Oral evidence: Reforming the UK border and immigration system

Oral evidence, 3 September 2014.

Witnesses

Mark Sedwill, Permanent Secretary, Home Office, Mike Wells, Director of Immigration Operations, UK Visas and Immigration, and Mandie Campbell, Director General, Immigration Enforcement, gave evidence.

Chair

Welcome. We are seeing you on Monday again, and that’s it, isn’t it? Or are you coming on Wednesday as well?

Mark Sedwill

Not so far. What’s happening on Wednesday, Madam Chair?

Chair

I think we are taking Monday as an example and then we are doing contracting in a wider way on Wednesday next week. Good. Welcome to all of you, and to the two of you here for the first time in your new roles, although you have given evidence to us before, haven’t you? I am going to start on asylum seekers. The backlog there has increased. I don’t know which figure you want to take, but if you look at figure 14 on page 31, you still have 38% of asylum cases waiting more than three years, I think that is fair to say. Is that right?

Mark Sedwill

Sorry. Figure—

Chair

It’s right through the Report. So if you have read the Report, there is a drop in performance on asylum seekers. It is one of the areas where if you look at performance, it is going in the wrong direction. The number of cases awaiting a first decision has increased hugely. Performance is going backwards, yet the whole reorganisation, which is now 15 to 18 months old, was supposed to lead to an improvement in performance. This is not good.

Mark Sedwill

There are perhaps two points, Madam Chair. Let me just set the context first. You are right to focus on asylum seekers. The asylum system is under pressure and Mike Wells can perhaps fill in some more of the detail in a moment. I can explain some of the reasons for that, but performance overall in the border and immigration system has improved across the board in the 15 months since the break-up of the UK Border Agency. I can give you some examples and, to set the overall context, it is probably right to do so: 100% checks; no queues at the border; record seizures; backlogs in permanent and temporary migration, which we were told by another Committee might take decades to resolve, have gone; new visa products launched; immigration volumes from outside the EU down, quality up; and more people leaving the UK, with illegal immigrants leaving the UK 20% up on the year before, and 10% more foreign national offenders. While the job is not done—I am not claiming that the system is perfect; we were never going to do it in one year—I think it is only right, as you will want to focus in on the areas where performance is still not good enough, that we do acknowledge that performance as a whole has improved, as the Report itself acknowledges.

Chair

I would challenge that, Mark. If you want me to, I can equally pull out a set of statistics. Your data is pretty appalling and when, in my briefing for this Committee, I said to the NAO, “I don’t understand some of these tables,” what they told me was that it is because the data they get from you is so dreadful that they cannot unravel it. You can point to a whole lot of these tables where, particularly in recent months, performance is going down. You have set lower service standards in all sorts of areas—work visas for one: you are now expecting people to wait two months on average for 90% of them to get a work visa, so you have created a lower standard for yourselves. All of us have problems with the Passport Office—I know it’s not entirely the subject of today’s interrogation, but you have a huge backlog of passports. We will come to backlogs in general, which I think are a problem here. We can all draw on statistics. Given that the purpose of bringing it in-house was to improve performance, my reading of today’s Report is not as optimistic as yours. I think there is massive room for improvement, and I hope in the course of the interrogation to draw out the issues that give me cause for concern. I have started with asylum seekers. By the end of this afternoon, you’ll find I have a very long list, so let’s deal with the asylum seekers and then go forward. With asylum seekers, it’s going in the wrong direction. Far too many people—over 25,000 people—have been waiting years and years and years to have their claim dealt with; and performance is worse than it was.

Mark Sedwill

Madam Chair, I accept the point: the asylum system is under pressure. Let me make a couple of points on that and then I’ll let Mike Wells address the specifics in a little more detail. I am not suggesting that we’re there yet. We said that this system would take several years to sort out. All I wanted to suggest, in opening, was that there are—there have been improvements across the board against a situation which had been deteriorating in the past.

Chair

We will come to that by the end.

Mark Sedwill

We can come to that more generally. The asylum system is under pressure, really for two or three reasons. The first is that there was—to be candid—an ill judged decision taken in the last days of UKBA to downgrade the caseworkers in that area of work from HEO to EO. HEOs left. We reversed that decision and we’re recruiting HEOs—more experienced, more senior caseworkers—back in to deal with the asylum casework, but that has had an effect on the capacity and capability in that area. We hope that effect will be temporary. Mike can talk a little more about that. That’s on the capacity side. On the demand side, there are two or three factors. The first is that, as we have dealt with the backlogs in the permanent and temporary migration, some of those people refused naturally then spill through into appeals, human rights litigation and the asylum system. Essentially, for those who wish to game the system—try to stay in the UK by any means possible—asylum is their last port of call, so we always expected that in year 2 of the new arrangements, we would see that spill-through effect into asylum. As I said, we have difficulty in dealing with it, because capacity in the caseworking area has taken us time to build up. So we have that effect coming through, and that will take the rest of this financial year, we think, to tackle. Of course, we are also conscious of the potential shocks from world events and the risk of more asylum seekers heading into western Europe more generally and of course a proportion of those to the UK—

Chair

I think I’d be more convinced by that answer if I didn’t have this statistic, which I assume is correct—correct me if I’m wrong—38% of asylum cases avoided for more than three years.

Mark Sedwill

That’s part of the legacy that we’re—

Chair

That’s now—

Mark Sedwill

No, that’s absolutely right. That is part of the legacy we are dealing with. We are still dealing with the old backlog as we try to get on top of the new flow, but Mike will know more of the detail if you want—

Mr Burrowes

Mr Sedwill, how can we be more sure that the commitment now, as I understand it, to clear workable backlogs in asylum by March 2015 will be met, when the old commitment to clear backlogs by summer 2011 was plainly not met?

Mark Sedwill

Mike, why don’t you pick up that point as well?

Mike Wells

To take the Older Live Cases Unit, which is in figure 14, first, those cases are cases that pre-date March 2007. It’s clearly unacceptable, as you have said, that those cases are still awaiting a decision.

Mr Burrowes

How many are we talking about now?

