Examination of witnesses (Questions 180
- 186)
TUESDAY 11 JULY 2000
SIR DAVID
OMAND, KCB, MR
ROBERT FULTON
and MR STEPHEN
BOYS SMITH
180. There were 80,000 asylum cases and 101,000
nationality cases.
(Mr Boys Smith) On asylum the figure went on increasing
until about the turn of the calendar year and is now coming down
by 5,000 or 6,000 a month, against an intake of approximately
five, and that rate of decline will increase for the reasons I
explained a moment ago, as we jack up the decision rate later
in the year with the arrival of fresh staff.
181. David Winnick accused me of being suspicious
and he is right. Can it be that you are making quicker decisions
not because you have got extra resources but because maybe you
are allowing people to stay in the United Kingdom rather than
expel them just to get them off the backlog?
(Mr Boys Smith) No, that is not the case. Country
by country the refusal and acceptance rate is essentially the
same. It does fluctuate from month to month because in order to
improve our efficiency we are tending to batch countries and focus
on them. Over time the 70 per cent/75 per cent overall refusal
after appeal is the same and our success rate at appeals, in the
sense of those that are lost by applicants, has remained pretty
constant, again if one isolates the individual countries.
182. I mentioned it to you earlier on and you
know that we have been visiting various ports of entry. I was
rather struck by the lack of consistency, if you like, between
the immigration officers in your Department and the local police
forces and the degree of communication between them. In some areas
it is seen that the police force was really working hand-in-glove
with the immigration officials, particularly where people had
entered a port and were maybe in Kent and the whole procedure
by which they were then found. In other areas there did not seem
to be much communication at all. To what extent are you trying
to regularise the relationship between your Service and that of
the police force?
(Mr Boys Smith) That is something we want to do and
I hope will flow from the increasing of resources for the Enforcement
Directorate which I mentioned a moment ago. I am very conscious
that there are some parts of the country where we have good and
close and productive relations—and Kent is one example of
that, both at the port itself and with the Facilitation Unit to
enable the prosecution of facilitators and to get to those found
in country who have arrived and got through clandestinely. In
other parts of the country asylum seekers may get out of lorries
by chance because they stop at a motorway service station and
the relations are more ad hoc although we do have Memoranda
of Understanding with a lot of forces. However, we are under-resourced
quite clearly in many parts of England, particularly the inland
parts of the country, and we hope to rectify that.
Mr Howarth
183. Mr Boys Smith, in your further submission
to us, or the Home Office further submission to us, of 22nd June
under the heading, "IND objectives and targets", there
is an item relating to airline liaison officers in post. The target
for 1999-2000 was twenty. Performance, twenty. For 2000-01 there
is no target at all. We did meet an extremely efficient and extremely
bright member of your staff, if I may say, out in Budapest—we
will give you his name later—we were all impressed with
him. We were quite convinced that not only was he doing a good
job in the specific area in which he was working but he was, quite
clearly, frustrated at not being able to do more. Can you tell
us why there are no figures for2000-01, also, perhaps, make comment
on the remit of these airline liaison officers, and whether there
is a case, in your view, for extending their remit?
(Mr Boys Smith) As to the number, 20 was the target
set in the White Paper published two years ago, which we achieved
earlier in the calender year. We are now looking at the question
of whether or not the numbers should be increased, not necessarily
always on the model that you are familiar with and you have quoted
or in the model we have applied. One of the problems, in a sense
created by the success of airline liaison officers, is displacement
of the problem itself. People start coming in through other airports.
Some kind of mobile capacity, within a region, may be a better
way forward. We are looking at possible enhancement, although
I cannot, at the moment, give any undertakings as to what will
flow from that. It will not decline from twenty, the question
is the extent to which it might go up from twenty.
Chairman
184. You make the point very well, Mr Boys Smith.
The man that we met, and were very impressed with, described his
job as like squeezing a sausage, just when he has got improvements
in Budapest there is a big scream from Bucharest that things have
got worse there, because those wanting to abuse the system keep
a watch on these things.
(Mr Boys Smith) International co-operation is an important
element here. There are some other countries, not a large number,
that have airline liaison officers on the model that we do, the
Americans, the Canadians and the Dutch, all of whom we work closely
with. Quite a lot can be gained, both for ourselves and those
other countries, from co-operation between airports and at one
single airport.
185. Can I ask you one last question, your targets
for 2000-01 and 2001-02, are they dependent on the eventual full
implementation of the casework programme? In other words, if that
does not work, are you in the soup again?
(Mr Boys Smith) No, we are not. We will deliver those
targets in terms of the decisions. The integrated case working
project is proceeding, we are managing it very slowly, for the
kind of reason that Sir David mentioned in another context a short
while ago, and we will introduce it on the basis of pilots and
careful testing bit by bit through the system.
186. Are you optimistic at the moment about
that?
(Mr Boys Smith) I believe we will start to deliver
it, not in relation to asylum, where individual cases are highly
complex, but in relation to what we call the "after entry
casework", students extending their stay, things of that
kind, where the cases are intrinsically easier to handle in a
fully automated way.
Chairman: Thank you, Sir David, Mr Fulton and
Mr Boys Smith. Thank you very much for your help.
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