Labour's inbox: Home Office culture and approach

Focus on outcomes, avoid vibes-based policy-making, respect the rule of law, dismantle the bunker and think long-term.

Photo by Spencer James Lucas on Unsplash

I’ve already published a couple of articles on asylum and immigration inbox issues. Some of these are pretty obviously urgent and genuinely need to be addressed as a priority if serious financial and political consequences are to be avoided and manifesto commitments kept. Others are important but less urgent, yet ought nevertheless to be addressed sooner rather than later in my view. Today’s article falls into that second category.

Issues around the culture and approach of the Home Office as an institution should be addressed sooner rather than later in my view. It takes a long time to bring about such changes. But this is a matter of political choice for a government. Business could continue as normal. But it shouldn’t, for the reasons I address at the end of this article.

Focus on outcomes: entry, integration, removal

As I’ve previously said previously, there are three things that an immigration department should be aiming to achieve: (1) control the entry of immigrants and then either (2) ensure that those who enter integrate into our society and economy or (3) ensure that they depart.

These are the Home Office’s basic, core immigration functions. Activities that do not contribute to these objectives should be deprioritised. Activities that actively obstruct these objectives should be stopped. Yet there are lots of activities undertaken by the Home Office that contribute nothing to the core functions or which actively obstruct them.

Tough on migrants isn’t tough on immigration

Most of the culprits that spring to my mind obstruct integration but do nothing to control entry or ensure departure. High application fees, hostile asylum processing, prolonged precarious immigration status, rules that prevent switching from one route to another, the entire hostile environment… the list is endless. And even where a policies might in theory affect entry or departure, there are so many ‘exceptional circumstance’ exceptions and such a lack of enforcement that the impact is minimal. The spouse minimum income rule, increased to £29,000 earlier this year, is one such example.

These policies make peoples’ lives miserable, which inhibits integration, but do little or nothing to control entry or ensure departure. Many people, including policy-makers, confuse being tough on migrants with being tough on immigration. There has never been any evidence for the theory of deterrent effect. But being tough on migrants often makes genuine, measurable immigration control harder by distracting policy-makers from more impactful work and by creating more work for frontline officials who have limited resources.

The dangers of values-based policy making

There are several reasons why these tough-on-migrants policies are so popular and persistent.

They are relatively easy and cheap to create. When civil servants or a minister are searching for something to do — anything to do — to try to affect incoming or outgoing immigration numbers, these policies can be made law very easily and often very cheaply. Actually implementing and enforcing them would require resources and management time and energy that is often absent. And even if they were enforced their real-world impact would probably be very limited.

Perhaps the most important driver, though, is values. These policies are pursued because key people and many members of the public consider them to be the right thing to do. They are considered morally correct, based on notions of fairness.

High immigration fees are right because migrants should pay for immigration control, not the wider British taxpayer. But migrants are taxpayers…

Hostile asylum processing is right because it acts as a deterrent and the hostility filters out the genuine from the bogus. But deterrent effect is a myth and the hostility afflicts refugees who will stay here permanently…

Precarious immigration status is right because those who do not meet rules should be treated worse than those who do, otherwise there is no incentive to comply with those rules. But it creates more work for officials and they all get to stay in the end anyway…

Preventing switching is right because otherwise people will enter on an easy route and switch to a harder route once here. But people’s circumstances do genuinely change…

The hostile environment is right because illegal immigrants have broken the rules and should not have access to jobs, accommodation, healthcare, benefits and so on. But that creates an unauthorised and exploitable underclass while doing nothing to ensure departure…

And so on.

Values-based policy-making is understandable and popular. But evidence-based policy-making would, by definition, have more real-world impact.

If politicians want to be judged on results then they should follow the facts, not the vibes.

There has been plenty of evidence produced by Home Office and other researchers over the years. Since 2010, all of this seems to have been routinely ignored. Impact statements are more like press releases than genuine assessments of the pros and cons. Outcomes include debacles like Windrush. It would take a colossal change of culture to start being serious about the evidence at this point and to start incorporating it seriously into the policy-making process as a matter of course. It would require genuine curiosity, openness and humility.

Respecting the rule of law

All too often, the law is considered an annoyance by the Home Office. Given that the laws in question are the government’s own and the responsibility for enforcing laws often lies with the Home Office itself, this makes no sense on a logical level. Too many within the Home Office seem to think they and their department are somehow apart from and above these pesky laws.

There are two main manifestations of this thinking.