Mike Wells

The number that are still awaiting a decision is now down to 11,000. The 29,000 that I think was referred to earlier is the total cohort. Within that, there are people who have had a decision; that decision is to refuse them leave, and they have still, as Mark has said, to leave the country. There is another group, which we are working through, that have yet to have a decision from us. We have committed to making decisions on all those cases by the end of this year, and I’m pleased that the Report does acknowledge that we are on track to deliver that. That’s in relation to the oldest cohort—those that pre-date March 2007—

Mr Burrowes

Okay, stick to the old ones. Reference is made to workable backlogs. Does that come within your definition of workable?

Mike Wells

Those are all the older live cases. There is a defined cohort of those. It’s the first block on figure 14. That’s the group that the Chair was referring to and which I was answering in respect of. We are working through that group. We are making sure that we give decisions and communicate decisions to all of those people by the end of this year.

Mark Sedwill

That’s the end of this calendar year, by the way.

Mr Burrowes

March 2015?

Mark Sedwill

No, December 2014.

Mike Wells

December 2014. We have been clear on that commitment and we are confident that we are on track to deliver that. That is in respect of those people. Clearly, with some of those people. we will refuse their claim. We may not be able to conclude all of those cases in the sense that those people might not have left the UK by the end of this year, but we have committed to giving all of those people a clear decision by the end of this year.

Sir Amyas Morse

Could I just check something before we move on through the data field? We took our information in this agreed Report at the end of the first quarter. You are saying that in quarter two of the year, you have taken it down by 14,000. Is that correct?

Mike Wells

No.

Sir Amyas Morse

I want to make sure we are being precise.

Mike Wells

To be clear there are two figures. There is the number of people in that cohort and there is the number still awaiting a decision. A considerable number of those people have had a decision to refuse them leave but have yet to leave the UK. There is another group within that cohort that have yet to have a decision. We have said that we will ensure that all of those people have received a clear decision, either to grant or refuse them leave, by the end of this year. That is in relation to the older cohort that is referred to in figure 14. There are then the problems in relation to more recent asylum claims, some of which are in backlog, as Mark has said.

Chair

Where there has been a drop in performance.

Mike Wells

Yes, for the reasons set out. There has of course been an increase in the number of asylum claims. That has been increasing across the whole of the European Union. We have said that we will bring those cases back into service standard, because there will always be a flow of those case. We will bring those back into service standard by March of next year.

Chair

March 2015.

Mike Wells

Yes.

Mr Jackson

What is the reason for these intractable seven-years-plus cases? Did you say 11,000?

Mike Wells

Yes.

Mr Jackson

What are the main reasons why they are still not being expedited and why they are so intractable?

Mike Wells

There are two main reasons. First, many of these have put in a series of further submissions. It would be misleading to think that those cases have been sitting on a shelf with nothing happening to them for seven years. Often asylum seekers will make a series of further submissions. They will say that there have been changes in their circumstances, sometimes quite genuinely so, other times perhaps less genuinely so. They will make further submissions and we are bound to consider those. We have made a commitment to reconsider all of those cases. Hence, that is why we are working through them. The second thing is that we inherited a very large number of these cases from UKBA. We have put resources—

Chair

The same people. You say you inherited them but they are the same people. All they did was switch from being with one headed notepaper to another.

Mike Wells

We have those cases. We have to work through them, in a balanced way, while also ensuring that we work through all of the other sorts of cases. We have 3.5 million applications a year. We are talking about some tens of thousands here. We have to balance our resources. We are putting resource into that to make decisions on all of these cases and communicate them by the end of the year.

Mr Bacon

For clarity’s sake, there are 3.5 million applications a year for what?

Mike Wells

In total.

Chair

Not for asylum.

Mike Wells

No, across visas and immigration.

Chair

Asylum has been stable.

Mr Bacon

Let’s be clear. What is it that 3.5 million people a year are applying for? You didn’t say.

Mike Wells

All sorts of visas that our staff are working on.

Chair

But asylum has not gone up.

Mark Sedwill

It has, but not hugely. It has gone up from low twenties to mid-20,000. It has drifted up but not spiked up as it did a decade ago.

Mr Jackson

You have got 11,000. You said that their circumstances have changed, which I find a bit puzzling. Presumably, if you have come from Somalia claiming asylum you are not popping over to Somalia with changed circumstances, are you? You are still in the United Kingdom for more than seven years. How can it be that you cannot expedite a solution in eight or nine years?

Mike Wells

To answer your second question, we are expediting these now. I am not trying to defend the time that was taken to deal with some of them but we are now expediting them and dealing with them by the end of this year, as I said, to make decisions on all of them.

Mr Jackson

No, you are not answering the question. Why has it taken so long? I have constituents who were claiming asylum when I was first elected. I am in my 10th year now. That is unacceptable. Why is that happening? I am not asking you to say when they will be sorted out. I am just trying to get to why it is taking so long.

Mike Wells

That cohort of cases built up over a long time. There was a large influx of asylum claimants into the UK in the early years of this century—a very sharp increase. It was not handled well. As I said earlier, I am not trying to claim that the situation is acceptable as it obviously is not. We are dealing now with that. We are looking to make decisions.

Chair

Are you expecting to uncover any more files that you lost? In the past we have found rooms full of files that for some reason had been mislaid. Are you on top of that? Are there any more files around that had been lost for years on end?

Mark Sedwill

I think the short answer is no. Nor are there cases that are not on the system. This is part of the changes that we made in the past year. This is important around the service standards. Those that were not contained within the service standard could drop off the edge because there wasn’t an incentive to process them. If they dropped past the service standard, there wasn’t an incentive to deal with them quickly. The service standards are now—

Mr Bacon

When you say “drop off the edge”, do you mean that they stopped being counted?

Mark Sedwill

No, they were counted but a small proportion—of course, that accumulates—were not being actively worked.

Mr Burrowes

Are these straightforward and non-straightforward cases?

Mark Sedwill

I think these were mostly non-straightforward cases.

Chair

Are you talking about asylum seekers here?

Mark Sedwill

I am just talking in general terms. You were asking whether we have cupboards full of files we have not found. Eighteen months ago there were 60,000 cases—not of asylum seekers—in the migration area that were not even on the system. They were not even in the system to be counted properly as either part of work in progress or a backlog or whatever. So we have been addressing all of those very basic points. We are ensuring that we don’t have cases that just drop off the edge, get left in a cupboard and just accumulate. To go to Mr Jackson’s point, you will remember back in the early part of the decade, asylum intake was well over 100,000.

Chair

We know that.

