Examination of Witnesses (Questions 809
- 819)
TUESDAY 16 MAY 2006
MR DAVE
ROBERTS
Q809 Chairman: Good morning Mr Roberts.
Thank you very much for joining us. Before I ask Mr Winnick to
start the questioning, perhaps you could formally introduce yourselves
for the Committee.
Mr Roberts: Good morning, Chairman.
I am Dave Roberts, I am the Director in the Enforcement and Removals
Directorate within IND.
Chairman: I might say to members at the
outset that the officials who will be dealing with the foreign
prisoners issue are in front of the Committee next week; so for
clarification for the press as well we will concentrate this morning
on other aspects of Mr Roberts' responsibilities and duties.
Q810 Mr Winnick: Mr Roberts, are
you and your colleagues in the section satisfied over the removal
of those who have no right to be in the United Kingdom?
Mr Roberts: I was listening to
the evidence and the comments from members of the Committee about
an acceptance, that there is a complete lack of enforcement activity,
and I would like to challenge that with a few facts really. In
the last 12 months we have operated around three and a half thousand
targeted visits to employers, we are working really closely with
a number of partners, both within the joint workforce pilot that
we are running in the West Midlands, we are also working closely
with the Gangmasters Licensing Authority set out to control gang
master activity in agriculture and in the shell-fish industry,
we are able to share data and have signed protocols with organisations
like Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and in the last year we
removed from the UK over 1,000 individuals a month—these
are not failed asylum seekers, these are immigration offenders—which
was in excess of the number that we had in our business plan to
target; so, yes, I think that is a significant enforcement effort.
Q811 Mr Winnick: In the last point
you have made you are saying, "Yes", to my question,
are you?
Mr Roberts: The question was am
I satisfied.
Q812 Mr Winnick: Can I remind you
what my question was? I asked you whether you and your colleagues
in the section are satisfied that action is being taken regarding
those people who have no right to be here being removed.
Mr Roberts: Yes, I am satisfied,
Mr Winnick, that the target that was set for us last year to remove
immigration offenders who are not failed asylum seekers was not
only met but was exceeded; so to that extent I am satisfied.
Q813 Mr Winnick: The answer is, "Yes",
then. Of course, we will again be pursuing such matters with ministers;
that goes without saying. We understand, as we would have understood
from day one, the difference between you in your position and
other senior civil servants with ministerial responsibility, but
you are here to give evidence and I ask you the questions accordingly.
Mr Roberts, when we had evidence from Mr Justice Hodge, the
Chief Adjudicator, he was very critical about the failure to remove
those who had no right to be in the United Kingdom, and he said
an official removal system would be great. I quote what he said
as well directly. Mr Justice Hodge said: "It must be right
that if you are likely to be sent home, if you are wrongly here
and you are discovered to be here wrongly, then the incentive
to come here in anything other than a rightful way is reduced."
Throughout this inquiry we have heard, time and again, that efforts
being made to apply immigration control do not really work it
and have become somewhat of a mockery because people are staying
here when they should be removed. What is the greatest difficulty
in ensuring that those who have gone through the system of lodging
an appeal being refused, all that has been exhausted, yet continue
to stay in the United Kingdom? Why are they not being removed?
Mr Roberts: Can I say, there is
a real perception issue here and an issue of public confidence,
which I recognise only too well. Clearly, if we are to target
individuals whose leave may have expired, for example, then we
would need a very different system of internal immigration control
than we have at the moment, and targeting individuals in order
to ensure that they are removed is not, I believe, an effective
enforcement strategy. What we need to have is a very clear set
of priorities which are ranked, if you like, in terms of an understanding
of the harm that people who are here unlawfully cause the UK and
target our resources accordingly. What I would argue is that,
in terms of our targeted resources, we have a number of competing
priorities which the Committee are very familiar with. We have
a priority to remove failed asylum seekers. That is given us quite
properly by ministers as a requirement. It would be quite wrong
to say that was our only focus, which was why I explained in my
opening remarks how we were doing in relation to non-asylum removals.
