| Summary
The United Kingdom's asylum policy has been undermined by the inability of the Home Office's Immigration and Nationality Directorate (the Directorate) to deal promptly with asylum seekers whose initial application to stay in the United Kingdom fails. The Directorate does not know how many failed asylum applicants remain in the country or where the majority are located, including over 400 criminals released from prison into the community.[1]
The Directorate estimated the backlog of removals at between 155,000 and 283,500. It could not be more precise as it had not kept track of, or collected sufficient data on, those who had changed address or left the country without informing the Directorate. The Directorate was removing around 1,350 failed applicants a month by September 2005, but this was still below the number of newly failed applicants, and hence the backlog is increasing.
Even if there were no new unsuccessful applicants, the Directorate's current level of performance would mean it would take between 10 and 18 years to clear the existing backlog. In practice, the longer failed asylum seekers remain in the United Kingdom, the more difficult it becomes for the Directorate to locate them and arrange removal, and the more likely it is that they will have established roots in the communities in which they live.
The Directorate makes only limited use of detention, preferring instead to use reporting arrangements at dedicated centres or police stations to monitor the whereabouts of asylum applicants. Electronic tagging had produced good results in limited trials but the Directorate was still in the process of evaluating the results of the exercise before rolling it out more widely. Only one local enforcement office routinely arrested failed applicants at their reporting centres rather than in the community, even though there was evidence that arrest at reporting centres was less resource-intensive and more successful.
The Directorate has no targets currently focused on reducing the backlog of removals. Segmenting failed applicants by age, availability of travel documents, criminal record, country of origin and date of arrival in the United Kingdom would help the Directorate tailor its removal strategies and set targets for each group. Increasing awareness of voluntary removal schemes amongst asylum seekers, staff and third parties could increase the take-up of a less costly form of repatriation than enforced removals.
On the basis of a Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Committee took evidence from the Home Office's Accounting Officer. The costs of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate across its full range of responsibilities are some £1.5 billion. The Home Office faces a severe problem, arising from a loss of control in the past. Progress is being made but until the Home Office:
- exceeds its current target to remove as many failed asylum seekers in a year as there are newly failed applicants; and
- starts making significant inroads into removing the large backlog of failed applicants, many of whom have remained in the country for some years;
it is difficult to conclude that the taxpayer is obtaining value for money in the efficiency and effectiveness of the Directorate's operations. On current performance, it will take many years to remove failed asylum seekers, undermining the whole asylum application process.
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