Mark Sedwill

I was talking to a former Home Secretary about this. The system could not cope with that and that is partly why cases built up. Then when they are here for a long time—your first point, Mr Jackson, was one that Mike didn’t get the chance to address—their circumstances change within the UK. They may have a family. They have children and so on and they gradually accumulate, if not asylum rights, more rights under the Human Rights Act—article 8 rights—to stay within the UK. That makes those cases more and more complex.

Mr Burrowes

You said you that you are going to clear the backlog by the end of the financial year. Are we dealing with all cases? There is reference to “workable”. Are there some unworkable cases that will not be cleared? Can you define “workable” and “unworkable”? Is it straightforward and non-straightforward? Are they the same type of terms?

Mike Wells

There are essentially three types of cases: straightforward cases; complex cases, but workable; and cases that are blocked. Cases that are blocked could be blocked for a variety of reasons. It could be that they are part of a criminal investigation. They might be awaiting prosecution. There are a variety of other reasons of that sort. There will always at any given time be some cases that are blocked and we cannot make a decision on them.

Mr Burrowes

But all other cases are workable?

Mike Wells

We expect the workable cases to be back within our service standards in respect of asylum by the end of the financial year.

Mr Burrowes

So their complexity isn’t the issue and they are all workable if they are not blocked?

Mike Wells

We will be back within our service standards by the end of this financial year.

Chair

How many are blocked in asylum at the moment?

Mike Wells

I don’t have the exact number.

Mr Bacon

How many are blocked altogether, whether asylum or other?

Mike Wells

I think across the temporary and permanent migration area, it is around 10% of cases at any given time.

Mr Bacon

How many? I didn’t ask you for a percentage.

Mike Wells

At present, that is around 8,000.

Mr Bacon

8,000 are blocked.

Mr Burrowes

And in terms of asylum?

Mike Wells

At any given time. Of course, it changes over time.

Mr Bacon

It is a cohort that is moving, yes.

Chair

And asylum?

Mr Burrowes

In terms of asylum claims?

Mike Wells

I don’t have a specific number, I’m afraid, in respect of that.

Mark Sedwill

We’ll see if we can get it for you.

Chair

I want to ask three more questions on asylum.

Mr Burrowes

If I could just follow through on the non-straightforward cases that are now coming within the service performance standards. Do any drop off? I am aware of constituency cases that have gone through whole years of process to the point of getting indefinite leave to remain, and then when they are dealing with the very basic issue of getting their paperwork and passport back to move on, that is the area of significant delay. They seem to drop off the proper communication standards with the HO. Are they included to the very end? Or, when you have made the decision, do they not get included in any service standards to get their passport and move on in their lives?

Mike Wells

On that particular point, the service standards I referred to are in respect of giving a decision. Clearly, if there are situations where people are otherwise waiting for something else from us, I would like to ensure that we give people a good service in that regard. Again, we recognise that we have got to improve.

Mr Burrowes

But there is no measurement of that. The suspicion is that there is firefighting to try to deal with the decision. As far as people’s lives are concerned—not just about making the decision—and getting the paperwork back to move on, they are left to wait months and months with their lives on hold. There is no priority given by the Department on that.

Mike Wells

It is actually in our interests, once we have made a decision, to deal with them as quickly as possible, because it reduces contact, allows people to get on with their lives, as you say, and us to get on with other work. I can assure you we are not doing that as a deliberate policy.

Chair

I just want to ask three more questions on asylum. The delay costs the UK taxpayer money. Have you calculated how much the UK taxpayer is picking up because of the delays that are beyond your service standards?

Mark Sedwill

I think we’d have to let you have detail on that specific point. Certainly, the asylum support budget has increased as a result of that. That is essentially the increased cost. It is underfunded, an increase in the asylum support. It is one of the reasons that I want to get this backlog down as quickly as possible this year.

Chair

There are two other issues on cost. One is that you lost the case in the High Court on the essential living needs of £5.32 a day that you give to asylum seekers, which leaves a lot of them virtually destitute. I understand that you have not changed that figure. Is that right?

Mark Sedwill

I don’t know the answer, Madam Chairman. We’ll have to come back to you. I’m sorry; I don’t know the answer.

Chair

That was in April this year. I am not talking a recent High Court case. It had quite a lot of coverage at the time.

Mark Sedwill

Sorry, I just don’t have it to hand.

Chair

£5.32 a day is just pathetic. You lost. One wants the cases dealt with quickly, so that they can get out of the system, but if you are keeping people waiting and putting them into bed and breakfast or hotel accommodation, they need enough to live on.

Mark Sedwill

We’ll come back to you. We just don’t have it to hand.

Chair

The final thing is that I understand, though I am not an expert on the new Immigration Act, that the expectation is that you will get an increase in asylum applications when you implement that now. That is assuming you are starting implementation in October/November. That will again lead to an increase in expenditure, because you will have to accommodate people in bed and breakfast and hotels. How are you going to manage that increase in expenditure in the constrained circumstances in which you operate?

Mark Sedwill

I will let Mike answer the second point, if I may. On the first, though correct me if I am wrong, it is not necessarily an increase in the total number of asylum claims; it is that they will make them earlier in the process, because we have essentially reduced the number of opportunities to make individual claims. The likelihood is that many of them would have ended up making an asylum claim at the end of a protracted process of trying to make other claims as well. It will bring some of that forward. That does not undermine your point that there is an immediate caseworking and financial impact of that, if we get that effect brought forward. It is quite difficult to predict.

Mike Wells

You are exactly right, Mark. Our plans for this year assume an increase as a result of that.

Chair

How much?

Mike Wells

Well, as I said, we had a 5% increase last year. We are assuming something of the same sort of order—

Chair

Sorry, you are going to have to speak up.

Mike Wells

We had a 5% increase last year. I believe we are assuming something of a similar order this year.

Mr Bacon

Is that in the number of asylum applications?

Mike Wells

Yes, asylum applications.

Mr Bacon

And what do you assume is the financial impact of that?

Mike Wells

Overall, that depends partly on how many people seek accommodation as part of their support costs.

Mr Bacon

But you are budgeting. You must have a number if you are assuming an increase.

Mike Wells

Overall, our budget for asylum support this year is about £260 million.

Mr Bacon

How much is that up on what it was? So that is the total asylum support budget.

Mike Wells

Yes.

