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Thursday 22 November 2012 |
By Alan Travis Home affairs editor
Senior UK Border Agency officials have been accused of misleading parliament after a damning report said they wrongly claimed they had dealt with a backlog of asylum and immigration claims - and that at one point more than 100,000 items of post about such cases remained unopened.
John Vine, the chief inspector of immigration, said UKBA's programme to deal with 147,000 outstanding asylum "legacy cases" - submitted before March 2007 - was far from resolved. The asylum seekers concerned have been left in limbo for an average of seven years.
The operation to deal with them was so inefficient and poorly managed that last winter more than 150 boxes of mail, including correspondence from applicants, lawyers and MPs, lay unopened in a room in Liverpool. At its peak, there was a backlog of more than 100,000 items of post, including 14,800 unopened recorded delivery letters and 13,600 unopened first and second class letters containing crucial information and documents about cases.
Vine identified inefficiency, poor customer service, and a lack of security and data checks that left often vulnerable asylum seekers facing further lengthy and distressing delays.
He also established that no security checks had been carried out routinely or consistently against either the police national computer or the anti-terrorist "warnings index" on the 124,000 cases that had been consigned to a "controlled archive". It is still not clear how many of them were properly dealt with.
Keith Vaz, chair of the Commons home affairs select committee, said: "This is a devastating report into the way in which the UKBA administrates the immigration system. The failure to properly check asylum cases means UKBA is in danger of overseeing an effective amnesty for many of them."
He said it appeared that senior UKBA officials had misled his committee about facts and figures. "Those same officials . . . have all received bonuses. On the basis of this report they should hand them back immediately," said Vaz.
The issue of these asylum legacy cases dates back to 2006 when the home secretary at the time, John Reid, declared the Home Office "not fit for purpose". He split off immigration and borders as a separate agency and promised that a backlog of 450,000 unresolved asylum claims would be cleared within five years, by July 2011.
But Vine's report shows that despite repeated claims by ministers that they were "getting a grip" on the system, it still remains in administrative chaos.
"I found that updates given by the agency to parliament in the summer of 2011, stating that the legacy of unresolved asylum cases was resolved, were inaccurate," said Vine. "On the evidence I found, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that cases were placed in the archive after only very minimal work in order to fulfil the pledge to conclude this work by the summer of 2011."
UKBA officials had assured MPs that the cases were only archived after "exhaustive checks" to trace the applicants.
"I found that the security checks on controlled archive cases had not been undertaken routinely or consistently since April 2011, and data matching with other departments in order to trace applicants had not begun until April this year. This was unacceptable." The inspection was carried out in May and June this year.
Vine said a change in a policy to give those affected only three years' permission to stay in Britain, rather than indefinite leave to remain, meant that many were badly affected by the delays. The oldest case the inspectors found had been waiting since June 1995 for a decision.
A Home Office spokesman said: "We have known for some time that UKBA is a troubled organisation with a poor record of delivery. Turning the agency around will take time, but we are making progress . . . UKBA has a transformation plan that will put the agency on a surer footing."
He added that the agency had reviewed all cases in the "controlled archive" to make sure anyone still in Britain was traced and, where appropriate, removed. A new performance and compliance unit had been created to ensure data published by the UKBA was robust and reliable.