Examination of Witnesses (Questions 840
- 859)
TUESDAY 16 MAY 2006
MR DAVE
ROBERTS
Q840 Chairman: You have raised the
issue in that previous conversation about people who are no longer
where they said they were when you were last in touch with them.
What access do you have to other departments' records, national
insurance, child benefit and so on, in order to track down people
who have not told you where they have moved but may have told
other authorities?
Mr Roberts: We have protocols
recently agreed with HM Revenue and Customs and we have statutory
gateways with other government departments, including the Department
for Work and Pensions, so we have access to other government department
records.
Q841 Chairman: Are those now in active
use?
Mr Roberts: Yes, we have an intelligence
capability with enforcement and removals that enables us to track
individuals in the way that you would describe by checking with
these other government departments if, as a tactical priority,
tracking that individual makes sense.
Q842 Chairman: How often do you use
it?
Mr Roberts: I do not know.
Q843 Chairman: Extensively?
Mr Roberts: Yes, it is in regular
use. Can I perhaps give a bit of context? Obviously, if we are
going to mount an operation, which means we have to make an arrest,
for example, in the community, that has to be intelligence-led.
Part of that intelligence-led work is to look at the impact on
the community of that activity as well as the risks around any
such operation. Each operation visit has a number of checks made
in order to build up an intelligence profile, and that would include
the kind of checks that you have just described; so it would happen
almost before every operational visit and we did over three and
a half thousand operational visits to employers last year.
Q844 Chairman: That is employers,
but I am actually talking about tracking individuals. Somebody
has come in, they are a failed asylum seeker, because that is
where you are concentrating your efforts, they have been through
the procedures, they have lost their appeal, they have been refused
the right to take the case legally any further, they have been
sent a letter saying they have to leave the country, you now have
to report them. Are you regularly using other government department
information to track those individuals that you then lose track
of?
Mr Roberts: I have already said
that tracking individuals at the level of individuals is not a
strategy that I favour.
Q845 Chairman: Including with asylum
seekers.
Mr Roberts: Yes, including with
asylum seekers.
Q846 Chairman: The problem I have
got, Mr Roberts, is that some time, if not this week, next week
will contact my constituency office saying, "I have lost
my appeal, I have got a letter from the Home Office saying I have
to leave the country. What will happen now?" I get the impression
that the correct answer for me to give is, "Not very much.
They do not track individuals. I would not worry about it."
Mr Roberts: We do a lot of operations
that are targeted at where people might be working. We do follow
up individual cases, particularly as part of a reporting regime.
I do not know about your particular case, Chairman, but if this
person— I know it is hypothetical.
Chairman: In certain areas it is not
an uncommon occurrence to have people coming genuinely for advice
and often feeling they have had a wrong decision, or whatever,
so I am not criticising the individuals, but they are coming for
advice, but it does sound as though the advice I should give them
is that no-one is tracking them.
Q847 Mr Winnick: People are made
up of individuals, so it is individual cases.
Mr Roberts: I understand that,
and if the Committee concludes that we should be tracking individuals
as part of its inquiry, then that presents a series of challenges
for us to act on that recommendation in relation to the internal
controls that we have in the UK. Can I go back to contact management?
You give the impression, Chairman, that there is no contact with
this constituency member at all. He or she may be reporting.
Q848 Chairman: Of course, I am only
talking about the ones you lose track of.
Mr Roberts: That is the contact.
If they then drop out of the contact management structure, your
question is could we access other government departments to trace
them, and when we are looking for individuals we do.
Q849 Chairman: Can I move us on.
In fairness, we understand that for a number of countries there
are difficulties in sending people back, issues around documentation,
and we know there are readmission agreements with a number of
countries, and we were told a little bit about them on the visit
that I took part in with some members to India. The impression
we got was that the readmission agreement with India was being
used exclusively in relation to returning failed asylum seekers
and not in relation to substantial numbers of other illegal immigrants
of Indian origin. Is that the case and, if so, why is it being
applied to asylum seekers only and not to other illegal migrants?
Mr Roberts: I think it is probably
the case that in terms of removing failed asylum seekers, the
lack of documentation, be they a citizen of India or other countries,
is a real barrier, as I think I gave in evidence to Mr Winnick's
question. There is nothing to stop us using that access for returning
people who are here unlawfully, who do not have documents, who
have not claimed asylum. If I may so, the partnership that we
have with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office now, developed over
the last 12 or 18 months, really has given us an opportunity to
leverage some of the most difficult countries that we are experiencing
difficulties in returns to. I know the Public Accounts Committee
took specific evidence on that and took it in writing because
those civil servants then giving evidence did not want to name
countries because that would cause problems in that bilateral
relationship, but a huge amount of cross-government effort
goes into securing agreements to return people to difficult countries.
My job is to maximise those returns.
Q850 Mr Benyon: A quick question
so we understand our statistics. My information is that passenger
arrivals, say, a group of five individuals, four dependents and
one adult, will count as one, and asylum applications and decisions
are counted by principal applicants and so exclude dependents,
but removals all count as individuals. What I am concerned about
is that we are going to get one story in terms of the number of
people coming into the country and a different—. It is comparing
apples with pears in terms of who you are actually deporting.