Mr Bacon

You said you were expecting a further 5% increase this year as you had last year. I was really asking you what your assumption was about the financial impact of that further 5% increase. You said that it depends. Obviously, it depends. You must have been making some assumptions around it, just as you are making assumptions that there will be a 5% increase. What is your assumption about the financial impact?

Mike Wells

The assumption is that it would follow through at roughly the same proportion.

Mr Bacon

So you would add 5% on to the £260 million?

Mike Wells

Exactly.

Mr Bacon

So another £13 million or whatever.

Mike Wells

But at the same time the effects of dealing with the backlog that we talked about earlier should bring that back down again. So we are looking to constrain the costs of the asylum budget to around the £260 million mark.

Sir Amyas Morse

Sorry, but just to be sure that I have understood this: looking at the backlog and the rate at which it is feasible for it to be brought down, I am just wondering how aggressive your assumption about getting it done in this calendar year is. I realise that it is a desirable thing to do, but you are re-recruiting the people who have left. The decision rate has dropped off. Even if it goes back up to where it was before, it is still 5,000 a quarter and you have a backlog of roughly 20,000. I cannot see that happening before the turn of the year, so do you have some other resource? I may have misunderstood how you will achieve this. Can you just unpack it a little bit?

Mike Wells

So, as I said earlier, the figure I think you are referring to, which is in respect of older live cases—

Louise Bladen

This is figure 10, so it is the number of claims and decisions outstanding.

Sir Amyas Morse

If you look at figure 10, what has dropped off as a result of reducing the caseworkers is the yellowish line which is the rate of decision making on cases. Even if you have got it back up to where it was before, on a good day it would be rolling at about 5,000 decisions a quarter. You are saying, on the face of it, you will make 20,000 decisions in two quarters, and I am just wondering where the capacity and the resources to do that would come from. Have you got a special team or something?

Mike Wells

We are going to do two things. We are deploying additional resources. That is the first thing. So, yes, there is additional resource going in, so it is not that we are going back to where we were. We are applying additional resources. Secondly, we are not saying that we will remove all cases, so I don’t think your 20,000 is right. We are saying that we will be back within our service standards. At any given time, there are always cases in the system. Even if you go right back to the very beginning of that table—figure 10—in Q1, there were over 10,000 cases in the system. At any given time, there are always cases in the system.

Sir Amyas Morse

So if we are being realistic—I am not saying you weren’t being, but just to understand it better—what we are saying you would do by the end of the year is get it down to something around 10,000 to 12,000 of backlog rather than what it is at now. Is that about right? Instead of 20,000—is that what we are saying?

Mike Wells

It is not backlog. There are always cases in the system.

Sir Amyas Morse

Forgive me. You are quite right. It was the wrong expression. You will bring cases waiting for a decision down to about 10,000 to 12,000. Is that the plan?

Mike Wells

We will bring that back to a position where there aren’t cases in the system that are older than the service standards.

Sir Amyas Morse

Because I am an accountant, I like numbers.

Mike Wells

That will be roughly the sort of order that you are talking about, but I would need to check for the precise number.

Sir Amyas Morse

Thank you.

Mr Burrowes

On the impact of the Immigration Act and in terms of your scenario planning, which I understand from paragraph 3.13 that you have been doing, what scenarios have you come up with in terms of this 5% increase? Reference is made to the use of hotels “if initial accommodation becomes full”. What is an example of a scenario you have planned for? Have you planned the amount of hotel accommodation that would be needed and the costs of that?

Mike Wells

We’ve done a number of different scenario plans, and we have a variety of different ways in which we would look to flex our resources if necessary.

Chair

Tell us about them. What are they?

Mark Sedwill

You may recall, when we looked at the COMPASS contracts at an earlier hearing, that one of the points—I think it was yours, Madam Chair—was that we hadn’t been providing the contractors with our forecasts of demand right at the beginning. I then remember you said, “Are you now?” and I said, “Yes,” and we are. We provide the contractors and suppliers with our forecasts, including potential scenarios, so that they can adjust their plans to provide accommodation. Of course, one thing they have to look at is what proportion of that they would expect to be long-term and should therefore be rented accommodation, and what proportion is short-term and might need hotel accommodation.

Mr Burrowes

In terms of accommodation, what are the worst-case and best-case scenarios?

Mark Sedwill

I think we might have to come back to that. Broadly speaking, it is along the lines that Mike has been talking about—the 5% increase we were expecting. One of the lessons we learnt from the Passport Office’s problems earlier this year is that there has to be a difference between your forecast and your planning assumption.

Mr Burrowes

Yes, but you must have quantified your worst-case and best-case scenarios in relation to accommodation.

Mark Sedwill

We’ll have to come back to you.

Mr Burrowes

What about the results in reduced services? Are there worst-case and best-case scenarios for reduced services? Paragraph 3.13 says it “could result in reduced services within those areas and possible income reduction.” Let’s go back a stage: in terms of using staff from other parts of the directorate, what is your scenario planning in terms of the amount of staff and the best-case and worst-case scenarios?

Mike Wells

What we obviously want to do in relation to our other work is stay within our service standards, because we have brought ourselves back within the service standards for our temporary and permanent migration. We would need to balance that, but potentially use the margin we have within that work to redeploy. We have been doing that this summer, across different areas of our work, so that we have a balance.

Mr Burrowes

I understand the reasons as a management rationale, but I am trying to understand what these scenarios are. Can you provide us with the details of the accommodation, the numbers of staff and the scenarios in relation to reduced services?

Mike Wells

Would it help if I give you a couple of examples? We have been able to redeploy around 100 staff to different areas of our work earlier in the summer, while staying within service standards. That gives you an order of magnitude of the sort of thing we would be looking at.

Chair

A hundred staff on what?

Mike Wells

We have been looking to recruit about 400 additional staff in asylum.

Chair

Four hundred?

Mike Wells

Yes. We have been able, as I said, to redeploy about 100 people into different areas of our work earlier in the year, which gives you an order of magnitude of the amount of flex we would be looking to try.

Mark Sedwill

That includes deploying people from nationality casework, where we were well within the service standard, to help out with the Passport Office over the summer. Those people are now coming back into Visas and Immigration.

Chair

You’re always firefighting, Mr Sedwill—always firefighting rather than planning.

