Oral evidence: Managing and removing foreign national offenders, HC 708

Oral evidence, 5 November 2014.

Witnesses

Mark Sedwill, Permanent Secretary, Home Office, Mandie Campbell, Director General—Immigration Enforcement, Home Office, Michael Spurr, Chief Executive Officer, National Offender Management Service, and Steve Rodhouse, Deputy Assistant Commissioner—Specialist Crime and Operations, Metropolitan Police, gave evidence.

Chair

Welcome. I am sorry we are a little late in starting. We have a huge amount to get through this afternoon and there is a lot of interest from all members of the Committee. We will try to keep our questions short, and I will be really grateful for very short, direct answers. If I feel the session is going on to another subject, I will interrupt. If we can keep it short and direct, we might get through it in a decent time. Let us turn to paragraph 4 of the summary. The Report is agreed, isn’t it, Mr Sedwill?

Mark Sedwill

We cleared it, yes.

Chair

In the polite way that these Reports set it out, paragraph 4 states: “Overall progress since 2006...has been slow despite increased resources and tougher powers.” Why?

Mark Sedwill

It is one of the most complicated areas of Government activity. The Report acknowledges that. People of course seek to evade justice and seek to evade being deported or removed from the country at the end of their sentence. We can go through some of those issues. I agree that, over the eight years since 2006, progress has not been fast enough. We have made significant improvements to that in the last 18 months/two years since the National Security Council took an interest, and it has become a genuine across-Government strategy. Again, we can talk through the various elements of that, but I agree with the basic point you make that over the eight years we should have been in a better position than we are now.

Chair

In 2006, the Secretary of State lost his job over this issue on the back of a Report from this Committee and hard work from Richard Bacon. So you would think that it would not take until now for you to come and tell us that there is going to be jam tomorrow, particularly with 100 people working on it before, and now 900 working in the area—a ninefold increase in the number of people there. It seems as if it is impossible to deport anybody. That is what it feels like when you read the litany of failures that are set out in the Report, which is agreed with you.

Mark Sedwill

You have touched on two issues there. First, the increase in staff. Most of that increase came in the early years after the 2006 crisis. We can go through those numbers, or I can write to you with the detail if you wish.

Chair

From 100 to 900.

Mark Sedwill

But that is not an even increase. It was up, and it has essentially been level for the last few years. That is a secondary issue. You are right that we have increased the amount of resources. That has come at the same time. In the last few years there has been a huge increase in the number of appeals by foreign national offenders—a 28% increase in the number of appeals by FNOs—and that is part of the reason why we have sought to reduce their appeal rights. We have sought to reduce the number of appeal opportunities, enabling us in the most serious cases to remove them from the UK before they are able to lodge their appeal. That has only come into effect with the new Immigration Act 2014. The early data is promising, but of course it is very early data. Again, we can share some of that with you, but it covers only the last few months. The other point worth making is that the policy framework makes a big difference, so the upcoming vote on some of the European data sharing is an important element, too. But as I say, I think we have made progress. It is not just jam tomorrow; there is a certain amount of jam today. We have increased the number of removals in the last year by over 500, from 4,600 to over 5,000, and the reduction in appeal rights is already having an effect. We hope to see further improvements both from that and from co-operation with our European partners to try and prevent more criminals getting into the UK in the first place, and we hope to make it easier to remove them if they are here.

Chair

I think I need to put it on the record that that does not seem to be a sufficient explanation of the failure to improve performance, given the massive additional resources that have been invested by the taxpayer in what is a hugely important issue to all of us and all our constituents. There has been a 900-fold increase in resources and you are only now beginning to talk about future improvements. Let me just take you to a couple of figures and then I will pass the questioning to my colleagues. May I take you first to figure 14, which details the failed removals? I want to quarrel with your definitions, because you say that whether someone has an escort is outside your control. That is entirely within your control.

Mark Sedwill

May I pass over to Ms Campbell or Michael Spurr to answer that detailed point?

Chair

Quick and short.

Mandie Campbell

If you look down this list, you will see that some of the things that are deemed to be inside and outside of our control are interchangeable. There are things in the first block that we say are in our control, such as getting a travel document from an embassy, which we can apply for in plenty of time and not get. For others in the latter half of the table, one could argue that we could do more, which could be within our control. We might have booked the escort from our contracted company, but the escort may not show up because of other conflicting—

Chair

I bet you do not have a clause in your contract that ensures a sanction against the escort. I do not want to get deviated on this, but—

Mandie Campbell

There is a clause and we apply service credits and funds from the contract if that happens.

Chair

The reason why I quarrel with that, and with the fact that you cannot book the flights, which seems basic and within your control, is that if you were to put them in the top, you would find that more than half of the reasons why you fail to remove are within your control. They are in your control. It is not about people appealing, which you have tightened up. The reasons are within your control.

Mark Sedwill

The basic point is that we need to address everything on this page and not just focus on those that are within our control and—

Chair

Of course, but if they are in your control, since 2006, when Richard Bacon and others drew massive public attention to this problem, you should have ruddy well sorted them out. You might not have got everything 100%, but to see so much failure on the part of the Department is just awful.

Mark Sedwill

Madam Chairman, I am not going to defend that. There are administrative failures and gaps and difficulties in our system that we need to fix. That is absolutely correct.

Mr Bacon

The point of figure 14 is that it describes the conversation that you had with the National Audit Office when it was writing this Report, in which you said, “There are these things that are within our control, but you have to remember that there are these things that are outwith our control.” The numbers reflect that conversation. 523 of the cases relate to things that are within your control, in your view, but 930 cases involve things that are, in your view, outwith your control. The NAO has just reported what you said in that conversation. Yet the things that are in the list are apparently outside your control. “Nothing to do with us, NAO. It is nothing that we can control.” “Nothing to do with us” is a terribly tendentious phrase; I am sorry. But “Disruption”? The list describes disruption as “FNO became disruptive at place of detention”. Why can’t you control that? Why do you expect us to take this seriously after all this time?