Mr Roberts: It would be if we
were counting dependents in terms of the intake figure and not
counting them in terms of a removal figure or vice versa. If we
are removing more people a month than are unfounded, which is
the tipping target that has been commented on so frequently in
the past few weeks, that would have to be validated and would
have to come from statisticians rather than civil servants or
ministers; so, yes, we must compare like with like.
Q851 Mr Benyon: My concern is that
we are not. The information this Committee has received is that
the way people are calculated when they come into the country
is an entirely different concept.
Mr Roberts: Can I reassure you
that you are wrong, that we are comparing like with like in relation
to asylum intake and asylum removals.
Q852 Mr Benyon: And the immigration
intake?
Mr Roberts: Outside of the asylum
context?
Q853 Mr Benyon: Yes?
Mr Roberts: I believe so. It is
a statistical question really.
Q854 Chairman: Perhaps you could
let us have a note for the record setting out clearly how the
calculations are made.
Mr Roberts: Certainly. Can I clarify,
not in relation to asylum intake and removals but outside of the
asylum context?
Q855 Mr Benyon: I just want us to
be absolutely clear that when somebody has gone through the whole
process and they and anyone else are removed from the country
that that counts the same number of heads as came in in the first
place. Otherwise we are getting a completely distorted picture.
You could be producing very good figures and the tipping point
is actually reached a lot earlier because of the difference in
the way people coming and going is calculated?
Mr Roberts: I understand the Chairman
wants to move me on, but I am absolutely clear that in relation
the tipping point and the asylum unfounded intake and removals,
we are comparing figures which are absolutely consistent. I will
let you have a note if your question is about broader immigration
and statistics.
Chairman: Thank you. Mr Roberts, we were
going to ask you about the encouragement to voluntary return,
which is an important issue, but perhaps, because of the time,
we can write to you and ask you to send us some more detail on
that. I know the Government has done a number of things. Can we
move on now to Mr Prosser to follow up on the tipping the balance.
Q856 Gwyn Prosser: We have been talking
about the tipping point and we understand that you were involved
with the introduction of those targets. Although the targets themselves
are being met and that can be looked upon as a success, critics
say that it is detracting from non-asylum work. There has been
a lot of publicity lately and, as the Chairman has said, we will
be looking at those specific matters about foreign prisoners in
the future, but is it right, in your view, that there has been
a serious detraction from non-asylum work on illegal immigrants
and overstayers, etcetera due to that policy?
Mr Roberts: Again, I understand
the point of view; I do not agree with it. Having said that, the
tipping point has been a priority and we have been quite specific
in tasking our operational capability that the priority has to
be around tipping, but that is not to the exclusion of all other
immigration offences. I have already referred to the removal of
over a thousand immigration offenders a month. The target that
we had for the last financial year of removing 10,000 was, I think,
met in January, and I think the final figure for the financial
year is 12,500 immigration offenders removed on top of the numbers
who have been removed who are failed asylum seekers. A lot of
illegal working activity that I have mentioned, a lot of co-operation
with the police. I can name, for example, teams of immigration
officers supporting the counter-terrorist agenda, the black-on-black
gun crime agenda, Operation Trident and supporting the Metropolitan
Police in terms of its criminal investigations into organised
crime committed around immigration agenda and serious organised
crime, which, of course, is now the responsibility of the Serious
and Organised Crime Agency, but we support an operation in London,
which is known as Maxim, where the immigration service supports
police officers in criminally investigating and charging those
who are dealing in organised crime.
Q857 Gwyn Prosser: You have provided
the Committee with lots of facts and figures about illegal working
and enforcements. For instance, you have said that 2,850 operations
against illegal work took place last year in 2005, but there were
only 293 successful prosecutions, 10% or so. Why is there such
a gap between the number of enforcements and the number of prosecutions?
Mr Roberts: Prosecution is a very
resource-intensive response to a threat, is it not? In order to
prosecute an individual it requires a huge investment in the investigation
and taking that case to court. I think that, frankly, our ability
to prosecute for section 8 offences, offences in relation to illegal
working, is a sledge hammer to crack a walnut, because not every
employer, for example, is committing a crime, and, if you recall
the civil penalties that went onto lorry drivers in order to enable
us to incentivise a compliance with the security that had to apply
to transport operators so they were not bringing in people in
backs of lorries because they had not taken the time to check,
for example, that the seal was intact or that they had parked
in a safe environment, I do believe that the civil penalties in
relation to employers will be an effective sanction, although
there are regulations on which we must be consulting, and the
fine of up to £2,000 for every illegal employer strikes me
as being an alternative sanction to the prosecution sanction.
Q858 Gwyn Prosser: Can you tell us
what happened to all of those people who were investigated but
not prosecuted?
Mr Roberts: I do have some figures.
They may well be the figures that I put in front of you.
Q859 Gwyn Prosser: Not just the figures,
but what happened to them? Were they just allowed to continue
their operations?
Mr Roberts: Sorry, who were not
prosecuted?
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