Mark Sedwill

We’re doing both. We plan, but I suspect your predecessors and mine had this conversation, too. One of the things we are trying to do is improve our capability to redeploy caseworkers across all the boundaries between the Passport Office and Visas and Immigration, and across different cohorts of casework within Visas and Immigration, so that we have a more flexible pool. One of the problems in the past was called “junior football” by an earlier Home Secretary, in that everyone runs round after the ball; you go to the immediate crisis and something else goes wrong. We want to avoid that. While we are dealing with a system that is under a lot of pressure, we have pretty much managed to flex our resources to do so. We can let you have as much detail as possible.

Mr Burrowes

On the passport issue, while I appreciate they are now coming back, understandably so, what was the impact at the time on those other services where they came from? Did you do any assessment or measurement at the time?

Mark Sedwill

Yes. When we put decisions to Ministers about redeploying staff, how many staff and for how long, we were very clear with them about the predicted impact on service standards. It was mostly from the nationality casework team because they are the people with the skills set closest to the passport skills set. That work was already well within the service standard set for it, so we took an explicit decision, or Ministers did, that that work would drift a bit but stay within service standards to supplement passports. We were really clear with Ministers about the predicted impact.

Mr Burrowes

Finally, when looking back to some extent, can you now measure what the impact was?

Mark Sedwill

Yes. We predicted at the time and we monitored all the way. I cannot give you the numbers off the top of my head, but we managed the impact by maintaining the service standard in that case within nationality casework service standard times.

Chair

We will come back to other backlogs, but Austin has a question about asylum seekers. We need those figures because extra cost to the taxpayer is arising out of all this delay. I would like us now to be able to report and to bottom that out in a further note from you. So on asylum seekers, and then we will go to Richard and another backlog.

Austin Mitchell

Okay. On the 25,000 old but still active asylum cases dating back to pre-2007, you are hoping to clear workable backlogs by March 2015. That is in paragraph 8. Do we know what proportion of those are still in paid-for accommodation and therefore a charge on the taxpayer, as the Chair said? How many have disappeared and gone to ground?

Mike Wells

I think it would be best to cover that with the early material. We can give you information about the number who are receiving asylum support. I do not have that number to hand immediately, but we can give it to you.

Austin Mitchell

So it’s purely guesswork. We don’t know.

Mike Wells

No, no. We have the number. I just do not have the exact number to hand.

Austin Mitchell

You say you want to clear the workable backlogs. What is a workable backlog? How far can we clear the cases of people who have gone to ground? In similar circumstances and without the machinery of a police state, such as dawn raids on Christchurch—sorry, restaurants in North East Lincolnshire, where a cook was dragged off in front of astonished and incompletely fed diners as an asylum seeker—will you be able to clear that without police state methods? Mark Sedwill: I think, Mr Mitchell, that brings us to where I suspect the Chair might be going: the migration refusal pool.

Chair

Yes, I am.

Mark Sedwill

Sorry, Madam Chair, that was a bit presumptuous of me, but you warned me you were going to another backlog—and, again, I dispute that description. On the migration refusal group, you are absolutely right, Mr Mitchell, that there is a group of people in the UK at any one time who have gone to ground and haven’t left. We will have a lot better information about that, including individual cases, when we have comprehensive checks, although it will take some years to build up the comprehensive data. Mandie can talk more about this, but where we are intervening in the way you described, we are largely doing so on the basis of intelligence about where people might be working or living illegally and some of the changes in the Immigration Act 2014 are designed to enhance our capabilities in that regard. It will always be a challenge because people will, of course, do their best to go off the grid if they feel that we are going to take action against them. Some of the changes in the Act are designed to make it harder for them to do so. We will withdraw driving licences, and the announcement on the implementation of landlords’ obligations was made this morning. More effective action against employers of illegal workers, etc. will make it harder for those people to operate in a modern economy and will therefore incentivise them just to leave the country without necessarily requiring the intense resource of an enforcement operation. Mandie can talk more about that, perhaps in response to further questions, Madam Chairman.

Chair

I was going to come to the migration pool and I think that is where Richard wants to come as well. I could not work this out. If we look at the stuff that you gave to Capita asking them to analyse who is in that migration pool, they looked at 250,000 people and 50,000 could not be contacted. Does that mean 50,000 have gone and simply disappeared into the system?

Mandie Campbell

What that means is that 50,000 people cannot be contacted, but it does not mean that they are in the country. They could be or have already left the country.

Chair

But you don’t know.

Mandie Campbell

We don’t know.

Chair

It is a scary fact.

Mandie Campbell

A number of checks are made, but there are more things that we can do and we are starting to do in co-operation with other Government Departments, to see if we can find out whether any of those people actually remain here.

Chair

Have you any intelligent estimate of how many have left?

Mandie Campbell

Of that group, we don’t at the moment, because, as the Permanent Secretary said, we don’t have comprehensive exit checks at the moment. As we get to the end of next year, when we have that data available with all new cases, from that point on, we will be able to say with confidence whether those people remain in the country or not.

Mr Bacon

Can I stop you? You said when you have that data at the end of next year. The Permanent Secretary said a moment ago, apropos comprehensive exist checks, that it will take some years. Are you saying that it will take one year plus four months?

Mandie Campbell

No. For people who come in after next year, a lot will come with visas that perhaps give them permission to remain for a number of years. Obviously, knowing that they have left the country will be some years hence, because they are properly in the country until that time. For people who have an adverse decision made against them from next year, we will be able to tell after that point whether those individuals have left the country or not.

Mr Bacon

The exit checks will be in place by what point next year?

Mark Sedwill

Exit checks will be in place by the end of March 2015. Of course, the data that one exploits from that—

Chair

So new people who are coming in who are refused, you will be able to do an exit check on.

Austin Mitchell

What does this say about how the Capita contract worked if you have got 50,000? Are they paid if they tell you that in the case of 47,000 that they have already gone? Is that 10 quid to Capita for that information? About 60,000 couldn’t be contacted, which you should have known in the first place, and in 121,000 cases there was a barrier to contact and Capita passed the cases back to you. If they have disappeared and there is a barrier to contact, you should not be putting them out to contract if you are going to get value for money. You should not be paying somebody to tell you what you don’t know.