Imagining abuse by others

Some officials and ministers consider that migrants relying on the law are somehow cheating or abusing the law. When they say they want the law respected, they mean the law as they imagine it should be rather than as it actually is.

We saw this at the very top of the Home Office when former Home Secretary James Cleverly accused migrants of “abusing” visa conditions by bringing their families with them. The rules in question allowed migrants to bring their families with them. How is it “abuse” to make an application which you are entitled to make under the existing rules and for that application to be granted because the rules are met?

The attitude is widespread in the department. We see this all the time with manifestations of hostility to asylum, trafficking and human rights claims, for example. These claims are considered by many within the Home Office to be a nuisance. A means of cheating removal. Not a legal protection established by parliament and the government to respect the humanity of the people concerned.

There may be some people who make a claim knowing what they say is untrue. There may also be some people who put forward a claim in good faith but the claim does not satisfy the relevant legal tests. But the high success rates suggest that a large proportion of all these claims are actually good in fact and law. And anyway, everyone should be treated with basic decency.

The laws and processes protecting refugees, trafficking survivors and those whose human rights might be breached if the law took its ordinary course should be seen as positive features, not as bugs. They are safety valves that prevent inhumanity. They legitimise the otherwise harsh system of borders that the institution of the Home Office holds so dear.

Actual abuse by officials

The other manifestation of disrespect for the rule of law we sometimes see from the Home Office — and this seems to have been a growing problem in recent years, as we have chronicled over on Free Movement — is unlawful action by officials themselves. Some officials are so dissatisfied with the laws they are supposed to uphold that they knowingly or recklessly violate those laws themselves.

I gave up making Freedom of Information requests some years ago because of obviously abusive refusals by officials. There’s a string of cases where the Home Office has been found to be operating unlawful policies. There’s another string of cases where the Home Office has failed to disclose documents or information to claimants, in breach of the duty of candour. There are also cases where the Home Office has been found to violate basic human rights standards by breaching the prohibition on torture or inhuman or degrading treatment when detaining vulnerable people. There are countless cases where damages for unlawful detention has been ordered by a court. There’s the whole Windrush debacle.

The Home Office is bound to lose some legal challenges. That's what legal challenges are for: establishing the limits of the law. But the scale and persistence of unlawful conduct seems very considerable. A culture of ‘you’re doing it wrong if they’re not suing you’ is not a healthy or respectful one.

Officials should be enforcing the law as it actually is. They should do so with decency, humanity and respect. Asylum, trafficking and human rights claims should be seen as opportunities to protect relatively small numbers of vulnerable people from the harsh consequences of international borders, not nuisances to be suppressed. Legal safeguards and duties are there for important reasons. Paying mere lip service to them is doing it wrong, not doing it right. Above all, treat humans with humanity and treat the law with respect.

Dismantling the bunker

The Home Office is notoriously defensive and insular. This bunker mentality is understandable given how contentious so many Home Office policy responsibilities are. Immigration, policing, security and terrorism are big topics, there is no consensus on how to address them and the media are obsessed with these issues because they are so important to the public. The Home Office is constantly under attack from one angle or another.

But there are consequences to a bunker mentality.

Policy-making suffers. Closing yourself off from the world means you are not open to a full range of ideas, either from other branches or government or from outside government. When new laws or immigration rules are devised, the Home Office does so alone and without any built-in consultation process either within government or with wider civil society. The consequences of those laws and rules have therefore not been properly thought-through.

The abolition of the ID cards project in 2010 immediately followed by rapid and unmitigated expansion of the hostile environment is perhaps the most egregious example. But we see it day-to-day with things like the rapid roll-out of the graduate visa for students in the face of careful, cautious advice given by the Migration Advisory Committee. Or the explosive expansion in the number of care worker visas. In both cases, the popularity of the new visa types, the behaviour of recruitment agencies and the fact that family members would accompany the principal visa holders seems to have been completely unanticipated, despite being eminently predictable.

And even if consequences have been signalled, too often the Home Office either doesn’t care or will even relish those consequences.

To take a systemic example, the Home Office is, rightly, obsessed with security. That’s literally what the department is for, when it comes down to it. But it is a very narrow, short-term form of security. Economic growth, family integrity, child welfare, race relations and security of belonging all contribute to our collective security but are actively harmed by multiple Home Office policies like citizenship deprivation laws, the discriminatory nature of the hostile environment, the divisive nature of family immigration rules and so on.

