Home Office has ‘no idea how many illegal immigrants in UK’
Charles Hymas
THE Home Office has no idea how many illegal immigrants are in Britain, the National Audit Office has said.
In a critical report on its management of illegal immigrants, the NAO said the Home Office’s last estimate was 15 years old, when it stood at 430,000.
Subsequent studies by other groups suggest the total has doubled but the spending watchdog said the Home Office “does not have an up-to-date estimate of how many people have no right to remain in the UK”.
The NAO acknowledged there would be “significant uncertainty” around any estimate. But it said such an estimate would help the Home Office demonstrate whether it was being effective in deterring people from entering or remaining in the UK illegally.
The Home Office detected 46,900 attempts by migrants to enter the country in the year to October 2019, up 12 per cent on the 40,800 in 2018. However, the Home Office did “not know whether this reflects detection of a higher proportion of attempts or if the number of attempts is increasing”.
The NAO said the Home Office was deporting fewer illegal immigrants, largely due to successful legal challenges, yet the department did not have any strategy to tackle the issue.
Enforced returns were down by 40 per cent at 7,400, from 12,380 in 2017, with fewer than half of Home Office-planned returns in 2019 going ahead.
The NAO said: “The department tells us that this is mostly explained by spurious late challenges to removal, but we have not seen evidence it has tried to actively understand and manage these challenges and it has no strategy... to reduce their frequency.”
The number of people persuaded to return voluntarily also fell from an average of 1,200 a month in 2015 to approximately 460 in 2019.
The Home Office estimates that it will deal with up to 320,000 deportations or immigration cases requiring enforcement each year but the NAO said “it does not know whether demand is growing or falling”.
Gareth Davies, the NAO comptroller and auditor general, said: “While the Home Office has introduced significant changes to its enforcement activity, it cannot demonstrate that overall performance is improving.
“[It] needs a better understanding of the impact of its immigration enforcement activity on its overarching vision to reduce the size of the illegal population and the harm it causes.”