Mandie Campbell

If I take the barrier cases first, it is not that there is a barrier to contact. It is when they have been contacted by Capita, there is a barrier to being removed from the country. For example, they have already been refused once. The migration refusal pool, as the Permanent Secretary said, is not a backlog of cases waiting to be dealt with. It is people who have already been dealt with. They have had an adverse decision made about them, but they have not left the country. Once Capita made contact with them again they then said, “There has been a change in my circumstances and there is more information you don’t know. I wish to make a different claim in a different category.” At that point, Capita passed the cases back to the Home Office for casework and a further decision.

Chair

Can you give an assurance to this Committee that you know where all those 121,000 are?

Mandie Campbell

We have made contact and determined that those cases have another claim in the system.

Chair

You know where they are. Mr Sedwill shook his head. We know there are 50,000 you don’t know, some of whom might have left. There is another 121,000 who may try a new claim in a different way—I can think of a lot of my constituents who might do that. Out of those 121,000, how many do you know? Could you hand us a list of addresses or be able to contact them?

Mandie Campbell

We have a contact address or details for all of those people at the last point that they made the last application to us. But, as with any individual, they could move house tomorrow and then we wouldn’t know where they were.

Chair

And then you’d lose them.

Mr Jackson

Let me just explore something. You said in reference to the 50,000 that you do checks. You also said that you have no way of knowing where they are. There is a bit of a discrepancy there. What checks do you do? Do you do the checks and then conclude that you do not know where they are, or do you work on the basis that you do not know where they are? What are the specific checks that you do?

Mandie Campbell

Capita do a range of checks on the individuals to try to follow up last named addresses. There are checks on standard available databases and some special checks with credit reference agencies to try to determine where they are, as well as checking with our advance passenger data information that is available at the moment to see if we have any record of them leaving the country and across any Home Office systems. A range of checks take place to try to determine their location. As I said, with that group, we do not know whether they have left the country and gone out through a route where we have no data until that data comes on stream next year.

Chair

Can you define that group? Is that the 50,000 or the 121,000?

Mandie Campbell

That is the 50,000, I think, that Mr Jackson was talking about.

Mr Jackson

Okay, are you saying that all those 50,000, or a huge proportion of them, are submitting a second and third stage claim?

Mandie Campbell

No, that is a different group. We have had no contact with that group at all.

Mr Jackson

So if you have an address for them, are you actively seeking them out to remove them from the United Kingdom as having no legal basis to remain?

Mandie Campbell

We are not sending enforcement officers to that address because we have a limited amount of enforcement resource and we apply that resource on a harm basis. If there was any evidence that those individuals were causing harms—criminal offending—then we would prioritise those cases.

Mr Jackson

You don’t know, do you? You don’t know who they are. You don’t know where they are, who they are or what they are doing. Do you think they are going to turn up at Portsmouth and say, “Can I check in on your embarkation system please and leave the country?” It is just not going to happen. It’s a lot of people. It’s not 500 people; it’s 50,000 people that you have just lost.

Mr Bacon

Presumably, those 50,000 people are entitled to benefits of various kinds. Is that correct?

Mandie Campbell

No, they are not entitled to any benefits.

Mr Bacon

Nothing at all. They are not entitled to any payments of any kind.

Mr Jackson

So none of them have national insurance numbers.

Mandie Campbell

They may well have national insurance numbers, but they are not entitled to claim benefits.

Mr Jackson

That is not the same as not claiming benefits. You are saying they are not entitled to claim benefits. They could have a council tax reference. They could be on the electoral register. Just this week, incidentally, cross-referencing with the Home Office, I found three people who were on the electoral register to vote. One of them voted at the local elections. That is one example of someone who had no legal basis to be in the United Kingdom voting in our elections. There is this idea that they are just disappearing into thin air. This is an important public interest and public safety issue. It seems that there is an element of complacency here: “50,000, well they might turn up and they might not.” It is not acceptable really. I will come to another issue that I do not think is acceptable about the openness and transparency of the Home Office in a particular case that I had in July. Sticking to this 50,000 case, there needs to be a much more robust methodology for tracking these people down and ensuring they are formally removed from the United Kingdom or leave of their own volition.

Mandie Campbell

Part of the response to that are the measures that we have taken in the new Immigration Act. The idea behind those measures, first and foremost, is to create an environment where people are not able to access benefits in this country. That makes this country a less attractive environment in which to remain. The driving licence measures are a good example of that. Measures were brought in in the new Act to prevent people who are in the country illegally from holding driving licences—acquiring and renewing them—and to revoke driving licences of people in the country without leave. In the six weeks that those measures have been in operation—since 14 July—having provided information to the DVLA, they have now revoked over 3,600 driving licences.

Mr Bacon

In six weeks?

Mandie Campbell

In six weeks. They have also refused to issue a further 600 driving licences on the basis of the data.

Mr Bacon

That is by working their way through the case load. So, crudely, could one assume that in 60 weeks—slightly over a year—you might find 36,000 at that pro rata rate?

Mandie Campbell

I think it is a law of diminishing returns.

Mr Bacon

Probably, but it sounds like a lot of people. It could even be Mr Jackson’s 50,000 or a significant chunk of them.

Mandie Campbell

We are working closely and now have arrangements with the DVLA to exchange data with them. Of course, people provide addresses for driving licence applications. They may well be addresses that were not previously known to the Home Office, and we are exchanging that data. So we are taking these measures in the Act to enable us to have much closer relationships with organisations who can give us the data that will help us to locate people.

Mr Bacon

Mr Jackson distinguished rightly—he took the words out of my mouth—between not being entitled to claim benefits and successfully claiming benefits. Of the 50,000 of whom you say none is entitled to claim benefits, am I right in thinking that you cannot be completely confident that some of them—apparently some have driving licences—are not holding down jobs and have got payments from the state of one kind or another? You cannot guarantee that, can you?

Mandie Campbell

I can’t guarantee that.

Mr Bacon

One of the things you said was that it was about resources. If the state is paying them resources through benefit payments, that is money that could be used to cause them to leave the country, couldn’t it?

Mandie Campbell

The people in this pool are not asylum seekers. These are a group of people who were never entitled—

Mr Bacon

I don’t think I mentioned the word “asylum”. You did. I was talking about this cohort of 50,000 people; you don’t know where they are and you said that they are not entitled to claim benefits. Mr Jackson said that they are not entitled to claim benefits but they might none the less be claiming benefits. I asked you whether you can guarantee that this cohort of people, none of whom is entitled to claim benefits, are not somehow managing to claim benefits. You said, no, you could not guarantee that. Therefore, I was making the point that you cannot guarantee that money from the state, from our constituent taxpayers, is not being used to pay them. My point was that those are resources of the state which, were you more organised, could be being used to add to your pile of resource, the lack of which you prayed in aid a minute ago, to remove them because they don’t have the right to be here. That is right isn’t it?