Where unanticipated or adverse consequences ensue, the defensive attitude at the Home Office means that the department doubles-down rather than seeking to understand, reform or mitigate. Resident since the 1970s and now unemployed and homeless? Blame a feckless failure to keep records or apply earlier! Family are separated and British children brought up by involuntarily single parent? Blame the parents and tell them to use Zoom! Migrant workers being exploited because of grossly negligent Home Office checks on sponsoring employers? Deport the workers!

It is easy (and right!) to criticise this way of thinking. There are powerful reasons that have caused it to evolve, though, and it would be extremely difficult to inculcate a new mentality. Leadership matters. A long-term strategy for the department, clear goals, introduction of feedback loops and some process and legal changes to how rules and laws are made might all help.

The new proposed Migrant’s (or Windrush) Commissioner could be part of that process. But as with the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, creating an institution is insufficient. The previous government sidelined and ignored successive Chief Inspectors, eventually sacking the most recent. The leadership team at the Home Office need to be willing to listen and be in post for long enough to incentivise them to listen.

Why tackle these issues?

Self-interest

Firstly, there is a degree of self interest for politicians and political advisers. The current approach is closed, opaque, defensive and aggressive. There are powerful political and media imperatives that have driven these dysfunctional behaviours and I recognise that. It helped politicians manage the rapid media cycle from day to day. But the consequence has been poor expectation management, bad policy-making and a communications strategy that bore no relation to reality. The public have been told one thing: we’ll reduce immigration. The department has in reality done quite another: increased immigration. In the medium and long term, this was the undoing of the last government.

One way to resist day-to-day pressures is to have continuity of personnel. After all, why worry about tomorrow if that is going to be someone else’s problem? With Yvette Cooper looking like she could be a very durable appointment — perhaps the longest serving Home Secretary since Theresa May — it is in her own interests to think about the medium and long term. Her very considerable political and governmental experience and her time as chair of the Home Affairs Committee will hopefully help her with that.

Will the same be true of the two immigration ministers, not officially announced but understood to be Angela Eagle (Border Security and Asylum) and Seema Malhotra (legal migration)?

Angela Eagle is vastly experienced. In fact, she’s the longest-serving front bench politician in British politics, I think. She’s been an MP since 1992 and has served since 1997 as minister and shadow minister with only fairly brief interregnums. She’s not afraid of confrontation, having challenged Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2016.

Seema Malhotra was elected to parliament in 2011 but previously served as a political adviser; she hasn't the same front line experience in government as the others but she’s certainly no debutant.

Principle

Secondly, tackling the culture and approach at the Home Office is the right thing to do.

It is surely self-evident that better quality policy-making, laws and rules which take proper account or a wider range of factors is a virtue.

It is surely right that the huge coercive power of the Home Office is properly constrained by law and is used only as intended by parliament.

It is surely the case that state violence — for that is what immigration detention and removal really is — should be kept to a minimum.

I hope that the new government and the new ministerial team will recognise these principles as important. But what if they don’t, or don’t seem to?

Advocacy in the new environment

I am cautiously optimistic. Some of the early signs are positive. The Rwanda scheme has been dropped. The asylum backlog is being reduced. The Bibby Stockholm barge is to be closed. The language of illegal migration has been dropped.

But the new government is bound to do things I don’t like. Any government must. A successful, election-winning political party must appeal to a broad coalition of people who inevitable have disparate views. Even more so a government for the whole country.

Unlike Suella Braverman, I don’t dream of removal flights. But, unlike some, I recognise that removal flights are something that the government must do. If someone has no legal basis for remaining here, they ought to go back to their country or origin.

That doesn’t mean we should give up on advocacy or just passively accept the things we don’t like. There is plenty of space for campaigning work in my view. But I’ve reached a point where I think, for example, campaigning to end all removal flights on principle is pointless. Campaigning to keep them to a minimum can do some good, though. In the coming years I will be focussing on three things:

1. Advocacy around ensuring that everyone has a fair chance to put forward any legal claim they do have. Home Office culture and approach is part of that. Administrative processes and legal aid are part of that too.

2. Advocacy around what the legal basis for stay actually is. I’m in favour of better regularisation routes, rules and processes which do not unnecessarily push people into unlawfulness and a humane, respectful approach to decision-making.

3. Advocacy around the way that residents, whether migrants or citizens, are treated while they are here. I don’t have strong views on how many students or workers should be admitted in the first place. I do have strong views on how those students or workers are treated once they are here. And I have strong views on breaking up families.

I’ll be taking a break from writing new Substack posts for a while as I’m going to be away for a bit. But I’ll line up a couple of posts with links to previous stuff I’ve written here that I think is still relevant.