Mark Sedwill

Ms Campbell has tried to answer the point. We are not saying that this is entirely binary in the way that you were just describing. We want to try to address all of these factors. Frankly, we should have done better on some of them, which is absolutely right. I will not defend the fact that we failed to book a flight when we should have done, which is quite clearly an administrative failure that should not happen. If you look at flights in the bottom half of the list, people can become disruptive and operators can refuse to transport them. That number includes both those categories. As Ms Campbell said, there is a degree here to which some categories overlap the two. My interest is in—

Mr Bacon

My point is that in the conversations with the NAO that led it to write this Report, you were obviously describing these things as being outside your control. Otherwise, the NAO would not have produced this chart in the manner that it did. It was a sort of “Hands off—we cannot do anything about it” kind of approach. That is what I cannot understand. Now you are saying something different.

Mark Sedwill

I don’t think that we are. Because of the kind of the conversation that we had with the NAO, they have been defined into two categories. That does not reflect how we handle them. Saying that something has been categorised here as outside our control does not mean that we are taking a hands-off approach, nor that we just regard this as something that we should forget.

Chair

By saying that it is outside your control, the attempt is to say, “It’s not our fault.” What this conversation demonstrates is that most of this is within your control and most of it you have failed to do. Some might be excusable, but the enormity of what you have failed to do is inexcusable. I think that is where we are at.

Mr Jackson

If you look at page 32 of the Report, you will see a detailed breakdown of some of the most egregious examples of your Department’s maladministration and incompetence. It says, “Unnecessary delays in starting cases”, which is a very important point. That rule could be changed; it seems to be prescriptive. It seems that, as a result of one judicial review, you have decided that the rule is that you do not look to prepare foreign national offenders for deportation because of an arbitrary date. The Report also says, “Inefficient FNO information gathering”, which is pretty damning. Under “Processing delays” it says that 38%—of a small sample, admittedly—“had avoidable processing delays, including 7 where the Department did not work on the case for an average of 76 days, and a further 6 cases where delays were caused by administrative errors.” All this is within your control. Who is line-managing this?

Mandie Campbell

Perhaps I could just come in on that. The 18 months issue was the result of a court judgment that said that it would not be appropriate to consider people for deportation until 18 months before the end of their sentence, because circumstances change.

Chair

When was that overturned?

Mandie Campbell

We brought in a new immigration Act that made deportation automatic from the beginning of 2008.

Chair

It was overturned in 2008?

Mandie Campbell

Yes.

Chair

We are now at the end of 2014.

Mr Jackson

So you have taken six years to completely ignore the new circumstances and you are relying on a judicial review.

Mandie Campbell

Not at all.

Mr Jackson

Well then, why haven’t you changed the rule? Why are you not flexible in order to facilitate the removal of foreign national offenders?

Mandie Campbell

We do consider for removal all foreign nationals who meet the criteria for deportation at the earliest point that we can. The Report reflects that 37% of them are now removed within their early release period. The 18-month period reflects a certain category of offenders who were sentenced before 2008. A very small set of offenders are within that block, but the Report does not go into all the detail.

Mr Jackson

No, it says: “The Department applies this to all cases, but only needs to do so for cases sentenced before 1 August 2008.” You have agreed the Report—are you saying that it is wrong?

Mandie Campbell

No, I am saying that since the new immigration Act we will automatically move to deport people from the date of that Act coming into force.

Mr Jackson

No, we are not talking about future actions; we are talking about what you are doing now. The Report that you have agreed says that you are applying this prescriptive rule, which arose from a judicial review, to all prisoners. Is that or is that not the case? Do you disagree with what is in the Report?

Mandie Campbell

I don’t disagree with the Report. The prior judgment was about the changes in circumstances that can take place during the course of a prison sentence, which mean that you should take the most relevant and up-to-date information into account when you make a decision to deport. We have maintained the 18-month period as a trigger point so that we know that any information after the 18 months and towards release of sentence will be as current as it can be. That is a proper basis on which to make a deportation decision. All that has been overtaken by the most recent legislation, which now means that when we make a decision to deport we give the individual a very short period in which to indicate any circumstances that would require us to consider not deporting them. Otherwise, we will proceed to a deportation.

Chair

Okay. I don’t think you have answered the question. All the evidence in the Report demonstrates that if you started everything earlier, you would be more successful in the policy intent, which is shared throughout this Committee Room. You are still deliberately not starting until 18 months before someone’s conviction comes to an end. Stewart Jackson was trying to get out of you why he has not had an answer. I want to move on to one other thing—

Stephen Phillips

Hold on, Chair. I can see Mr Sedwill shaking his head and I think Mr Jackson is entitled to an answer to his question.

Mark Sedwill

The point I wanted to clarify is that, if you look at what it says there, it is 18 months before their earliest removal date.

Chair

Yes.

Mark Sedwill

So, the point Ms Campbell is making is that, if you start a case a long period before the earliest date before we can actually remove them, circumstances might change and therefore you have to do the case again.

Mr Jackson

What circumstances?

Mark Sedwill

Their personal circumstances can change. That was essentially what the judge—

Mr Jackson

You have got them incarcerated in the prison estate. What circumstances change? They are not changing gender. They are not going on holiday. They are not getting a job. I mean, what circumstances change? That seems to be not acceptable as an answer, in terms of where you want to get to, which is to remove them as expeditiously as possible. I could ask you, en passant, why you send them a 50-question form to fill in and then don’t ensure that they all fill it in.

Mandie Campbell

That has been changed. That is one of the key changes that have been made with the new immigration Act. That no longer happens.

