relation to the legacy, the Q102 Mr Winnick: To follow-up on other questions if we can get a yes or no answer if possible: these 40,000 cases which have been referred to on endless occasions, the backlog, are they going to be cleared sometime during the course of next year? Ms Homer: They will be cleared by June 2011 with the remainder of the backlog. Q103 Mr Winnick: You are committed to that. Ms Homer: Very. Mr Winnick: Thank you very much. Q104 Chairman: On the question of correspondence, which was raised by Mr Winnick, he is not alone in his criticism of the way in which you handle correspondence. This is a letter from your previous boss. I think he appointed you when he was Immigration Minister. "I have received a letter from somebody called Merritt Shaw for Visa Customer Services dated 19 January". This is in relationship to a visa application by Mr Aslam, sponsored by one of the councillors in Birmingham. "I was disappointed to receive a letter from a junior official. I ask that you look at this case personally. One of the reasons for refusing the visa was that the Entry Clearance Officer was not satisfied with the credibility of the sponsor. Given that you [Lin Homer] know the sponsor personally, who was on your appointment panel at Birmingham City Council, I feel that you might have been able to add something to the balance of probabilities test that the Entry Clearance Manager was conducting. I would be grateful if you would look at this again and give me a proper reply". That is a pretty serious criticism, from not just a Member of Parliament but the person who was the Immigration Minister, about the way in which you personally are handling these matters. Given what Mr Winnick has said and the fact that you say you sign 50 letters a day, I personally have not received a letter signed by you and I do a lot of casework. Ms Homer: That is not true, Chairman. Q105 Chairman: I have a little squiggle on the top of you name. That is not necessarily signed by you. Ms Homer: Yes, it is. It absolutely is, Chairman. Q106 Chairman: The point that Mr Winnick is making and the point that Liam Byrne is making - and he of course is a Member of the Cabinet, but he was the Immigration Minister - is that this is not about law, it is about administration. The Committee have said this to you on a number of occasions: it is customer service; it is dealing with correspondence; it is making sure that people get replies; it is the courtesy of not saying the same thing that people said the time before. This is not rocket science, is it? It is the ability to deal with Members of Parliament. If you get 60,000 letters basically complaining about or being dissatisfied with the service from Members of Parliament on behalf of their constituents, does that not show you that something is wrong with the system? Ms Homer: Chairman, when you get something that says "Lin Homer", even if it is a squiggle, it is my signature, and I have read it and it is my signature. I apologise if you do not like my signature. Q107 Chairman: I will send them to you. Ms Homer: A number of you will get letters signed by me, and if it appears to be my name it is my name. Second, of course I want to be in a situation where there are less concerns about delay. I have to say that I do not believe that in all cases the best way of progressing cases is through an MP's letter. We struggle under a system where sometimes we may have as many as five representatives writing to us on a given case. We may have a lawyer, we may have a friend or representative, we increasingly have a Member of either the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly as well as a Westminster MP, and we may have the individual themselves. I do not believe that is a system common to most areas. Q108 Chairman: I agree. Ms Homer: And we are trying to raise quality. Q109 Chairman: To try and help you, because you have not been an elected official, I understand: the reason why people come to us is because the system is failing them. I, like other Members of this Committee, regard this as the last resort. It is only because you do not reply to solicitors or people that they come to us. I would never write a letter and Members would never write a letter to try to circumvent the system, something I make very clear, but the reason why you get the letters is because the system is not working. When you have a letter giving withering criticism from the man who was supposed to be responsible for immigration for three years, complaining that it is not good enough that a junior Customer Services official should write back to an MP - precisely the point Mr Winnick was making - when a letter is written to you from a Member of Parliament which asks you to look at it personally. What Liam Byrne is saying is basically that nobody bothered to read the letter and they just got a standard reply. Ms Homer: Chairman, I believe that the habit of writing via MPs was established during the period when the Agency's performance was poor. Therefore, it is our own history that has generated this. I accept the responsibility for that. I do believe there are many more cases now where a case owner is identifying themselves to an individual applicant, where correspondence is being undertaken with the representative. Where, if I can put it that way, the belief is that by involving an MP as well it will produce additional help, that is something that we have to challenge as we go forwards. I do not think I can reply to all letters written to me. I do reply to a proportion. I would have to say, in fairness to Liam Byrne, that he wrote me withering letters when he was the Immigration Minister as well. I think it is the