The Home Office is the wrong department to manage immigration after Brexit, says a highly critical report by the Institute for Government (“IfG”) think tank.
The report lays bare systemic flaws in the Home Office and calls for an urgent review of its immigration operations. It alleges ministers have relied on high-level political rhetoric about migration but have no clear policy on or coherent account of what should be done about immigration. Instead they suggest government has set fixed numerical targets that are unrealistic and so damage public confidence and make it impossible for the system to be run effectively.
Sajid Javid, the British home secretary, has announced an independent review of immigration directorates in the wake of the Windrush scandal that cost his predecessor Amber Rudd her job, but the IfG report claims ministers need to consider whether the Home Office is the right permanent home for a migration policy that must serve the needs of the labour market, be fair, efficient and inspire public confidence.
The report unearthed many shortcomings including:
- a disconnect between what politicians say and what the Home Office does;
- unrealistic targets set by Theresa May;
- policies based on politics rather than evidence, such as the widely criticised “hostile environment” introduced by May to scare immigrants into leaving voluntarily; and
- poor decision-making, meaning that more than half of appeals made against the Home Office are successful.
It also highlighted a discrepancy between what politicians and policy officials think happens in theory and what actually happens in practice. The report asks for an urgent review in the light of the fundamental changes in immigration that will flow from the UK’s departure from the EU when freedom of movement rules will not longer apply.