Chair

But why didn’t you—

Mr Bacon

Can we just stick with this question, because I am puzzled by this? What are the personal circumstances? While they are sitting in jail eating their porridge each morning—

Mr Jackson

Filling in their 50-question form.

Mr Bacon

Although we know that only 9% of prisoners have daily access to porridge. I got the statistics from your Department on an earlier occasion. What is it about their personal circumstances while they are sitting there each day that changes sufficiently—other than that they are getting a bit older—that would lead a court to deem that they have a greater right not to be deported than they did, as it were, the day before?

Mandie Campbell

This is a matter regarding specifically European nationals, because the offence itself is not sufficient. We have to apply a public policy test, under European legislation. Therefore, if prisoners are being rehabilitated within the prison system, we have to take into consideration the degree of rehabilitation that has taken place when we are applying the public policy test.

Mr Jackson

When has rehabilitation been tested in the European Court of Justice?

Mandie Campbell

I am not aware.

Mr Jackson

No, because you are gold-plating the free movement directive, that is why. You are putting the free movement directive and European legislation before taxpayers’ interests. Let’s be honest: that is what you are doing. I am not an expert, but I have read the free movement directive. There is nothing to say on public safety—public policy grounds—that they can be removed. If there is then a legal precedent set that you have erred in European law, that is a different matter, but you are gold-plating now and that is costing the taxpayers money. People who should be removed to places like Lithuania, Latvia and the Czech Republic are not going, because of your activities.

Mandie Campbell

This is about consideration of the case before the earliest release point. As I mentioned earlier, 37% of people are now removed within that period. There will be a group of prisoners who will never be able to be removed within that period because, for example, they are from countries where we do not have a relationship and we can’t get travel documents.

Mr Jackson

No, let’s go back on the European Union. You brought up the issue of European Union nationals. How can they sanction the behaviour of the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice from the European Union if no legal precedent has been established? You are making a value judgment as to rehabilitation. On what basis are you doing that? You should remove them and assume that you are complying with European law rather than saying, “We have to take longer because their circumstances have changed.” It is the typical, same old British civil service approach—gold-plating European law and European regulations.

Mandie Campbell

Perhaps I can answer that. Of a cohort of individuals who are in prison, about 45% of foreign national offenders are European nationals. Of the cohort of foreign offenders, two thirds of them now are sentenced to sentences of less than 12 months, so we are focusing our efforts on the people who have quite short sentences to make sure that they are not released from prison before the end of their release period. We are working from the release period back to make sure that we catch all the short-sentence offenders and that we can consider them before they are released. Of course, we want to move as far back in the system as possible, but that is not always possible when somebody has only had a 12-month prison sentence. So two thirds of foreign national offenders in prison now are there for sentences of 12 months or less.

Mr Bacon

What in their personal circumstances has changed that means that they are more liable not to be deported than hitherto? You babbled on—I am sorry, you talked about rehabilitation. Are you saying that their personal circumstances have changed in that they are somehow more able to be rehabilitated than they were before or what?

Mandie Campbell

That was the specific judgment that caused that 18-month threshold previously—it was the case of Chindamo—and it was in relation to a young man who had committed an offence.

Mr Bacon

Can you remind us of the offence you are talking about? Was it a serious offence?

Mandie Campbell

It was a serious offence.

Mr Bacon

What was it?

Mr Jackson

The murder of Philip Lawrence.

Mandie Campbell

It was a murder. It related to an individual who for most of his life had lived in the UK and we made a decision very early in the prison sentence to deport. The judgment said that we should wait until closer to the release date to take all the relevant circumstances into account before we made a decision to deport. That does not prevent us from taking that decision twice.

Mr Jackson

No. What you did was take was take one case and article 8 of the European convention on human rights, the right to a family life. In the, thank goodness, very rare circumstance of a 15-year-old stabbing to death a headmaster in Maida Vale in 1995, which was a tragic case, you are extrapolating that case for all European Union prisoners—

Mandie Campbell

No, we are not.

Mr Jackson

Well, that is what you are implying. From memory, that case was about the fact that he had no familial links in Italy, which is where he was likely to have been deported back to. That is a sui generis case and I respectfully suggest that you should not be applying that across the whole of the prison estate.

Mandie Campbell

The changes that we have made mean that it no longer takes us the length of time it did previously to move to a deportation decision. We have been maintaining an 18-month threshold just because that means that we have plenty of time to go through the deportation process before the person leaves their custodial sentence. With the new legislation that we now have in force, we can do it much closer to the earliest release period because there is no appeal to have to go through. We needed to do it before—

Chair

Right, Stephen, very quickly.

Stephen Phillips

In fact, you could always have done that for cases where sentencing had taken place after 1 August 2008. What the NAO found out, which is encapsulated in the first bullet point under paragraph 3.13, is that you had completely misread the case.

Mandie Campbell

No, we were using that as a trigger point in order to ensure that we had sufficient time to go through a deportation decision and an appeal process—

Stephen Phillips

Forgive me; you are not answering the question. Had you formed the view, off the back of the case to which you have referred, that it applied to all cases, and not only cases where sentencing had taken place before 1 August 2008? That is essentially what you have agreed to in this agreed conclusion. Is that right?

Mandie Campbell

It is the period we have been using, but the new—

Stephen Phillips

Wrongly, as a matter of law.

Mandie Campbell

No. The new Act makes the deportation decision automatic—sorry, the previous immigration Act of 2007 that came into force in 2008.

Chair

Ms Campbell, tell me this: because you delayed taking the action, how many foreign national offenders are there in prison today whose sentence has expired, and they should therefore be released, but you are keeping them in prison to try to deport them? You delayed starting, but how many today are sitting in our prisons whose sentence has expired whom you still wish to deport?

Mandie Campbell

Those are two different issues.

