Home secretary Theresa May yesterday responded to an urgent question raised by Yvette Cooper MP in the House of Commons on the report from the National Audit Office (NAO) on the removal of foreign national offenders.
Cooper highlighted sections of the report that flagged departmental failures for over a third of failed removals, saying: “The national audit office has found that over a third of failed removals were a result of factors within the Home Office’s control. Failing to fill in the forms, failing to get the papers there, failure even to book the plane tickets that were needed.”
Cooper added: “Nearly 40% had avoidable processing delays. More foreign criminals have disappeared too, around 190 absconding last year, and a 6% increase since 2010, yet the NAO says there are only 11 staff working on those 700 cases and 10 of them are very junior; why has she got so few staff working on such important cases?”
She also commented on the rate of improvement, given the tenure of Theresa May as Home Secretary: “It’s no good blaming the past, no good blaming the others, she has been Home Secretary for four and a half years; the system is still failing on her watch and fewer foreign criminals are being deported than when she started.”
Theresa May responded by pointed to more positive aspects of the report: “The NAO report makes clear that the time taken to deport FNOs is reducing; it notes that the number of removals increased 12% over the last two years, I quote: ‘largely because of a change in the department’s approach to deportation’, and it praises operation Nexus – that is the work between police and the immigration enforcement command – which has helped us to remove more than 2500 foreign nationals in its first two years. This government is the first government to adopt a cross-government strategy on dealing with foreign national offenders.”
May also addressed barriers to removal and what is being done to tackle them: “The report makes clear that our efforts have been hampered by a range of barriers, including the law. The main problem we face is the rise of litigation; we’ve seen a 28% increase in the number of appeals, that’s why we’ve taken the changes that I’ve set out in the Immigration Act to cut the number of appeals.”
May noted: “These are the most significant changes to deportation since 1971.”
New powers from the Immigration Act came into force this week to cut the number of grounds on which criminals can appeal their deportation from 17 to 4. Criminals can no longer appeal against a decision that their deportation is conducive to the public good.
In July new powers were introduced to stop criminals from using family life arguments to delay their deportation.
Outlining the new powers of the Immigration Act further, May added: “Where there is no risk of serious, irreversible harm, foreign criminals will be deported first and have their appeal heard later. For those that do have an appeal right, they will only be able to appeal once.”
May described these changes as “rebalancing human rights laws in favour of the British public, rather than the criminal”.