Chair

Say yes.

Mr Bacon

We are spending money paying people to be here who have no right to be here. Instead of paying them to be here, we could use that money to track them down to get rid of them.

Chair

She was worried her bosses won’t like it, but the answer must be yes.

Mr Bacon

Is that correct?

Mark Sedwill

I think—

Mr Bacon

Mr Sedwill, Miss Campbell has not said very much and I am looking forward to her answer. Is that right?

Mandie Campbell

This is a group of people who were not entitled to claim benefit—

Mr Bacon

Is that right? Is what I have just said correct?

Mr Jackson

I think what Mr Bacon is saying—

Mark Sedwill

You need to let us answer the question.

Mr Jackson

With respect, can I finish my point before you come back in, thank you very much? Right. The point Mr Bacon is making, I think, is that a national insurance number is a gateway to other benefits. So you are going to access school places. You are going to access social housing. You are going to access health. Therefore, it is important that that 50,000 is prioritised. There is obvious evidence that an effort is being made to apprehend those people and to remove them within the law to the place where they should be and not the United Kingdom, where they have no legal basis to reside.

Mr Bacon

Can I get the answer to my question? Is what I said right?

Mandie Campbell

Theoretically, those people might be in the country and those people theoretically might have access to a benefits system. What I cannot say to you—

Mr Bacon

I appreciate that you cannot guarantee. We are not speaking in the language of guarantees. The fact that you don’t know very much about these people at all means that we cannot issue guarantees. But it is possible, is it not, that the scenario that I painted is quite correct? Some money is being used from our taxpayers to support these people. We do not notice 50,000 people wandering round in the street, naked and hungry. So presumably something is happening somewhere. Either they are working illegally or the state is paying them benefits that they are not really entitled to. That is correct, isn’t it?

Mandie Campbell

Perhaps I can give you some reassurance on this point in relation to the action that we taking. Back in July, we ran a two-week multi-agency operation.

Mr Bacon

Hang on. You are giving me an example. A minute ago you started talking about theory. I am still looking for a clear answer to my question. That is right, isn’t it? They could be in the position that I described. We are using taxpayers’ money to support them in some way or another. That could be correct. You can’t say it is wrong. You cannot say that is not the case.

Mandie Campbell

It could be correct and we are working closely with the DWP to exchange information about people who are not in the country lawfully. In July we had an operation involving a number of agencies—including HMRC, the DWP and Trading Standards—where over a two-week period we mounted more than 160 multi-agency operations, resulting in the arrest of more than 500 individuals who were not in the country lawfully.

Mr Bacon

Are those 500 part of this 50,000 cohort?

Mandie Campbell

Not necessarily, but they could overlap into them. Within the terms of those multi-agency operations, of that 500, more than 400—

Mr Bacon

Hang on. You say “not necessarily”, and that is fair enough because they might fall into one of the other categories, but when the authorities arrested them and you compared the identities of the 500 people who had just been arrested with your list of 50,000 people of whom you do not know the whereabouts, were some of them the same?

Mandie Campbell

I don’t have the data here. That cohort is changing all the time as we find people. Within the terms of that operation, the DWP made about 400 searches against their information and initiated 33 investigations into various forms of benefit fraud. HMRC indentified just under £5 million of potential tax frauds. For ourselves, there were more than 500 people without permission to work who were working unlawfully.

Mr Bacon

So my theory and my surmise is more than a theory and a surmise: you cannot quite pin down the quantity of it, but I am correct in the scenario that I described. To some extent—you cannot say exactly how much—that is happening, yes?

Mandie Campbell

Inevitably people are working and claiming benefits without permission.

Mr Bacon

Right, okay. Figure 14 describes the 301,000 people in that last bar chart. We can see the dark blue migration refusal pool, which is the 175,000. Underneath that is this green sliver that represents the foreign national offenders living in the community. They are described in paragraph 2.16 as: “People who have served their sentences and are now awaiting deportation.” So am I correct in thinking that all the people in that green tranche fall into the category of people who have served their sentences and are now awaiting deportation.

Mandie Campbell

That is correct.

Mr Bacon

How many of them are there?

Mandie Campbell

There are just over 4,400 in total.

Mr Bacon

And they are all out of prison and living in the community.

Mandie Campbell

They are.

Mr Bacon

And they have no right to be in the UK—is that correct?

Mandie Campbell

That is correct.

Mr Bacon

And at the moment they are being put in accommodation somewhere—obviously they are not entitled to work.

Mandie Campbell

No, they are not given any accommodation.

Mr Bacon

So where do they live? Are they in ditches somewhere? Are they sofa-surfing?

Mandie Campbell

They are self-supporting.

Mr Bacon

They are self-supporting. Do you know where they are?

Mandie Campbell

Approximately 87% of those individuals are bailed by a court, and a further 6% are granted bail by the Department—so they are bailed to live at a specific address. A further small number are subject to mental health provisions and so on.

Mr Bacon

So because they are bailed to live at a specific address, your expectation is that, in most cases, that will be the address where you will find them.

Mandie Campbell

It will, because if they breach bail, they can be recalled. A number of those would be within the terms of their licence—

Mr Bacon

So the taxpayer is not supporting their stay at that address in any way whatever, as far as you are aware.

Mr Jackson

So they are not in bail hostels?

Louise Bladen

Can I just jump in? We have a Report on foreign national offenders coming out in October, and it contains a breakdown of the figures for FNOs released in the community, so you will have that in due course.

Mr Bacon

Okay. Are there any in bail hostels?

Mandie Campbell

I don’t have that information.

Mr Bacon

So it is possible that some of them are being supported by the taxpayer.

Mandie Campbell

It’s possible.

Mr Bacon

You just said that that was not the case, but at least some of them might be.

Mandie Campbell

They are not given benefits through the immigration and asylum provisions.

Mr Bacon

No, but I was talking about the cost of their accommodation somehow falling on the taxpayer somewhere.

Mr Jackson

Are they in social housing?

Mandie Campbell

They would not have an entitlement to social housing.