right of all of you to write as constituency MPs, regardless of your position. Q110 Mr Winnick: Would you be willing, Ms Homer, to look again, following this meeting, at replies to Members of Parliament, including the amount of time. Yesterday I put down four questions asking when I will receive a reply. I wait four weeks. I do not see any reason, there is never any acknowledgement. My office does not even know if the letters are being received. Presumably, if they are, then the hotline can be phoned by my secretary. I give it four weeks. I do not raise it on the floor of the House. I am quite capable of doing so, but I do not because I put down a written question and usually it does provide the answer - although the reply is along predictable lines. Could you look at all those issues, if the Chairman is willing, and write to us in the next week? Ms Homer: I am very happy to do that. I am very committed to improving the quality and the timeliness of our replies. We hold workshops regularly with MPs. Q111 Mr Winnick: Perhaps who signs the letters could be looked at as well. Ms Homer: I will give you the detail of broadly the proportion of grade and numbers. Mr Winnick: Thank you. Chairman: That is very helpful. Perhaps you would reply by Q112 Mr Clappison: To be very clear about this, of course MPs should get proper responses to their letters. MPs are rightly concerned to see that their constituents' cases are administered within the rules in a prompt and efficient manner. Ms Homer: Yes. Q113 Mr Clappison: You will guard against creating any culture in which cases on their merits are dealt with with greater favouritism because somebody has gone along to their MP rather than where somebody has not gone along to their MP. Ms Homer: Of course. That is one of the challenges for us, and why applicants being kept out of needing to inform MPs would be where we ought to aspire to be. Q114 David Davies: Ms Homer, could you have a look at this snapshot. Ms Homer: I think I recognise it. Q115 David Davies: If you do recognise it, you have no reason to think that has been made up then? Ms Homer: No. I am sure it is a representation of the kind of MI we use. Q116 David Davies: Can you tell me why the removal figures are so low? Month after month in all the different areas I have looked at, it is 1%, 2%, 3%. The highest I can find is 4%. Is this normal? Ms Homer: The overall removal performance that we achieve in relation to asylum is about 50% of cases. Q117 David Davies: 50%? Ms Homer: Yes, about 50% of cases. The asylum statistics that were published, I think on 25 February, will give you the full detail of that. Q118 David Davies: Is that 50% of everyone who comes in? One of the things that this whistleblower has said is that all sorts of people get removed. Ms Homer: That is absolutely 50% of asylum applications. The figure for overall removals is nearly four times that. Q119 David Davies: Four times 50%? Ms Homer: No, four times the number of asylum removals. If you look at the asylum statistics - and I know many of you do in great detail - there is a breakdown of the types of removals overall into port refusals; what we would call "overstayer" removals; and asylum removals. It is very clear. Q120 David Davies: Help me out here. These figures are in black and white. They say 4% of removals, 6% in one case, 3%, 1% and 0%. How does that square with your 50%? Ms Homer: Simply that the target we are setting ourselves is that we want to try to achieve conclusions within six months. We are still struggling - I am very happy to share that with you - to achieve removals within six months. The figures you are looking at are the removals achieved within six months of the application being made. We go on to achieve a much higher proportion of removals. Q121 David Davies: If we look at the 12 month figures, then we get a much higher removal rate. Ms Homer: If you look at 12 months, in 2009 you get a removal level of 11,000 against an intake of 24,000, so about 50%. Q122 David Davies: How many countries are on the general legal barrier list? Ms Homer: A reducing number, because we
reassess this regularly. We have just
recently taken Q123 David Davies: Perhaps you would not have a copy yet, but would it be possible to get that list of general legal barrier countries? Ms Homer: It does change. Q124 David Davies: Would you be able to write to the Committee with the most recent list? Ms Homer: Yes. Q125 David Davies: You are saying 50% - I sort of understand why, I have no reason to doubt you whatsoever - and yet I have figures here, which you say appear to be correct, showing 2%, 3%, 4% being removed. Would you be happy, first, for us to see this monthly cohort snapshot rather than rely on leaks from whistleblowers? Ms Homer: We publish an enormous amount of information, all of which now is published through ONS. You will again, as Committee Members, be aware that we come slightly between a rock and a hard place as to when we give you information directly rather than share published information with you. I have to say there is a limitation to the degree to which ONS will accept all of our management information as capable of being published. Q126 David Davies: I would be quite happy to accept it, even though ONS do not want it. Would you be able to send it to me as a Member of the Committee? Ms Homer: I am very happy to talk to ONS about whether we could establish a greater range of data in their published figures. I think it is probably safer for us in the way the Government is trying to work. The difficulty for me is that if I use that information in a way that seems positive and it is not published stats, we get criticised for