Rishi Sunak’s government has no strategy for accommodating asylum seekers and has not learnt sufficiently from failures in Britain’s immigration system, according to the outgoing chief inspector of borders.
David Neal told the Financial Times that ministers in successive Conservative administrations had obstructed the oversight role of the inspectorate and presided over a system that created a tragic “waste of human capital”.
“There is no asylum accommodation strategy” at the Home Office, which had led to major problems of inadequate facilities across the asylum and immigration detention estate, said Neal in his first interview before stepping down next month.
“They don’t identify the lessons, they don’t learn the lessons,” said Neal. “The Home Office doesn’t want to change.”
Neal has for three years run the independent inspectorate for borders and immigration, one of the most highly charged policy issues in the lead-up to the next election.
Ahead of the vote, which is expected this year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to “stop the boats” bringing migrants across the English Channel.
Under Neal’s watch, which has seen five home secretaries and six immigration ministers, the asylum system has struggled with a swelling backlog of undecided asylum cases and successive scandals about dire conditions at some migrant reception and detention centres.
It has also been hit by growing public frustration about the tens of thousands of asylum seekers being housed in hotels at a cost to the taxpayer of up to £8mn a day. According to the latest Home Office figures, the cost of the UK’s asylum system ballooned to £3.96bn in the 12 months to the end of June 2023.
Neal — who previously led the 1st Military Police Brigade, a policing division of the British Army — accused the government of stifling the inspectorate’s work, including regularly delaying release of its reports, redacting parts on opaque national security grounds and “obstructing” access to contracts between government and companies that run services at sites.
Some 13 reports that Neal has submitted to the Home Office since April last year have yet to be made public, including the inspectorate’s annual report for 2022-23.
“There are lots of things that are not going well within the system. It’s a really toxic area. That’s probably why they want to have control of the release of all reports,” he said.
Neal also said he was concerned that the asylum estate was not being expanded quickly enough to meet what is expected to be vastly greater demand once the government’s Illegal Migration Act comes into full force.
Under the legislation, anyone entering the UK via irregular means, including on small boats, would no longer be permitted to claim asylum and would be detained until removal to a safe, third country.
Although it passed into law in July last year, the legislation has not been implemented in full because of the government’s failure to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Neal noted that only a few hundred new accommodation spaces had been created around the UK since last July.
Neal said that while conditions at some asylum sites — including the scandal-ridden Manston detention centre in Kent — had improved since he took the helm, people were still being held in poor conditions at others.
Citing his 26 years of army service, Neal called on the Home Office to put officials on the ground across the asylum estate to “check, check and check again” that things were working as they should and that contractors were complying with standards. “It’s not rocket science,” he added. “Dull is good.”
He pointed in particular to the former air force base at Wethersfield in Essex, which has been converted into accommodation for single men since July 2023 and where more than 500 asylum seekers are “marooned on an island in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do”. Five people at the base had attempted to take their own lives, he said.
“What I see, all the time, is waste of human capital,” Neal said, referring to migrants who waited months or years for an asylum decision, without being able to work or fill their time with meaningful activities.
“It’s a tragedy to see the waste of humankind, when you see doctors, when you see people who are clearly good people, who can’t get on with their lives.”
Neal said relations between the inspectorate and government had improved since James Cleverly became home secretary in November, describing a “change of tone” compared with some of Cleverly’s predecessors who refused to meet him.
Neal also praised the government for reaching its target of recruiting 2,500 asylum caseworkers and for almost entirely clearing the so-called legacy backlog of claims dating from before June 2022.
However, in the rush to clear the backlog, he said the government did not know how many “poor decisions” had been made, which would likely re-emerge as appeals in the future.
He also criticised the government for cutting the inspectorate’s budget by 5 per cent since 2023 to £2.1mn, even as the Home Office’s headcount had jumped 88 per cent since 2008. “We’re suffering the death of a thousand cuts,” Neal said.
A government spokesperson said the Home Office had a “clear strategy to provide sufficient accommodation to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute”, noting that it continues to “meet all statutory and regulatory requirements and residents have access to health and social care services, including mental health support”.
“We’ve made significant progress moving asylum seekers out of hotels by introducing alternative accommodation, maximising space, and clearing the legacy backlog,” they said.
“It is right that we take time to carefully consider independent reports. We continue to support . . . inspection activity and are committed to implementing recommendations.”
Then it’s mind boggling that we still accept them with no plan?
