Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
WEDNESDAY 26 OCTOBER 2005
HOME OFFICE
AND IMMIGRATION
AND NATIONALITY
DIRECTORATE
Q20 Chairman: Alright, I am not going
to get any further on that. Are there some older cases that you
expect now, Sir John, to remain permanently in the United Kingdom?
Sir John Gieve: Yes. As you know,
we have been running, and still are running, a scheme giving indefinite
leave to remain to some of the old cases, particularly the old
family cases, who have become established here and that is a continuing
scheme and we are identifying people where we do not think it
is reasonable to remove them.[1]
Q21 Chairman: I think people who
were here prior to 2000 have a right to remain here, do they not,
is that right?
Sir John Gieve: I am not sure
it is an absolute right to remain here.
Q22 Chairman: No. Can you explain
that to me?
Mr Oppenheim: If I may. No, there
is not an absolute right to remain if you have been here before
2000. We have been working on those cases quite carefully. Nearly
all of them are not supported by the National Asylum Support Service,
they are rather supported by local authorities. We are assessing
each of those cases and determining what needs to happen to them,
either bringing them into support from the National Asylum Support
Service or ensuring that they are prepared for removal.
Q23 Chairman: Can we, Sir John, look
at how we benchmark against other countries. If you look at paragraph
1.11, which you can find on page 11, you will see that in 2004
there were some 230 voluntary returns per month from the United
Kingdom compared with 600 a month from Germany and 263 a month
from the Netherlands. So why, Sir John, are the Netherlands and
Germany more successful than we are at encouraging voluntary returns?
Sir John Gieve: I do not have
a neat answer to that, partly because the statistics, as you will
see from the appendix, mix together asylum claims and non-asylum
claims, certainly in Germany and I think in the Netherlands. It
depends where you are sending them to. Certainly we do think we
can increase the level of voluntary returns and that is what we
are trying to do.
Q24 Chairman: Mr Clark, pretty well
the same question: in paragraph 3.4 on page 20 it says: "Our
work within the Directorate suggested that it could do more to
raise the profile of the voluntary returns. . . ." Are you
satisfied that your staff are doing enough to encourage voluntary
returns?
Mr Clark: We have got a programme
now in place to promote voluntary returns. There is a whole range
of issues that we are taking forward and these include more promotion
on the website, communication with asylum seekers or those whose
asylum claims have been dealt with or those whose support arrangements
have been stopped on information about the IOM and promoting contact
with them. We are taking forward measures in respect of promoting
voluntary returns through our induction centres. We have had discussions
now with the Probation Service and the Police and invited them,
and they are willing, to engage with us in promoting voluntary
return in a number of ways. We have got training operations running
with the Metropolitan Police in terms of their custody staff,
in terms of their new recruits, all around the issue of promoting
voluntary returns. We have taken that strategy forward in the
last four or five months. We think that is a key area in encouraging
more voluntary returns and we will continue to find other ways
of promoting that either ourselves or through the IOM, who have
got quite a substantial network in the UK with refugee groups,
who are working with us to promote voluntary returns.
Q25 Chairman: Thank you. Sir John,
could we look now at the balance between the older cases and the
newer cases. If you look at paragraph 2.11, which you can find
on page 16, it says in the heading: "As a result of the difficulties
achieving removals, the backlog of applicants to be removed includes
significant numbers of older cases and family cases." I wonder
whether you feel you have got the balance right between your efforts
to build in systems that can remove the new applicants quickly
and deal with the more difficult older cases.
Sir John Gieve: Our objective
is to ramp up the total number of removals and we are trying to
put our resources in the place which will have the biggest impact.
We are constantly assessing whether we have got that balance right.
I think we are approaching the two different sorts of cases in
slightly different ways: first through the new asylum model we
are trying to keep contact with and process quickly the new asylum
claims and move them straight from refused appeal into the removal
pool; in the other cases there is an element of opportunism, we
make arrests, we go to places where we think there is illegal
working and we come across people who are, in fact, failed asylum
seekers and at that point we look at whether we can remove them.
There is always going to be a mix. In the future we hope to make
the end-to-end system work better so that there is swifter removal
and, therefore, that proves a higher percentage of the total.