that. All the information which I have just given you, on removals, on intake, on FNPs, is all effectively quality assured by ONS. Q127 David Davies: Since I obviously do not understand why what appears to be 4% actually is 50% of people being removed, would you be happy for me to spend an hour, not with you, Ms Homer, but with somebody at a level who understands this. I do not need red carpets. I will quite happily talk to anyone at any level. Ms Homer: We would be very happy to do a workshop for the Committee as a whole. As I say, if I could just repeat, the simple question is removals within six months versus removals overall. Q128 David Davies: Right. We do get people coming into our constituency surgeries asking us to take up cases for them. In some instances my concern has been that this person standing before me deserves a fair shout, but basically I happen to agree with the Agency that they should not be in this country and should be removed, but I will write a letter setting out their reasons why not. Presumably you would not, just because I am a Member of Parliament, grant them any additional rights just because they have come to me. You would treat them in exactly the same way that you treat anyone else. Ms Homer: Absolutely. We are very clear that if an MP's letter suggests to us a piece of information that may be different from that we have on file, or a level of worry - the Chairman has just written to me about potentially some vulnerable asylum seekers who seem to be destitute - we will always seek to make sure that we are complying with our procedures to look after people I have to say it has always been the principle that a letter from you does not change the rules on which we determine the cases. David Davies: Good. Q129 Mr Clappison: Presumably that rate of removals does not include the 450,000 that we were talking about, the resolution of the case backlog? The 50% figure does not apply to that, does it? Ms Homer: The 50% figure is year-on-year. Each year you are sending some people home and they may have come in before, so of course some of them will, but that is the point of a lag, is it not? Anyone we remove who claimed in 2009, if we remove them in 2010 will appear in the 2010 figures. Q130 Mr Clappison: You gave us some figures in your written evidence on the last occasion you came before the Committee for the 450,000, for the old asylum cases, in which you said that, of the 220,000 inclusions, 14% were removals, 52% were other conclusions (such as erroneous or duplicate records), while 34% were grants. Ms Homer: Yes. Q131 Mr Clappison: The 50% figure does not apply to that, does it? Ms Homer: It is 50% overall of intake. Q132 Mr Clappison: I am talking about the old asylum cases. Ms Homer: I know you are. Q133 Mr Clappison: You told us that 34% were granted, 52% were erroneous or duplicate records and so are out of the picture altogether, and so there were only 14% removals. I am going on the figures which you gave us the last time. Ms Homer: Yes. You have two different ways of measuring
performance. One is cohort, and you can
track the individual claimant over a length of time. We try to do that with the Q134 Mr Clappison: I am linking the statistics to the cases that were being dealt with and saying, "This happened in this case". Of the 220,000 cases that were concluded, 14% resulted in removals, 34% resulted in grants, and 54% were mistakes. 14% of 220,000, which is about 30,000 I think, resulted in removals. Ms Homer: Yes. Q135 Mr Clappison: How many of the 40,000 cases which you told us about - these are the non asylum cases, this is another backlog we have started looking at, as we have said - have resulted in removals as you have gone through those cases? Ms Homer: Chairman, I think I said earlier that I would write to James Clappison with the details of the 40,000. I am clear that only a small number of those cases have been dealt with yet, and therefore I am not expecting there to be many decisions on those cases, but I had already agreed to write. Q136 Gwyn Prosser: Ms Homer, I want to turn to the issue of e-Borders. We have had lots of differences over this; that is differences between you and the Committee and differences between you and the ports authorities and the airlines. As a general point, one of the differences we had was the EU's interpretation of international law. We understand that since the last time we met you promised that individuals will not be denied access or egress from a country on the basis of not having provided former notice of their identity, et cetera. Ms Homer: I think you are referring to
the conversations we had with Q137 Gwyn Prosser: Does one of the practical changes mean changing legislation and amending the Immigration Act? Ms Homer: No. Q138 Gwyn Prosser: The Government are saying it does not? Ms Homer: And so are the European Commission. Q139 Gwyn Prosser: Can you tell us what further discussions have taken place with the national authorities in Germany, France and Belgium about the scheme? Have other Member States responded to Julie Gillis's letter of 23 December? Ms Homer: There has been quite a lot of
ongoing work. There has been some
detailed discussion with a number of states, Q140 Gwyn Prosser: One of the difficulties the Committee has, and indeed the industry and ports have, is that all these meetings and all of this discourse and all of the correspondence that takes place, between you and the European Union, for instance, they are not privy to. When we met you in July, we had the understanding, so the minutes show, that you would provide this information directly to the industry. They are telling us it has not been provided. What is happening? Mr Clark: Certainly back in May we provided information very broadly about --- Q141 Gwyn Prosser: Very broadly? Mr Clark: In terms of the arguments we
