Further Government Response
TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT MIGRATION POOL
Paragraphs 44 to 46 of the report state that the
Committee 'were alarmed to discover in Sarah Rapson's evidence
session a further backlog of 190,000 cases in the temporary and
permanent migration pool that were never revealed to the Committee
before'. The figure of 190,000 was also included in the table
on page 20 of the report and the Committee's accompanying press
release.
The Home Office has regularly reported these figures
to the Committee.
· The information on temporary and permanent
migration caseloads was provided to the HASC in a letter from
Rob Whiteman to the Committee on 14 June 2012. This evidence was
reproduced in the HASC report on 'The work of the UK Border
Agency (December 2011 - March 2012)' in the evidence section
at Ev 57.
· An update on the temporary and permanent
migration caseloads was provided to the HASC in a letter from
Rob Whiteman to the Committee on 7 September 2012, detailing the
totals for April, May and June 2012 at paragraph 48 of his letter.
The Committee reproduced this information in its report on 'The
work of the UK Border Agency (April - June 2012)' in the evidence
section at Ev 19.
· On 28 February 2013, Rob Whiteman wrote
to the Committee giving a further update on the temporary and
permanent migration caseloads. In light of the Committee's interest
in "uninput" cases and in the interests of being open
and transparent he provided details of "uninput" cases
for the works streams in his letter of 28 February 2013, this
letter is reproduced in the Committee's report July to September
2012 at EV 43. These figures, totalling more than 190,000, were
published in the Committee's own report 'The work of the UK
Border Agency (July - September 2012)' in the evidence section
at Ev 43.
We also do not agree that all these cases should
be classed as a backlog. We receive
and process thousands of applications every day and there will
always be a large number of cases on our systems, the majority
within service standards.
DATA TABLE ON PAGE 20 OF THE COMMITTEE'S REPORT
We would also like to make further factual amendments
to the Committee's table on page 20 which we would ask are reflected
in future versions:
· The Asylum Controlled Archive closed in
Q4 2012, as Rob Whiteman told the Committee in his letter of 21
November 2012. However the Committee reported incorrectly that
the controlled archive had been closed in its Q3 report. At the
end of Q3 2012 the figure should have been reported as standing
at 70,000, as Rob Whiteman told the Committee in his letter of
6 December 2012.
· The Immigration Controlled Archive closed
in Q4 2012, as Rob Whiteman told the Committee in his letter of
21 November 2012. However the Committee reported incorrectly that
the controlled archive had been closed in its Q3 report. At the
end of Q3 2012 the figure should have been reported as standing
at 19,000, as Rob Whiteman told the Committee in his letter of
6 December 2012.
· The 28,558 further leave to remain cases
highlighted in the table refer to cases processed outside of service
standards in Q3 2012. These cases have been processed and concluded
and require no further action and this was made clear in Rob Whiteman's
letter to the Committee of 12 March 2013. We therefore do not
accept that these cases can be classified as a backlog and should
not be included in the table.
· The figure of 59,000 cases which the Committee
states are still to be loaded on CID, was actually 56,888 at the
end of Q3 2012, as explained in Rob Whiteman's letter of 28 February.
This figure of 56,888 uninput cases is included within the 190,000
outstanding temporary and permanent migration cases mentioned
above. It is therefore inappropriate to include separate sets
of figures for temporary and permanent migration and uninput cases
in this table as that would be double-counting.
· The Committee includes 14,000 further
leave to remain cases, on the basis of marriage or civil partnership,
which are pending review. These are requests to review cases
which have already had a refusal decision. It is therefore highly
likely that these cases will form part of the Migration Refusal
Pool (MRP). Therefore a large proportion of these cases have been
double-counted.
· The Committee includes 2,100 further leave
to remain cases, on the basis of marriage or civil partnership,
which are pending initial decision. They relate to a range
of further leave to remain cases, not just marriage. These cases
were concluded by the time the Independent Chief Inspector's report
on marriage applications was published at the end of Q3 2012.
The Committee was informed of this in our letter of 12 March 2013
and so should not be included in the table as they are not outstanding
and not part of a backlog.
In future reports we request that the Committee carefully
considers the information the Home Office provides to ensure the
reports and press notices the Committee produces are accurate
and contain the correct data tables.
IMMIGRATION DETENTION
The report states that 59 children left immigration
detention in Q3 2012. In fact 54 children left immigration detention
in Q3 2012. The figure of 59 relates to Q4 2012 and this section
of the report should therefore read:
59 children left immigration detention in Q4 2012.
92% of those detained had been held for three days
or less, an improvement from 87% on the previous quarter.
In addition, the Committee's report has labelled
the fact that there was an increase in the number of children
entering immigration detention in Q4 when compared to Q3 as 'worse
performance.' It should be noted that it is normal for there to
be variation between quarterly figures and it is not helpful or
reliable to draw conclusions about performance from such routine
variations.
SPONSORS AND LICENSING
In this report, the Committee classes the former
UK Border Agency's performance as 'worse' due to the fact that
in Q4 a higher number of follow up visits to Tier 2, 4 and 5 sponsors
were unannounced when compared to Q3.
However in previous reports the Committee has stated
their view that higher levels of unannounced visits are a positive
thing and has recommended that the majority, if not all, of post
licence visits carried out by the Agency should be unannounced
(Work of the UKBA December 2011 - March 2012, Conclusion/Recommendation
20; Work of the UKBA April - June 2012, Conclusion/Recommendation
31 and Work of the UKBA July - September 2012, Conclusion/Recommendation
30).
In line with the Committee's previous recommendations,
a higher percentage of follow up visits to sponsors in Q4 2012
were unannounced in order to ensure that the enforcement system
is rigorous and gives the public confidence that the government
is cracking down on illegal immigration.
We suspect that this is an unintentional error due
to a misreading of the figures and ask that this is noted for
future reports. If it is not an unintentional error however, we
refute that this represents worse performance by the Agency.
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