Chair

How many have you got?

Mandie Campbell

There are, I believe, about 700 individuals who are time-served who are still in our detention.

Chair

Seven hundred?

Mandie Campbell

I think it is 700. I will have to check.

Chair

Let’s get the figure.

Louise Bladen

I thought we said in the Report that there was a cohort of 5,600 people who had finished their sentences and, of that, about 1,400 were retained in the prison estate.

Chair

Is it 700 or 1,400? Just give us the figure.

Michael Spurr

It is not 1,400. That may include those who are held in immigration removal centres, as opposed to prisons. The Prison Service runs a number of immigration removal centres for the Home Office.

Chair

Okay.

Michael Spurr

The figure of 700 in actual prisons is right. That figure is reducing, and I could give you the actual number. I think it is closer—

Chair

What is the actual number, Mr Spurr?

Michael Spurr

I do not have it on me, but I think it has reduced to about 400 at the moment. It has been between 400 and 800 or 900 over the last 18 months and it is down to about 400-ish now.

Chair

Louise, what number do you have, which was agreed in the Report?

Louise Bladen

The number we have is 1,400 and that includes people in immigration detention centres, that is quite right, but they are still people who are pending deportation.

Mr Burrowes

Can I just ask, is that around 400 time-served? What is the longest period that they have been there after their time is served?

Mandie Campbell

I am afraid I don’t have that information.

Mr Burrowes

People have finished their sentence and they are waiting to be deported. Of that around 400, what is the maximum number of months or years that they have been in?

Mandie Campbell

I would have to write to you with that information. I don’t have it available.

Chair

When you looked at this in 2000 or whenever, Richard, there was a figure then. Lin Homer, who at that time had responsibility for this area, said that the Department was paying out money in compensation from people making claims because they were being held in prison beyond the end of their sentence and they challenged that. That is true, isn’t it?

Mandie Campbell

It is true, yes.

Chair

How much have we spent in compensation for keeping people in prison, because we have not managed to sort out their deportation, after their sentence has been completed?

Mandie Campbell

I don’t have data—

Chair

I asked you. I told you I was going to raise this.

Mandie Campbell

I don’t have data that are separated for foreign national offenders. The amount of money that was stated in answer to a parliamentary question last year was the total amount of compensation paid for all immigration cases. That would include people who are other immigration offenders or other cases of people who were detained, but were not necessarily foreign national offenders. It is not broken down, because it is kept by record by individual—

Chair

One of the problems is your failure— How much is that figure?

Mandie Campbell

The figure, I think, for 2013, was just over £5 million.

Chair

Is that £5 million just for compensation in 2013?

Mark Sedwill

That is across all immigration, not just—

Chair

How many people did that impact?

Mandie Campbell

That was about 130 cases, I think.

Chair

How much is that per person? Can somebody do the arithmetic, quick?

Mandie Campbell

Around £25,000 per person.

Mr Bacon

Can you just remind us why you are paying our constituents’ taxes to these people in what you call compensation? What is it compensation for? Can you just remind us?

Mandie Campbell

Our aim is to deport foreign prisoners directly from prison. Because of the situation—you will have seen examples in this Report—where people put in multiple appeals over multiple years, they frustrate our ability to remove them. We don’t want to release them into the communities, where they may be able to cause more harm.

Chair

Ms Campbell, you have just admitted that you don’t start the thing until 18 months before they are removed. If you started earlier you might be able to deal with some of these things.

Mr Bacon

Can we try to finish one point at once, because this is quite important. Can you explain your point again? You started talking about foreign national prisoners.

Mandie Campbell

That is right. We go through a deportation process. Often they do not make a claim until right at the point when they are going to be removed. They may submit a fresh claim, for example, for asylum. We then have to go through a series of examinations and appeals relating to that. At the end of that process, they may submit another appeal on the basis of a familial tie or another reason. During that period when they have finished their custodial sentence we seek to maintain them in detention to protect the public from harm. Also, in among that process, it may be that they do not have a travel document and we need to go through a process of getting one. If they are non-compliant, that can be a very difficult and long process as well.

Mr Bacon

Right. Going back to my question about why you are paying them our constituents’ taxes in what you call compensation, what is it that you are compensating them for?

Mandie Campbell

Well, the courts have found, I believe, in relation to foreign prisoners that their detention was unlawful in certain circumstances. It can be that they have been detained and for a portion of their detention—often it is not the entirety of the detention—at some point consideration wasn’t given for a particular aspect of a claim made at that particular point. We can be held liable for that.

Mr Burrowes

That is why the question about time served is important.

Mr Jackson

What is the legal case that you pray in aid in order to give effect to this policy?

Mandie Campbell

I am sorry—

Mr Jackson

What is the legal case—what is the legal precedent and when was it—that you use as the basis to put this policy forward to facilitate the payment of so-called compensation?

Mandie Campbell

The Department does not award compensation. This is a claim made to the court—

Mr Jackson

No, but you follow procedures based on a legal case. You will have had legal advice in either the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office or both as to your legal duties and responsibilities in respect of those prisoners who, it seems to me, are facilitating the delays themselves, and our taxpayers—our constituents—are paying the cost of that. What is the legal case? If you have not got that, will you write to us on it?

Mandie Campbell

I can write to you. We apply the legislation that is in force. More than 30,000 people go through our detention estate every year; the vast majority of them—

Mr Burrowes

You referred to claims for compensation.

Mark Sedwill

Sorry. Correct me if I get this wrong, Mandie, but essentially this is when we have sought to use either deportation or removal powers in order to get somebody out of the country, they have appealed time and time again and the court has concluded that we have detained them for at least a proportion of that detention—which could just be detention under immigration powers, not as part of the criminal sentence—unlawfully. It has gone beyond what—

Mr Bacon

So the compensation is awarded case by case?