were putting forward to the Commission in respect of the two Directives in
question and the challenge that has been made against those Directives. Following that, on 23 December, we received a
request for further information. We are currently bringing that information
together. It is a Freedom of Information
request. We will process that. We are having conversations with the
Commission about some of the release of that information. We will make that available to the industry
and to those who have an interest in the progress of the issues with Q142 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Clark, if the Committee went back to the industry today, would they express their satisfaction that they had received the information they think they were promised? Mr Clark: I am not sure what they would say, but I can confirm that we provided those pieces of information on those occasions to help the industry to be clear about our position in respect of moving forward with the Commission. Ms Homer: At the last meeting, when we
talked about e-Borders, you asked me to go personally to Q143 Gwyn Prosser: We will come back to the important issue of ferry ports and the Port of Dover in a moment. On the issues around the airline industry, they are talking to us about the difficulty of providing the information and processing data less than 30 minutes before departure. They are saying that at the moment their systems are geared up for that data coming forward 24 hours before, and they are not confident at all of being able to meet your deadlines here. Mr Clark: We remain in discussion with airlines and the maritime industry and the rail industry in terms of how the data is provided. We have made it very clear that there needs to be a window between 30 minutes and 24 hours that we are seeking to capture that data from the carriers. It is quite a broad window and we want to progress with them to find ways through that. Certainly our feedback from the air industry has been hugely positive. I have statements from Virgin, British Airways, and easyJet reflecting on the very good state of the relationship and the discussions and the healthy and positive way they are progressing. Q144 Gwyn Prosser: I do not think you would get such encouraging letters from the ports industry, the shipping industry, and certainly not from the Port of Dover. One of the problems we have is that we met you last July and we listened to your evidence and your appraisal of progress, immediately after that the industry came forward and described a completely different picture. Since then we have met individually the port operators in Dover. We talked to Mr Clark over in our visit to Calais, and again those two pictures were completely different. Here we are today, eight months or so later, and there is a yawning gulf between what UKBA are telling us and what the ports are coming back to us with. What is happening there? Ms Homer: I would like to pick up on
the Q145 Gwyn Prosser: They are not anxieties for themselves; they are concerns for the travelling public and their industry. They do not believe that they are in a position, so close to their own update, to be able to install e-Borders. Ms Homer: Yes. Q146 Gwyn Prosser: On the issue of talking to the Port of Dover, the Port of Dover have told me that even at their meeting between the Maritime Carriers group and UKBA on 21 January, there was a feeling of a complete lack of trust between the two parties. One of the specific issues they have raised is another promise of documentation. They were promised across this Committee room that the specific legal advice - never mind a broad appraisal of this and a description of that, but the specific legal advice that you received over the issue of international carriers, et cetera - would be provided to the Port of Dover and the industry. They have not received that. Ms Homer: Chairman, it might be useful if whoever made that comment to you was prepared to share it with me, because we would be very keen to work with them and understand their concerns. Q147 Gwyn Prosser: So you have provided that legal advice? Ms Homer: We think we have provided a great deal of advice. If there are other elements of information people think are missing, if they can be clear about those we would be very happy to look into it. Q148 Gwyn Prosser: If the industry write to you directly and list the information they say they are missing which is causing them problems, then you will respond to that? Ms Homer: Of course. Q149 Gwyn Prosser: Are you still confident that e-Borders will be rolled out in the major ports this year? I do not just mean the provision of IT; I mean the changes of configuration, the changes of port layout which will be necessary to accommodate it. Mr Clark: Our commitment was by the end
of this year to achieve 95% of passengers in and out of the Q150 Gwyn Prosser: They are saying to me, Mr Clark, "UKBA still just don't get it." Mr Clark: I think as long as we make
the comparisons that we have been in this exchange between air and maritime,
then that will not help. We are seeking,
with the Maritime Group exclusively, a solution that will work with them, for
