The protection of Britain’s borders and airports is “neither effective nor efficient”, the former immigration inspector has warned, in a series of reports in which he said the Home Office “must do better”.
At an inspection of Heathrow, Stansted and Luton airports, David Neal found that border posts were left unmanned, staff were distracted and guidance was ignored.
Poor communication posed a risk to both the security of the borders and officer safety, he said.
In a report on the use of hotels for asylum seekers, he pointed to a “lack of grip and poor leadership”, with “basic bread and butter checks” in several areas not being completed.
The Government published 13 reports on Thursday, having sacked Mr Neal for “breaching the terms of his appointment” by disclosing “unauthorised” information on border security to the media.
The former chief inspector of borders and immigration had broken ranks to say the department was suppressing 15 reports that exposed security risks. He claimed he was fired “for doing my job” of unveiling “inconvenient” truths about the failings of the system.
After inspecting airport e-gates, he said: “I believe the protection of the border is neither effective nor efficient.”
‘Home Office must do better’
In another report, he wrote there was a “lack of grip and poor leadership in a critical area of business”, saying: “The Home Office must do better.”
The reports come as Rishi Sunak faces a battle to tackle illegal migration, having warned a failure to take action would “destroy the public’s faith” in politicians.
He made “stopping the boats” one of his priorities as Prime Minister, though a poll earlier this year found that three-quarters of voters believe the pledge has gone badly.
New statistics published on Thursday provided a small glimmer of good news, showing the number of people arriving through irregular means – such as on a small boat or stowed in the back of a lorry – has fallen by a third since 2022, to 36,704.
But the total is still significantly higher than it was before the Covid pandemic, with the challenge far from over.
In his report on the three London airports, Mr Neal found posts were unmanned and staff were distracted by “a lack of focus and poor infrastructure”, while Home Office guidance calling for at least two roving officers to 10 or more gates was not followed at all.
In one case, inspectors saw the exit doors on one gate become stuck open, creating an opportunity for a passenger to pass through without checks. This was quickly rectified by a monitoring officer.
A lack of equipment also hindered effective communication, increasing the risk both to officers’ “personal safety” and the “security of the border”.
Officials ‘would put a positive gloss on failure’
At Stansted, Mr Neal reported that staff were so short on radios they were forced to shout messages to each other within earshot of passengers, leading to potential security risks.
In his annual report, covering April 2022 to March 2023, Mr Neal accused the Home Office of a “culture of defensiveness”, claiming he had experienced “significant pushback” while drafting inspection reports, including responses which “have gone way beyond” just checking factual accuracy.
He said officials would be happy to put a “positive gloss” on failures if left to their own devices.
“To put it bluntly, if the Home Office does not want to change, it will not,” he said.
“The only meaningful way of determining whether a recommendation has been delivered is to review it as part of another inspection.”
In a separate report, the former inspector found that customs channels at East Midlands Airport were also left unmanned, with no officers witnessed intercepting passengers.
He warned a “lack of anti-smuggling capability” at Britain’s airports posed a “major concern” – raising questions as to whether the border was “secure from a goods perspective”.
At hotels for asylum seekers, Mr Neal found there was a reliance on private contractors to self-report that DBS checks were in place, with only “periodic spot checks” by the Home Office – which was “really not good enough”.
He pointed to at least 467 cases of children going missing from hotels since 2021, with 147 still unaccounted for as of September last year.
Mr Neal added that there was “no evidence” of a Home Office strategy to end hotel use.
Elsewhere, he pointed to recruitment issues, inadequate training, decision-makers described as “frightening”, and poor quality decisions driving up appeals.
He also noted that some 7,500 asylum seekers had been effectively left in “indefinite limbo” because they were considered for the Government’s Rwanda scheme but couldn’t be sent, with some waiting for decisions for two years.
While the Home Office predicted that it could remove 300 asylum seekers per year under the “inadmissibility process” in the Nationality and Borders Act, only two had been sent away as of October last year, he added.
Mr Neal said: “I think it’s a real positive that these reports have been published. I think it bodes well that the Home Secretary has gripped his officials in getting these reports published so quickly, it’s only a week since I was sacked.
“But I think there are real questions to be asked about why it [took] the sacking of a public official to expose what should be routine.”
The Home Office said it had “delivered” on a promise to publish all overdue reports as soon as possible, adding: “The publication of these reports that scrutinise the activity of the Home Office and make recommendations for improvement is in and of itself a demonstration of transparency and acceptance of independent scrutiny.”
The two final reports will be published “in the established eight-week period” and the process of hiring a replacement watchdog was “already under way”, a spokesman said.
Meanwhile, the Information Commissioner said the Home Office broke the law by forcing migrants to wear electronic tags.
John Edwards said a pilot scheme to place ankle tags on up to 600 migrants on immigration bail to track their location breached UK data protection law.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the Home Office had failed to sufficiently assess the risks posed by the electronic monitoring of people, including the privacy concerns around the continuous collection of a person’s location.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We recognise that independent scrutiny, such as that provided by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), plays an important role in ensuring we have a well-functioning immigration system.
“We take ICIBI reports very seriously and work has been underway to implement the recommendations in these reports since we received them, regardless of the fact they haven’t been published.
“This has included improvements to how we manage information on ePassport gates so that faults are better identified and fixed and improving training materials for asylum casework teams.”
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