Mandie Campbell

Yes.

Mr Bacon

But presumably their legal representatives are praying in aid a precedent, which the court agrees with. Then you lose, they win and you pay them compensation. What precedent are they applying?

Mark Sedwill

We will have to write to you—

Mr Bacon

I am surprised. You are busy spending £5 million a year on this, so it does not seem to me unreasonable that you would know how and why you are doing that.

Mark Sedwill

If we had a legal adviser here, they would be able to quote the case. The point, however, is that it is the courts who are making those awards, not us.

Mr Jackson

Have you appealed the case on which you are basing your policy?

Mark Sedwill

We fight just about every case we can, particularly these cases, and we lose some of them.

Chair

Why do you not know how many of those cases relate to foreign national offenders?

Mark Sedwill

I was forewarned that you would raise this, just earlier today or late yesterday. I have asked the Department to try to get at that information for you—

Chair

Why haven’t they got it?

Mark Sedwill

Because we collect it across all the immigration casework and some people fall into more than one category. I do not want to come to you with a number that we later have to correct. We will try to give you that.

Chair

Mr Sedwill, the reason everyone is getting very uptight on this side of the table is that the deportation of this group of people, who have actually committed criminal offences and end up in our jails, is a huge priority. If you have offended our laws, we think that you should be pushed out. For you not even to have those very basic statistics to be able to account for your action is deeply frustrating and, I think, demonstrates why you are not able to make greater progress on the issue in its totality.

Mark Sedwill

Madam Chairman, we want to get them out, too. Everyone—

Chair

You have got to convince us of that.

Mark Sedwill

I am sorry, Madam Chairman, but just let me make this point. The people in the Home Office across the immigration and law enforcement systems get out of bed because they believe in trying to keep our public safe—that is what they do it for. We want to get these people out, too. That is why we on the professional side have been pressing for years—

Chair

You have got 900 people—

Mark Sedwill

Let me finish the point; it is only half a sentence. We have been pressing for years to get the number of appeal rights reduced, because people gaming the system, using appeals at the last minute to prolong the process, is genuinely beyond our control.

Chair

2006?

Mark Sedwill

That is something that is deeply frustrating to all the caseworkers involved.

Mr Burrowes

What you would accept are in your control are data and management of information in relation to FNOs. How would you characterise those data?

Mark Sedwill

Our management information as a whole is incomplete. It is poor in places and one of the priorities is to try to improve it to enable us to take better-informed decisions.

Mr Burrowes

And your data as well?

Mark Sedwill

Yes, that is what I meant.

Mr Burrowes

So it is not robust?

Mark Sedwill

All of it is not robust, but our data as a whole are not where they need to be, nor is all the management information we gain from them. I accept that point entirely. It is a priority for us to improve it.

Meg Hillier

I was in the Home Office dealing with some of these issues back in 2007 to 2010. This was a priority then. There was a whole strand of work about information exchange between different parts of Government. You are sitting here now saying, “Yes, it’s a problem,” but it is now 2014. I am very concerned about how little progress has been made from then to now. You have just admitted that, Mr Sedwill.

Mark Sedwill

In broad terms, I accept that point. When I came to the Home Office and was looking at management innovation generally across the whole border, immigration and citizenship system, it was weak. We have improved it a great deal in the last 18 months, but information about older cases is particularly incomplete.

Mr Burrowes

This is not just a broader issue—it is specific. In relation to telling us how many FNOs have been released without being considered for deportation, the criticism came in 2006. You are still unable to provide us with accurate, audited data. Is that true?

Mandie Campbell

Perhaps I could answer that. We have data that we can rely on from 2009. From 2012, we have been regularly reporting to the Home Affairs Committee with that data. We did provide incorrect data to the National Audit Office at the early stage of the gathering of this Report.

Chair

Why?

Mandie Campbell

The information had not gone through a sufficiently robust clearance process.

Chair

What does that mean? Someone got the figures wrong?

Mandie Campbell

All this information has to be drawn from a very—

Mr Bacon

This is what I find absolutely incredible. The Home Affairs Committee looked at this after we looked at it in 2006—this was eight years ago—and they said: “The Home Office has not captured centrally the key data it needs to manage the foreign national prisoner population from the point of sentence to deportation or release.” Eight years later, we look at this Report from the National Audit Office and it talks about various recommendations. One of its final recommendations—recommendation e—states: “In the longer term, the departments need to work together to develop accurate management information”. Why should we take you seriously?

Mandie Campbell

Shall I go back?

Mr Bacon

I want you to tell me why we should take you seriously. What evidence have you produced, over the last decade, that indicates that we should take you seriously? Eight years ago, the Home Affairs Committee said: “For years, the Home Office has failed to get to grips with the increasing number of foreign national prisoners”. The key point then was capturing the data centrally. It is now one of your longer-term aims. Why should we take you seriously?

Mr Burrowes

We have a position now where you are unable to reconcile the data with the data provided to the Home Affairs Committee. That does not inspire any confidence at all.

Mandie Campbell

Perhaps I could explain what happened.

Mr Bacon

I want to know why we should take you seriously. I really do.

Mandie Campbell

The data provided was drawn from a casework system. The information was drawn off by statisticians. It was not verified by caseworkers with an understanding, at that time, of the individual cases. Some of the cases which were classified as “released without consideration” were released without a deportation decision having been made, but they were in our consideration process. The figures were wrong; we admitted to that when we did the factual accuracy check and we provided the correct data. That data reconciles with the data that we have been providing to the Home Affairs Committee since 2012. The important thing that I would like to note about those “released without consideration” figures is that the vast majority of those 151 cases have been located. Only 10 individuals have not been traced.

Mr Burrowes

Is that the up-to-date figure?

Mandie Campbell

That is the up-to-date figure.

Mr Jackson

Over what period is that?