Mr Bacon

Right, okay. We will have to look at the NAO Report on that when it comes out. The figure you said was four thousand and what?

Mandie Campbell

It’s 4,400.

Mr Bacon

Since they have been in the community awaiting deportation, how many of those have committed further offences?

Mandie Campbell

I don’t have a specific figure, but if they commit more offences they will come back into the criminal justice system, so they would not feature in that number.

Mr Bacon

They would be removed from that number.

Mandie Campbell

Yes, because they would be back in the prison system.

Mr Jackson

So there is no risk assessment of the likelihood?

Mandie Campbell

There is, which is why the Department opposes bail in all the cases granted by the courts. In just under 90% the Department opposed bail.

Mr Jackson

Did you say you know where they are?

Mandie Campbell

We have an address as a condition of bail.

Mr Jackson

But it’s a reactive system. You are hoping they do not commit a crime to get back into the criminal justice system, which opens another can of worms as to where they go across the prison estate.

Mark Sedwill

Mr Jackson, we seek to remove as many as we possibly can. This will come out in a later Report, but we increased our removals of foreign national offenders last year from—

Mandie Campbell

4,700 to 5,097.

Mr Jackson

But if you do not have the details, you cannot risk-assess them, because you do not know where they are. They might be living near community facilities: schools, bail hostels, or private sector housing. 4,000 is a lot.

Mark Sedwill

There is a risk assessment of the individual by the courts when they consider bail. As Mandie says, we oppose bail in those cases. But in terms of prioritising those we are seeking to get out of the country to the countries where we can do this, we look at the hierarchy of risk from those prisoners to the wider community.

Chair

They should be deported.

Mr Jackson

Why aren’t they deported? You are the primary stakeholder. The minute they walk out of any penal institution in the United Kingdom, they cease to be the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice and they are your responsibility. So why are they not put on a ferry or a plane and got rid of straight away?

Mark Sedwill

We are doing more of those than we have ever done before. As we said last year, the numbers that we have been able to deport went up by another 10%. We have to have documents. The country of the national has to accept that they are from that country and take them back. We cannot simply put them on a plane. We have to document them before we send them back.

Chair

We are coming back to this. I want to move on to important expenditure issues, but there are two things about people disappearing that we have not quite bottomed out. We have bottomed out the 50,000, but then there are the 121,000. I cannot remember what you call them—“barrier to contact”, whatever that means. I wish we did not have such ghastly terms, but we’ve got them. Your answer to me earlier suggested that we may have lost contact with some of these people.

Mandie Campbell

All those individuals have been found to have submitted a fresh application.

Chair

They could submit an application and disappear.

Mark Sedwill

It goes to Mr Mitchell’s earlier point about the nature of British society and government. People can move.

Chair

So the 50,000—

Mark Sedwill

Individuals can move. That is the point. If somebody moves and does not notify anybody, they go off the grid. That is true of any member of society.

Chair

And they would eventually appear on your 50,000 list?

Mark Sedwill

This goes to the point of the Immigration Act. The new powers in the Immigration Act are making it much more difficult for people to disappear. There are new obligations on landlords and the removal of driving licences and so on. As the Immigration Act comes into real effect, people will really have to go off the grid. That was not the case before, and that is partly why this pool has built up over many years. The Act in a sense is the answer to Mr Jackson’s question about whether we are trying to take action to deal with it.

Chair

A partial answer, Mr Sedwill. One final category and then Austin wants to come in. It is more Border Force—I accept that—but on an FOI you talked about the Home Office data that showed a dramatic increase in the proportion of immigrants who vanish after being stopped during border checks for carrying false passports. The figures released by you show that 3,527 immigrants absconded at the border—I just can’t get this; except, again, I got an explanation before the hearing started—after failing border checks last year. Out of those 3,527, only 846 were found, which means that three out of four disappeared and they remain at large. While I accept it is not in one of your other directorates, you, Mr Sedwill, are responsible for a lot, and that seems to me such a basic thing. If you stop someone at the border, you do not then let them get through, escape and disappear into nothingness.

Mandie Campbell

I think there is a slight misunderstanding with those figures. Those figures, as I understand them, came from an FOI request that asked for data across a number of categories, including people who were in the country and had failed to comply with conditions applied in this country as well as some elsewhere. So it was not just border cases. This was a range—

Chair

But there are border cases in there.

Mandie Campbell

Well, if people come into the country at the border, are granted temporary admission because their case cannot be dealt with on that day and then they fail to comply—

Chair

Let me read again: they were stopped at border checks for carrying false passports or incorrect visas. Louise told me that it is quite easy to jump out of the pen and disappear. Somehow, that is what they do.

Louise Bladen

That was something we saw at Heathrow, where there was a pen, but I think there are other ways.

Mr Bacon

You saw it happening?

Louise Bladen

We saw the pen.

Mr Bacon

There was nobody in it. They had all left.

Chair

This is shocking. It is such a basic thing. It adds to the number of people who come in and disappear into the system. We are not talking about illegals who come in the back of lorries; these are people who are stopped at the border.

Mark Sedwill

We will have to come back to you because I don’t know the specifics.

Chair

It is an FOI from you.

Mark Sedwill

It may be, Madam Chair, but I was briefing up for this Report. It is a big system and I cannot remember every detail on it. It is important to recall, however, that we do not have the legal authority to indefinitely detain everybody that we encounter at the border who we think is in breach of one of our laws to enter the UK. Not all of them are escaping from detention; that isn’t, in all cases, part of our powers. They may have travelled, for example, on a false document and then claimed asylum at the border, in which case we then have to deal with their case.

Mr Jackson

We are not talking about that. We are talking about you saying, “You have a false document. Go into this holding pen and we will try to sort out a communication channel with you to find out what the true situation is,” and then they disappear. We are not talking about the early stages of a protracted legal process. We are talking about people who are placed somewhere and then disappear.

Mark Sedwill

Mr Jackson, those numbers are tiny and it might well be at the first stage of—

Mr Jackson

It is still not acceptable. When I go to John F. Kennedy airport and I get pulled over because my wife’s visa is slightly dodgy—which happened two years ago—I get kept in a holding pen for 1 hour and 40 minutes. There is no chance of me just saying, “I don’t fancy this; I’m just going to stroll out.” It just does not happen; it cannot happen. It would not happen in France and would hardly happen across Europe.