Home Office failures

Once again migration is proving a political headache for the Government. While it may correctly blame legal challenges or asylum rules or Albanian and French laissez-faire, the fact is that the public is likely to hold the Conservative Party responsible for failing to stop the flotilla of small boats that daily cross the Channel, bringing record numbers with them.

If bogus arrivals cannot be prevented from coming, the obvious answer is to send them home speedily. That would also act as a deterrent. Yet the average asylum case is taking 480 days to process, compared with six months before the pandemic. The UK is now facing a backlog of more than 120,000 asylum applications.

Part of the problem appears to be the bureaucratic failings of the Home Office itself. The department has long had a reputation for being dysfunctional, but as this newspaper reported this week, it appears that the cult of home-working has made a bad situation even worse. The Passport Office was also struck by similar inefficiencies, leading to huge delays. It is clear that such work-from-home culture must change. For paralysis entrenches the misery of genuine claimants, while making Britain appear a soft touch to criminal gangs who run the smuggling networks. As time goes by, estimates of the proportion of genuine claimants in each boat continues to fall, standing today at about just 50 per cent.

The Conservatives have promised at the last four elections to cut migration, only to see it rise. They have no option but to get a grip on the rolling crisis at the borders. They cannot afford the Home Office continuing to fail Britain.