Mandie Campbell

That is from 2009. The vast majority of those were released within the first couple of years. The number has been decreasing rapidly year on year, and 15 were released last year without consideration. Over the last three years, only one individual still remains at large as an absconder without having been in contact with us.

Mr Burrowes

You have not reported the number that have been traced but you have subsequently lost contact with. You have not reported that number.

Mandie Campbell

Those are reported to the Home Affairs Committee.

Chris Heaton-Harris

Sorry, what was that one person’s conviction?

Mandie Campbell

I don’t have that data with me. I can write to you.

Chair

I think we will have to go back to those figures because they float. Louise?

Louise Bladen

I just wanted to clarify on the reconciliation of the 151 cases to the Home Affairs Committee reporting data. We tried to do that reconciliation when we found out that there was the new number. We could not do that; we asked for that reconciliation but we have not had it. We have not audited that and we have not seen the reconciliation.

Chair

So you don’t accept the figure of 151?

Louise Bladen

We don’t know.

Chair

You don’t accept it because it has not been audited. This is yet another feature that happens all too often here—figures that are uncomfortable. From what you said in your answer to David Burrowes, I think you did a slight redefinition of the category, which brought the figure down. That suited you politically but does not give us a real figure. It has not been audited so we cannot take it seriously.

Mr Burrowes

Tell us about those 10 people whose whereabouts we haven’t got a clue about.

Mandie Campbell

I haven’t got a list of their individual offences.

Mr Jackson

I have a ministerial briefing by the Home Office from 2011 with figures from March 2009 to October 2011 on non-detained time-served foreign national prisoners reoffending: 60 were arrested for drugs-related incidents, 27 for violent crime, 64 for theft, 17 for immigration offences, 14 for sexual offences, 3 for murder, 3 for kidnapping, and 19 for motoring offences. That was prepared for Ministers. You will not know where that information came from but it is a briefing from the Home Office. How were you able to collect that information? What database did you use to collate that to give to Ministers?

Mandie Campbell

I am afraid that I was not in this role at the time and I do not know where that data has come from. If you share the data, I can find that out and write to you.

Mr Jackson

I will. I will share it with the Committee.

Mark Sedwill

It might be a different cohort from the specific group who are released without consideration. I did not quite hear what you first—

Mr Jackson

Non-detained time-served foreign national prisoners who reoffended.

Mark Sedwill

Yes.

Mr Jackson

In the period March 2009 to October 2011.

Mark Sedwill

So it is a different cohort.

Chair

On top of?

Chris Heaton-Harris

It will be an additional cohort, won’t it?

Chair

The fact that we cannot understand the figures, the NAO cannot get the figures and you change your figures shows that nobody knows what the hell the figures are.

Mr Jackson

This is the public safety and criminal justice context in which the lack of data is so important.

Meg Hillier

Chair, may I chip in because it is on the point? We saw a Secretary of State—a big rock of Government—lose his job in 2006. Work was put in to try to improve data and there has been lots of work across Departments to try to do better data sharing, but the Home Office’s basic figures are still this complicated and bad. Mr Sedwill, you talked about the past 18 months as if none of the rest of it is your responsibility. What do you need to do, as it is still this bad, to get it to a point where anybody—the Home Affairs Committee, us, or the public—can have confidence in the figures? It is really confusing and it does not give me confidence that you are in control.

Mark Sedwill

All elements, including the data, are better than they were. I have acknowledged that, as the NAO said, management of information data remains an issue for us.

Meg Hillier

So what is the plan to improve it?

Mark Sedwill

That is partly because we are dealing with data across multiple systems in different departments. We have had IT problems in hooking all of that together. It is difficult to draw data from the individual caseworking systems. As we introduce new and more joined-up IT, we will get more robust data. A reason we have had in the past—for example, we found that we were having to correct data going to the Home Affairs Committee, which you will recall happened far too often—was that we did not have, drawing from the caseworking system, automatic summaries of data.

Meg Hillier

I get that. Sorry, I do want to cut you short because we have heard that. Back in 2007 when I became a Minister in the Home Office, we were looking at this in the data sharing. We are now in 2014 and you are still talking about the same problems. I am dismayed that there has been so little process. If the systems still are not talking to each other, how many more seven-year periods before they will be? What has been the stoppage in the system that has prevented that new IT or whatever it is from being in place?

Mark Sedwill

One of the problems we had was the immigration caseworking system. One of the purposes of that system was to address precisely this problem. The immigration caseworking system did not work, as you know. We talked about it last time. We had had to cease that programme and we have replaced it with a new one. Getting better data and management information has been one of my priorities since I took this job, and I now have much better data across the entire system than was available when I arrived. That is better than it was back in 2006, but it is not where it needs to be yet.

Meg Hillier

How long?

Mark Sedwill

We are still in a position where we measure a lot of inputs. We are not measuring enough, in a sophisticated enough way, some of the impacts of our—

Stephen Phillips

You do not know the offences for which the 10 were convicted that you have talked about. You have not come here with that information today. Could you please write to the Committee identifying the offences that they committed and the length of custodial sentence that was imposed? Mark Sedwill indicated assent. Mandie Campbell indicated assent.

Stephen Phillips

Since you have also said today that you can reconcile the incorrect data that was given to the Home Affairs Committee with the data that was given to the NAO, but the NAO have made it very clear that you have made no attempt whatsoever to approach them to audit that data, could you also write to the NAO to make sure that that auditing exercise is carried out, so that we can have some confidence in your assertion that a mistake was made in collating the data for the Home Affairs Committee? Will you undertake to do that?

Mandie Campbell

I will.

Mr Burrowes

So this is the full data—this is the full picture?

Chair

Of what, David?

Mandie Campbell

Of individuals released without being considered.

Mr Burrowes

And those whom you can and cannot trace.