us, and for the Q151 Gwyn Prosser: We all support e-Borders. We want it done correctly in the ports. Ms Homer: Yes. Q152 Mrs Cryer: Julie Gillis suggests that EU passengers who do not provide advance information could or possibly will be held up on transit through the ports. Has the European Commission been told that this is the intention? Ms Homer: Mrs Cryer, this is really a part of what we are trying to look at with the practical workshop we have agreed to have with the Commission in a couple of weeks' time. We feel it would be useful to work out with everybody involved what practically people have to do and go through. The point, I suppose, I would want to make is that maritime, rail and air all have rules that are designed to prevent a last minute boarding of a plane in circumstances where everybody's requirements are not satisfied. We are confident that if we work through those we can find ways of ensuring that we are not putting burdens on people that would be inappropriate to the balance of safety that we need. As we all know, you cannot turn up to a ferry or an aircraft five minutes before it takes off and seek to get on. There are requirements and regulations that go to safety and the rules of ports. Q153 Mrs Cryer: How would this work with the juxtaposed border controls, where passengers have already been cleared to enter the UK, before embarking on ferries or trains? Mr Clark: In terms of the Commission's
note and the issues around freedom of movement, we do have the conversation
still to happen with the Commission on clarification around what is required of
us by way of ensuring that we allow freedom of movement but we can also do what
we can possibly do to collect the information necessary. Those discussions have still to happen. I think some of the outcomes of those will
help us better to shape the activity that we are going to deliver on the
ground. Aside from the work with the
Commission, we are also doing work with the Maritime Group and juxtaposed
controls. These are the operations we
have in Q154 Mrs Cryer: To go a little bit further along that path, what leads you to believe that it would be only in exceptional cases that EU citizens - and this would include presumably UK citizens - will refuse to provide carriers with their data? Ms Homer: Because the general practice
of the travelling public is already to provide a great deal of information in
advance. Most of the carriers and ports
systems effectively require you to upload that information to print your own
boarding ticket or to make your own bookings.
We are really not seeking anything more from passengers than they are
handing over already to easyJet or, in my case, Mr Clark: In terms of our progress to
date, we have managed 150 million people through the border with the pilot
arrangements for e-Borders and then when we started going live earlier this
year, and out of those number only but a handful have raised a question, a
challenge or an objection about providing data which would be onward
transferred into Q155 Mrs Dean: If e-Borders is not an "authority to carry scheme", in what sense can it be used to keep terrorists and other serious criminals out of the UK? Ms Homer: There is capacity for
e-Borders to be an authority to carry scheme.
We had always indicated that that was likely to be an element of the
project towards the later end of it. We
are building something quite complex. In
a sense, we had always committed to building it step-by-step. The provision for it to be an authority to
carry is in primary legislation and it is there. It is the case that it is not the only way to
generate a no-fly scheme. There are
aspects to an authority to carry system that would help you operate a no-fly,
but there are other ways, as Q156 Chairman: Finally, can I ask about Yarl's Wood. You have obviously seen the allegations that have been made by people in Yarl's Wood and we have noted the response of Serco which says that the allegations are unfounded. What is your current assessment of the situation? Ms Homer: My assessment of the situation is that we have had a largely passive demonstration at Yarl's Wood for a number of days and weeks now from women who do not want to be removed from the country. A number of those, 27 at the moment, are not taking meals in the canteen, but we have clear evidence that they are taking sustenance from both the vending machines and the shop, and all of them continue to have access to medical care at all times. Indeed, I was, I have to say, pleased to see the Guardian today publish a correction and clarification about the assertion they made on 22 February that a member of this group of women was suffering renal failure. They published quite a full and proper clarification today to say that was an allegation made by a doctor on the basis of "if someone was doing this and this and that" and they have subsequently been told that the woman is in good health and that allegation was incorrect. We are keeping a very careful eye on this. It is completely understandable that many of the people we remove do not want to go, but I am absolutely confident that this incident was handled with care, was watched by police and independent monitors, and that the decision to make a passive demonstration, which is something the women have taken, is not putting any of them in jeopardy with regard to their health and welfare. Q157 Chairman: Thank you. Ms Homer, this is probably the last immigration session that the Committee will be doing before the General Election. The job of the Committee, of course, is to prod and to poke. Ms Homer: Of course. Chairman: And to make sure you are properly scrutinised. We want to thank you for the courtesy with which you have dealt with this Committee and for your updates, which have improved greatly over the last couple of years. Also, whenever we have asked you to give evidence, you have been very willing to do so, and we are very grateful for that. I would like to thank you, and of course Mr Clark, for coming here today. Thank you very much. |