Q26 Chairman: Lastly, you will remember
that Sir Gus O'Donnell, Sir John, announced on 11 October a capability
review, did he not? Do you recall that speech?
Sir John Gieve: Yes.
Q27 Chairman: Your very first answer
was that the backlog of failed asylum applicants for removal is
growing. As you are clearly failing in your capability in this
respect have you volunteered yourself for capability review to
Sir Gus?
Sir John Gieve: We have all volunteered
for a capability review. I have got no problem about the Home
Office doing it, although it would be my successor who will go
through it some time in the next year.
Q28 Chairman: Would this be a suitable—
Sir John Gieve: I absolutely do
not accept the implication that over the last few years the rapid
reduction in the level of unfounded asylum claims and the ramping
up of removals should be seen as a failure; actually it is a success.
Two or three years ago the idea of removing more people than were
coming in would have seemed absolute cloud cuckoo land but now
we think we might do it in the next two months.
Q29 Chairman: But there is still
a lot more work to do, is there not? There is a lot of territory
to catch up.
Sir John Gieve: Of course.
Q30 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I just need
to declare an indirect personal interest, which is neither clear
nor substantial, in that my husband works for a charity that has
a contract with the Home Office to give advice to asylum seekers
and immigration help to refugees. Having got that out of the way,
can I start with you, Sir John. On page 40 in paragraph 5.6 it
states that the report: "urged the Directorate to implement
a robust and effective performance management system". It
said you had accepted these recommendations and are taking forward
its plans to address them. To follow up a bit on the point that
the Chairman picked up, do you separate out in your categories
and as part of your performance management those failed asylum
seekers who can be returned, those failed asylum seekers that
you need travel documents for and those failed asylum seekers
who are from areas that you are not currently sending back to?
If you look at the headline figures, "We are not removing
enough asylum seekers", when you get into the detail there
are actually very good reasons in many cases why you cannot. Are
you separating that information out and are you collecting that
data?
Sir John Gieve: Yes. I will ask
my colleagues to add to this. Yes, that is the meat of the new
asylum approach, which is to segment the applications according
to whether they are removable, easily removable, where they come
from, how old they are, whether they are last minute claims from
people who have been here before and so on, and then to tailor
the treatment of those cases to best effect. So we will detain
some of them, as we have been in Harmondsworth, and try and get
through those cases and remove them in a matter of days, in other
cases we will use the reporting centres and in other cases we
will use other approaches. That is exactly what we are trying
to do and we are building up the management information which
allows us to do that and to track the results.
Mr Clark: Can I add some comments
to that. We have put in place in the last six to nine months some
very clear management performance measuring systems, part of which
are simply outlining the performance that has been delivered across
different parts of our business organisation but part of it has
been in terms of benchmarking each part of our business with others
to make comparisons, to look at effectiveness and to make some
measures of efficiency in respect of the enforcement activities.
The question you have asked, which is a hugely important question,
is around the segmentation of the different categories and groups
within the asylum process and the new asylum model is almost basing
its design on that segmentation approach. Those different groups—
Q31 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Can I interrupt.
What I am trying to get at is do you have any results, ie of those
that it is possible to send home what percentage are we achieving
of that? It seems from here we could do this but we cannot because
there are outside constraining factors that prevent us from doing
it, however in this category there are some of the outside constraining
factors and we have achieved X success. This is what I think is
missing from here, that at this point you do not have the system.
How soon would you be able to give us those figures?
Mr Clark: I think one of the problems
is that the situation changes over time and a lot of the blockages
to removal are appeals issues or judicial review issues which
delay but do not stop removal. A lot of the issues around which
country they might be removable to will change over time. In terms
of pinning that down and having a firm grasp on that, making year-on-year
comparisons will be quite difficult to do. In terms of any particular
time, we will be able to give information of those appropriate
to removal and those where there are almost show stopping difficulties
which prevent removal.
Q32 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: So your definition
of a failed asylum seeker is not someone who has exhausted all
rights of appeal and judicial review?
Sir John Gieve: It is those whose
appeal rights are exhausted, although, as we have learned, there
are people who still go for judicial review of removal instructions
even when they have exhausted all of their appeal rights, so the
legal process does go on very often up until the very last minute.