Mandie Campbell

And those that we have and have not traced. That is the full data.

Chair

Let us assume that 151, not 250, is the right figure. Out of those 150, can you tell us how many are sex offenders, how many are terrorists and how many have been convicted of violent crimes?

Mandie Campbell

I haven’t got that breakdown of data in front of me, but I can write to the Committee.

Mr Bacon

Hang on. You haven’t got it here, but do you know it?

Mandie Campbell

Yes.

Mr Bacon

You know the offences that all 151 have committed.

Chair

Perhaps someone behind you can tell us before the end of the session.

Mark Sedwill

We will see if we can get it. My recollection from trying to brief myself for this, and we will correct it if it is wrong, is that of the 10, there is one very serious offender. He was a violent offender. I think that kind of proportion is the same elsewhere, but we will see if we can get you the correct figures by the end of the session. If not, we will write to you.

Chair

Before the end of the session today. I hate things coming—

Mr Bacon

You are saying that of the 151, you reckon 10% are serious offenders?

Mark Sedwill

I would not want to jump to that conclusion.

Mr Bacon

I am quite surprised, in light of the history of this, that you have not got the data at your fingertips. I have got the list from 2006 of what they had done, and it was murder, kidnap, arson, rape—you name it. I would have thought that if you were preparing for this Committee, you would have brought that information with you, but you are saying that you didn’t. Is that correct?

Chair

They are going to have it before the end of the session. I have told the people behind that I want it before the end of the session.

Mark Sedwill

We will try to have it before the end of the session.

Mr Bacon

I have one very closely related question. Of the one in six foreign national offenders living in the community that had absconded at the end of March 2014, presumably they are a subset of the 4,200 living in the community pending removal in the line above—this is on page 4 of the report. Is that correct?

Chair

Yes.

Mr Bacon

Yes? This is the penultimate and the antepenultimate lines of the table of key facts. There are 4,200 foreign national offenders, and the one in six who have absconded are a subset of the 4,200. Is that right?

Mandie Campbell

I am sorry; one of my colleagues just passed me the figure to answer your last question, so I was just going to check that before—

Chair

Well, let’s have the figure answering the last question. That is quite helpful.

Mr Bacon

All right. If you have got that data, let’s have it now.

Mandie Campbell

Of the 10 that we have not been able to locate—

Mr Bacon

I am actually talking about the 151.

Mandie Campbell

Yes. Of the 151, 141 are back in contact.

Mr Bacon

No, I want to know the offences that all 151 have committed.

Mandie Campbell

No, I haven’t got—

Chair

You will have before the end of the hearing.

Stephen Phillips

Ms Campbell, you can’t have a list of the 151.

Chair

No, they will have.

Mandie Campbell

We categorise them, for the purposes of this, into the most serious offences, which are things like murder and rape; more serious—other violent offences and things of that nature—and then other cases: traffic and so on. Of the 10, none is in the most serious category, one individual is in the more serious category—so a violent offence—and the other nine in other offences.

Stephen Phillips

Those in the more serious offence category will be things like actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm.

Mandie Campbell

It could be, yes.

Mr Bacon

My question was actually about the 151, not the 10. I was expecting you not to list them one by one, but to do a categorisation, as you did in 2006. Do you have available, or can you have available by the end of today—before the end of our hearing—the categorisation of the 151?

Mandie Campbell

I think I may have that too. I just need to add up a number of columns. [Interruption.] So, of the total of 151, there are two in the most serious category—

Chair

Which is what? Murders?

Mandie Campbell

That’s sexual assaults. 21 are in the more serious category—so, other violence. The remainder are in the other category. But I think it is important to note that 141 were back in control. Of those, I believe 68 have been removed from the country anyway, and 25—

Sir Amyas Morse

None of it audited.

Chair

None of it audited. I accept that.

Mr Burrowes

Moving on to the data on costs, is all your work on FNOs value for money?

Mandie Campbell

The figures given in this Report look at the total cost across the criminal justice system—

Mr Burrowes

Is it yes or no? Mr Sedwill, you should probably answer this. It sounds like it’s difficult.

Mark Sedwill

In a sense it is, because there is a political judgment about—

Mr Burrowes

No, no.

Mark Sedwill

There is, Mr Burrowes. There is a political judgment—

Mr Burrowes

It is not; it is an issue of costs and data. Independent of policy, you can come to a fundamental judgment, in your position as permanent secretary, as to whether all your work on FNOs is value for money.

Mark Sedwill

We can clearly improve value for money—

Mr Burrowes

Is it value for money?

Mark Sedwill

My point, Mr Burrowes, is I can’t give you a binary answer.

Mr Burrowes

Isn’t the problem that you don’t know, because you don’t how much it costs?

Mark Sedwill

We do know how much it costs. We have the NAO estimate here of £850 million—

Mr Burrowes

But what about your own estimate, for you to come to a judgment? The NAO has given us a clear judgment, but before we had the NAO Report, there were no cost data for us to reach a reasonable judgment as to whether all this work on FNOs, which is considerable and getting close to £1 billion, is value for money.

Mark Sedwill

Mr Burrowes, let me try and answer that. The total cost the NAO has estimated is £850 million. The total cost for an equivalent—

Mr Burrowes

What is your estimate?

Mark Sedwill

Ours is £97 million.

Chair

£97 million to £850 million?

Mark Sedwill

Yes. It’s in the Report. The total cost estimated by the NAO is £850 million. The total cost of managing an equivalent number of British prisoners is £750 million, so the additional cost of foreign criminals in the system is about £100 million. The Home Office costs, for which I am directly responsible, are £97 million. All of that is in the Report.

Chair

That’s the administrative cost?

Mr Burrowes

But the Report says that there is not the robust data to enable an estimate to take place.