The strategy should be that we aren’t going to house any asylum seekers. That would lower the rate overnight.
They should be sent to a 3rd party country or given a ticket to go back home, they will just keep coming otherwise .
Great to see the ‘send them back’ crowd really getting to grips with this article.
The sensible strategy – spend a chunk of money building modern, well run processing centers in the south of England, ensuring cases are heard swiftly and rejected applicants are deported quickly. Clamp down on ilegal work and abuse of the visa system. Put in place a deal with the EU to replicate what we had pre-Brexit where people could be sent back to the continent, thus stopping the small boats.
The Tory strategy – listen to NIMBYs and build nothing, spend even more money on temporary unsuitable housing that just fuels Farage Ltd, piss off the EU over and over again, explot illegal workers becuase they’re cheap labour, focus all time on energy on this bollocks Rwanda scheme that can cater for a tiny fraction of people.
We need to look after our own first before we burden our tax system even further – There is no money to fund the NHS – No money to put police back on streets – Fire Service running on reduced numbers as well as all the other services I have forgotten.
Price of living gone up but no pay increase.
But we can fund wars and asylum seekers, WE are in a mess never mind taking on anyone else’s problems – UNBELIEVABLE !!!!!
It dosen’t have a stategy for deporting them either. Common theme with this country, no strategy for anything, everything is a shambles.
What frustrates me is that the UK is so very obviously suffering from just an all-round complete lack of even attempting to plan any aspect or element of itself, for well over a decade at this point. We’re a country of tens of millions of people, an economy worth trillions of pounds. And all the people with power act like leaving this to just flail around and sort itself out with no clear direction or oversight is some kind of winning strategy, entirely because of some weird 1980s libertarian ideological bent they just cannot let go of. It has become routine public bodies and services are given a completely unworkable task, with budgets that are just laughable, despite government claiming these are super serious issues it really wants to deal with!
And time and time again, rather than address this, we just seem to blame any vulnerable group we can find and act like really its their fault for existing, and not an entire class and party of people in government who basically either just cannot be arsed or more scarily do not even seem to understand what the role of government is supposed to be in a modern society like our own.
We should spend £140 million on a new purpose built detention centre with single occupancy rooms kitted in the modern minimalist decor of soft mattress, padded walls and a built-into-the-wall water dispenser and separate internet terminal. For health and safety reasons the centre should be smoking free, alcohol free and drug free; food should be vegetarian only consisting mostly salads, soups and fruits or anything that can be eaten without cutlery and served on a paper plate or drank from a paper beaker; and time out of room strictly regulated with each individual chaperoned. Extra time out of room awarded to those who join citizenship classes. The centres should be built in the UK.
Dear asylum seekers and illegal border entrants: take it or leave it. Live in a dorm until your case has been processed, claim asylum through the UN scheme the UK is a signatory of, or stay where you are.
To my fellow Brits, this would stimulate the economy. It would create new jobs for British construction workers, new jobs for chaperones, new jobs for maintenance workers and it would keep asylum seekers off our streets until processed, vetted and either granted asylum or returned home.
Prisoners should be held in similar cosy single occupancy rooms. It’s obviously too practical, too cost effective and too much in favour of the right’s of British citizens not to be straddled with uninvited guests for our politicians to consider it a workable solution. We’ll have to bribe our own MPs to do the right thing.
Yea no shit. We haven’t for ages. Completely inept government
The UK has no strategy for housing *anyone*. Let alone asylum seekers.
I know one guy that was escaping from a muslim nation because he had converted to Christianity, and the UK government housed him *with muslims from neighboring countries*.
Like, c’mon.
Really sounds like the strategy is hoping they die much like the strategy with disability benefits.
Tory policy is to bus them all to the north(and midlands) where the houses are considerably cheaper than the south. It’s startling to walk around towns like Wigan, Bolton and Warrington now. They have completely changed in around 5 years.
I’m convinced having no strategy is the Tory’s strategy.
Can’t claim we’re being overrun by migrants if they’re being properly processed and assessed.
UK government has no strategy for housing its own citizens.
It does have a strategy.
Use Asylum seekers to transfer tax payers money to privatised contractor services. Once money has been made accidently loose them within the UK or try and send them abroad somewhere.
Asking them to stop the boats is like asking a land lord to stop taking on new properties and tenants. We need a nationalised service that will get the job done and then close down once there is no need for it.
The privatised systems in the UK are there for one purpose remove wealth from public purse and provide as little back as possible without any option of retribution.