On your question, we do not have the figures here but I could
send you a note on that to try and segment it down and say what
the hit rate is, so to speak.[2]
Q33 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Can I move
on to enforcement and detention. I think we would all agree that
detention is not the ideal situation from a human rights point
of view but may be necessary where you think people are going
to abscond. I recently visited, in a private capacity, the Haslar
removal centre and found it a deeply depressing place. It felt
like a prison and I think the people who were there felt it was
more like a prison and it was staffed by prison officers. It is
also expensive detention. I would have thought the aim was to
keep people out of detention as far as possible providing you
can keep track of them. Have you considered other methods? I am
particularly interested in whether you have looked at the Appearance
Assistance Program that has been used in the USA quite successfully,
where a community sponsor takes responsibility for the person
and it is intensive supervision, personal telephone reporting,
home visits. It is the fact that someone in the community takes
responsibility because these people very often have been part
of their community and their whole life and if they are put in
detention it is very difficult. I wondered if you looked at this
at all?
Mr Clark: The issues that we are
working with in terms of our contact management strategy do involve
detention. We have more recently looked at tagging, tracking and
voice recognition arrangements and we have a number of small pilots
operating on those and with the early stages of the tagging system
we have taken people from the detention estate and put them through
the tagging process. To date, for those who have been tagged that
is operating satisfactorily but we want to do a proper evaluation
of it. We are also looking in terms of the contact management
strategy at the reporting centre issues. We have about 40,000
people reporting at any one time and that is a very successful
and effective way of keeping some contact with those who are claiming
asylum or who have failed in asylum claims. We have not made a
study of the American system that you have described and clearly
there sounds to be some advantage if we were to do that.
Q34 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Might I suggest
that your contact reporting system is not working that successfully.
I had a constituent of mine who was reporting in Portsmouth but
your records still had him reporting in Newport even though on
many occasions the family that had been looking after him had
supposedly cleared this and he was taken in the middle of the
night and it took me a long time to find out where he was. He
was being held in the local police station. Eventually, he ended
up in Haslar. His wife had only had a baby two weeks previously,
she was distraught, and it took me three days to get the guy out.
I would think that your contact reporting mechanism is not working
that well.
Mr Clark: I do not know of that
case and I am not sure I would agree that is a symptom of the
entire reporting centre arrangements, but we are continuing to
look at improving the processes around our reporting and the linkages
between reporting arrangements and taking people into detention
for the final stages prior to their removal.
Q35 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Can I briefly
go to section 5.4 where it says: "There is, as yet, no facility
to routinely monitor the time taken to process cases through different
stages of the removals process." Is that still the case,
and if so, when are you going to have such a facility?
Mr Clark: Our performance management
arrangements are giving information on some aspects of the various
processes in respect of removals and performance is being linked
to the time taken to work through those parts of the enforcement
and removal process. I think we will be in a much better position
to do an end to end set of benchmarking once the new asylum model,
which is, fundamentally, an end to end set of processes, is in
place and is operating.
Q36 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Now, do you
accept that we are fundamentally a Committee that are looking
for value for money and the length of time taken to go through
the process is actually costing you more, apart from all of the
other human aspects of it?
Mr Clark: We believe that the
new asylum model with the end to end process will reduce delays,
that is why we are moving in that direction. We are very keen
to get that process operating effectively. We want to reduce the
delays. We want to reduce these opportunities for gaps between
different parts of processes. It is something the NAO pointed
out to us very clearly, it is something we are very aware of ourselves.
We want that to be a smoother, more seamless process, that is
why we are developing the new asylum model.
Q37 Greg Clark: Sir John, you have
got this target to, by the end of the year, have the rate of removals
higher than the rate of refused applications coming on stream.
Are you expecting to hit that target?
Sir John Gieve: Well, I am hoping
to hit it. I do not know if I would go as far as saying I am expecting
to hit it. There are only six weeks to go.
Q38 Greg Clark: Do you have an assessment
of whether you are on course to hit it?
Sir John Gieve: We are pretty
clear we are going to hit it in the next few months, we just do
not know whether we are going to hit it before the end of year,
especially because December is an odd month in that there are
fewer working days and so on and so forth.
Q39 Greg Clark: You are not confident
you are going to hit it?
Sir John Gieve: I am still hopeful,
but I am not betting my mortgage on it.
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