Mark Sedwill

Mr Burrowes, I agree we don’t have robust cost data, for example, to judge at the margin—I think the Report suggests this—whether one particular intervention, which might cost a certain amount of money, is more effective and better value for money than another intervention. But the overall approach we have been mandated to take by Ministers is to use all the interventions we can to maximise the number of FNOs removed from the country and to minimise the number who get in in the first place.

Mr Burrowes

Yes, I understand that there has been a tenfold increase in resources in terms of people on the job, but the issue is whether this is value for money. How can you reasonably come to a judgment—you did seem to struggle—about value for money on all the work on FNOs without robust cost data?

Mark Sedwill

You are right; that’s my point. I can’t come to a judgment. Value-for-money judgments are usually about different choices you make. In the end, there needs to be a political judgment about where FNOs sit in the priority. FNOs are more expensive per head than, for example, an immigration offender. So on one very basic definition of value for money, you would say you would improve value for money—if all you care about is numbers of removals—by removing lots of low-harm people and not high-harm people. But there is a separate judgment, which is essentially one that Ministers make, about the priorities between different categories of people we want to remove from the country.

Mr Burrowes

The problem you have is that you do not even have the relevant performance information; 2.18—you do not actually know whether the resources you are throwing into dedicated FNO prisons are really bringing about the results you wanted, and you cannot compare that.

Mark Sedwill

I think that is the point I was making. At the risk of violently agreeing, the point I was making was that we do not have good enough cost data at the margin to make a judgment as to just the one technique—

Mr Burrowes

To go to 2.18, it says here, “The Department told us that this approach increases FNO removals. However, we could not validate this because neither the Department nor the Agency collect relevant performance information.” How can you, without relevant performance information, come to a judgment that what you are doing is delivering value for money?

Mark Sedwill

What we are trying to do, Mr Burrowes, is deal with the problem—so remove the highest number of FNOs we can, and stop as many as we can getting into the country in the first place. We are using a whole range of different techniques and, you are correct, we do not have robust cost data to make a judgment on cost grounds as to which techniques are more cost-effective than others.

Sir Amyas Morse

2.18 is about people who are in prison, isn’t it?

Mr Burrowes

So in terms of people in prison, a situation where you have put a lot of resources into dedicated FNO prisons, we are not sure exactly, without the relevant performance information, the true outcome of that input of taxpayers’ money. On the other hand, let us go to Bristol prison; how many immigration officers are at Bristol prison?

Mandie Campbell

I don’t know how many, in Bristol.

Mr Burrowes

I will tell you: there are none. And how many of the percentage of the prison population are FNOs? 20%. So somewhere along the line a judgment has been made as to where resources go and do not go. Is that based on any relevant performance indication that can enable us or you to make a reasonable decision on behalf of taxpayers, that is value for money?

Mandie Campbell

The system we have in place is we have two FNO-only prisons—

Mr Burrowes

We know. It is in there.

Mandie Campbell

But we did provide information to the National Audit Office to show that in those prisons, whereas across the piece on average 37% of offenders are removed within their early release period—

Chair

Answer the question.

Mandie Campbell

I am. In FNO-only prisons 86% of individuals are removed within that early release—

Louise Bladen

We have never seen that figure of 86%.

Mr Burrowes

So this information is not being provided to—we have to base ourselves on this cleared, agreed Report. The additional information you are providing is after the event. On the basis of this, there is not the relevant performance information for there to be a clear judgment, which is the responsibility of this Committee, on whether there is value for money.

Mandie Campbell

As I said, our information—and we shared the information at the time that all the evidence was being gathered—is that 86% are removed within the early release period.

Chair

I have to say, because it will not go in the record, the NAO are shaking their head as to whether the information was shared.

Mandie Campbell

With regard to Bristol—

Mr Burrowes

Just in terms of the information, you are sharing it after the event of the NAO Report. The concern is that decisions are made before we get to this being exposed in a Report. You are making decisions about taxpayers’ money—where the resources go and the outcomes. There is not the confidence that there is the relevant performance information that can lead you to make a clear judgment on behalf of taxpayers. For example, you have left Bristol without any immigration officers. In fact, I understand visits there led to—FNOs there have never had any contact with anyone from immigration for a long time.

Mandie Campbell

We have a model that has some FNO-only prisons, some hub prisons where we have a permanent presence of immigration officers, and we have eight of those, and then there are 18 spoke prisons, which the officers from the hub prisons go out to visit on a regular basis—it can be monthly, it can be quarterly, based on the percentage of foreign prison population. Outside of that, we have local arrangements in place with the National Offender Management Service and local enforcement offices to either provide information through colleagues in the National Offender Management Service or to have visiting officers from local enforcement offices. We do not have people in every prison where there are foreign national offenders around the country.

Chris Heaton-Harris

Just to come in on the back of Mr Burrowes’s questions, Mr Sedwill, you said earlier that all elements of data are better—much better data than when you arrived. When did you arrive? Sorry, I can’t remember.

Mark Sedwill

February last year.

Chris Heaton-Harris

Based on the conversation we have just had, how bad was it?

Mark Sedwill

Well, data was very poor across the whole border and immigration system, and that was partly why we found ourselves correcting large amounts of data that we released publically. One of our priorities has been to try to get that into better order.

Chris Heaton-Harris

That wasn’t the point of my question, but, to use a Margaret word, it sounds shocking; it really does. It’s frightening, in fact, for my constituents in many ways, but let’s go—

Stephen Phillips

Why didn’t you answer that, Mr Sedwill?

Mark Sedwill

Sorry, I thought I had.

Stephen Phillips

Did you find the incompetence in the collection and capture and robustness of the data shocking?

Mark Sedwill

Sorry, that wasn’t quite what Mr Heaton-Harris asked.

Stephen Phillips

No, it’s what I’m asking.