May takes axe to civil servants at failed immigration agency

The UKBA is to be divided into an immigration and visa service and an immigration law enforcement organisation in the wake of a series of damning reports and inspections.

Theresa May said the UKBA in its current form “struggles with the volume of its casework”.

She told the House of Commons: “The Agency has been a troubled organisation since it was formed in 2008 and its performance is not good enough.

“In truth the Agency was not set up to absorb the level of mass immigration that we saw under the last Government.

“This meant the Agency has never had the space to modernise its structures and systems and get on top of its workload.”

The announcement comes after the Home Affairs Select Committee warned that it would take the UKBA 24 years to clear a backlog the size of the population of Iceland of asylum and immigration cases at the UKBA.

The committee also launched a scathing attack on former UKBA chief Lin Homer, now the head of Britain’s tax office, for her “catastrophic leadership failure” when she was in charge of the country’s border controls.

Mrs May also said the new entities will not have “agency” status and therefore will sit in the Home Office, reporting to ministers.

She said: “UKBA was given agency status in order to keep its work at an arm’s length from ministers. That was wrong. It created a closed, secretive and defensive culture.”

The Home Secretary said a board would be formed to oversee all the organisations in the immigration system - immigration policy, the Passport Service, Border Force and the two new entities.

Mrs May said: “Since 2010 the Government has been getting to grips with the chaotic immigration system we inherited.

“We have introduced a limit on economic migration from outside the EU, cut out abuse of student visas and reformed family visas. As a result net migration is down by a third.”

She went on: “But the performance of what remains of UKBA is still not good enough. The Agency struggles with the volume of its casework, which has led to historical backlogs running into the hundreds of thousands.

“The number of illegal immigrants removed does not keep up with the number of people who are here illegally.

“And while the visa operation is internationally competitive, it could and should get better still.”

Last year the Home Secretary hived off the UK Border Force, which is responsible for frontline controls at air, sea and rail ports, from the wider UKBA.

The move came after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of people had been let into the UK without being checked against a Home Office watch list.

She told the House that further splitting the UKBA in two will create “a high-volume service that makes high-quality decisions about who comes here” and an organisation that has “law enforcement at its heart”.

Mrs May said she has also asked the Home Office permanent secretary Mark Sedwill to work on a plan to revamp its “inadequate” IT systems.

And the Home Secretary said she will also bring forward an Immigration Bill by the end of the year in a bid to make it easier to remove illegal immigrants.

After the announcement, Home Affairs Select Committee chair Keith Vaz MP said: “The Home Secretary has done the right thing in putting the UK Backlog Agency out of its misery.

“As yesterday’s Home Affairs Committee report shows, the organisation is not fit for purpose.

“However, this cannot be an excuse not to clear the backlogs, which stand at a third of a million cases.

“Ministers are now on the front line.

“Proper accountability and scrutiny of our immigration system must continue, and it will need effective and strong leadership if the Home Office is serious about having a fully functional immigration system.”