I do not think the answer is to create an expectation that an
adequate enforcement strategy is to pursue individuals at individual
level. We need targeted operations, perhaps high profile, we need
targeted prosecutions, and, as I think the Committee were recognising
in the last session, our ability to prosecute under existing legislation
has been very limited, which is why we are taking powers in the
new Immigration Asylum and Nationality Act to come up with a civil
penalty which requires employers who are not criminally inclined
but just rather complacent in terms of the arrangements they have
to take more care about who they take on board.
Q814 Mr Winnick: With the greatest
of respect, and I am sorry to interrupt you, what I am asking
you is relatively simple and, if it is not, I will have to put
it in some other way. It is not necessarily the rogue employers
but people staying in this country whose appeals have been dismissed
where there is no further right of appeal to say here, and yet
they continue to stay in the United Kingdom. I am asking you why
are not greater efforts made to remove them according to law?
Mr Roberts: I think I have just
explained, Mr Winnick, that we are making huge efforts to remove
them but not on the basis of tracing individuals. We do remove
people who are here unlawfully, and we do so successfully. If
you are asking me to list the difficulties around securing removals,
they are, I think, quite well understood in terms removing failed
asylum seekers, for example, and there are issues around documentation
and there are issues about governments receiving back nationals
without the proper documentation, and these are at least two reasons
why removing people from the UK is not as straightforward as colleagues
might think.
Q815 Mr Winnick: How many people
would you estimate at the moment to be here illegally in the United
Kingdom?
Mr Roberts: I have not the faintest
idea, although I am aware of the research that suggests around
400,000.
Q816 Mr Winnick: A Home Office study
gave a figure of 430,000 people here illegally in 2001. Would
you say that has increased or decreased?
Mr Roberts: My personal and professional
judgment is that that figure will have included nationalities
who are now part of the EU. In other words, the accession states.
In my judgment, if we look at how people come here illegally,
they come either clandestinely, by which I mean they conceal themselves
in order to by-pass our border controls. I know from personal
experience the effort that has gone into securing our borders
in relation to Calais. Mr Prosser knows, as well as I do, if not
better, the efforts that have gone into securing that particular
link. In terms of the way that people are issued with visas, I
think you have heard evidence from UKvisas about the way they
are now risk assessing the visas that they issue, and if that
risk assessment is effective, then visas will be issued to people
who are entitled to them, who will comply with them. My final
point is that every visitor to the country who does not require
a visa is examined on arrival by an immigration officer and satisfies
that officer that he or she is intending to stay for a visit.
If you are asking my personal view, I think, for those reasons,
the numbers here unlawfully are likely to be less. If I am wrong,
then those numbers represent, I understand, 0.7% of our population,
set against an illegal cohort in the US, which I believe to be
closer to 7 or 8 million, as just some kind of comparison of the
risks that we are carrying.
Q817 Mr Winnick: Would you accept,
Mr Roberts, that it is important that there should be public confidence
in the ability of the Home Office to deal effectively with people
who have no right to be here but continue to be here?
Mr Roberts: I think that is the
biggest challenge. Not having public confidence and allowing perceptions
of a lack of enforcement, I think, is a huge challenge for us
that we need to address.
Q818 Mr Winnick: Though, of course,
you are not a politician, do you accept, nevertheless, that there
are serious political risks if there is a lack of confidence,
a serious lack of confidence, in the ability of the authorities,
namely, the Home Office, to deal with the matter that we are now
dealing with?
Mr Roberts: I think the lack of
confidence represents to me as a civil servant a serious risk,
and I am sure ministers would agree it represents for them a political
risk as well.
Q819 Mr Winnick: Can I ask you one
or two detailed questions, which I understand you have been given
notice of. Can you give any figure of the number of people coming
to the United Kingdom released after questioning at ports without
any reporting requirements?
Mr Roberts: I cannot give you
those details. I do apologise. I was given notice, but in the
time available I was not able to find the answer. If I could let
the Committee have a note I would be grateful.
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