UK government doesnt even have strategy to house its citizens
>UK has no strategy for housing
Fixed headline for you
It has no strategy for housing anybody for that matter
It’s already bad that these people have to comprehend living and becoming british but without a house as well is crazy
If we don’t have a plan (costed and funded) for additional housing, additional medical facilities, additional schooling and increased prison population, we should not allow anyone in until we do.
They should be getting bused to Tory MP constituencies and put up in social housing within those Tory MP backyards. Let it be said that the Tory MPs care about their constituents.
is there anything the UK does actually have a strategy for?
Well of course it doesn’t!
It’s a wedge issue for Tories!
Yes they do. Put them into hotels passing huge amounts of money to their mates and private businesses. Then pass them to councils who don’t have the money to house them but legally have to do it anyway. All the while spending millions upon millions on a hairbrained scheme to send them to Rwanda. All that money for what is essentially 30,000 people a year. Then people blame the refugees for all the problems even when we are part of the cause for the majority of them being refugees in the first place. Where do people think the Gazans are going to go once the genocide is complete and they are living in tents in the deserts of Egypt?
What stops immigrants from being sold into slavery by companies? Human rights laws? They can be repealed. The wealth of the Empire is more important than the lives of the people. But, when those people are… YOU, Hey, there will be no more laws to protect you.
“The UK has no strategy”. Fixed the headline for you. Thanks, tories!
We have no strategy to house anyone tbh – unsure how this is news.
They actually have no strategy for anything other than wanking off the rich, tbh.
29 comments
(Article)
—–
Rishi Sunak’s government has no strategy for accommodating asylum seekers and has not learnt sufficiently from failures in Britain’s immigration system, according to the outgoing chief inspector of borders.
David Neal told the Financial Times that ministers in successive Conservative administrations had obstructed the oversight role of the inspectorate and presided over a system that created a tragic “waste of human capital”.
“There is no asylum accommodation strategy” at the Home Office, which had led to major problems of inadequate facilities across the asylum and immigration detention estate, said Neal in his first interview before stepping down next month.
“They don’t identify the lessons, they don’t learn the lessons,” said Neal. “The Home Office doesn’t want to change.”
Neal has for three years run the independent inspectorate for borders and immigration, one of the most highly charged policy issues in the lead-up to the next election.
Ahead of the vote, which is expected this year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to “stop the boats” bringing migrants across the English Channel.
Under Neal’s watch, which has seen five home secretaries and six immigration ministers, the asylum system has struggled with a swelling backlog of undecided asylum cases and successive scandals about dire conditions at some migrant reception and detention centres.
It has also been hit by growing public frustration about the tens of thousands of asylum seekers being housed in hotels at a cost to the taxpayer of up to £8mn a day. According to the latest Home Office figures, the cost of the UK’s asylum system ballooned to £3.96bn in the 12 months to the end of June 2023.
Neal — who previously led the 1st Military Police Brigade, a policing division of the British Army — accused the government of stifling the inspectorate’s work, including regularly delaying release of its reports, redacting parts on opaque national security grounds and “obstructing” access to contracts between government and companies that run services at sites.
Some 13 reports that Neal has submitted to the Home Office since April last year have yet to be made public, including the inspectorate’s annual report for 2022-23.
“There are lots of things that are not going well within the system. It’s a really toxic area. That’s probably why they want to have control of the release of all reports,” he said.
Neal also said he was concerned that the asylum estate was not being expanded quickly enough to meet what is expected to be vastly greater demand once the government’s Illegal Migration Act comes into full force.
Under the legislation, anyone entering the UK via irregular means, including on small boats, would no longer be permitted to claim asylum and would be detained until removal to a safe, third country.
Although it passed into law in July last year, the legislation has not been implemented in full because of the government’s failure to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Neal noted that only a few hundred new accommodation spaces had been created around the UK since last July.
Neal said that while conditions at some asylum sites — including the scandal-ridden Manston detention centre in Kent — had improved since he took the helm, people were still being held in poor conditions at others.
Citing his 26 years of army service, Neal called on the Home Office to put officials on the ground across the asylum estate to “check, check and check again” that things were working as they should and that contractors were complying with standards. “It’s not rocket science,” he added. “Dull is good.”
He pointed in particular to the former air force base at Wethersfield in Essex, which has been converted into accommodation for single men since July 2023 and where more than 500 asylum seekers are “marooned on an island in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do”. Five people at the base had attempted to take their own lives, he said.
“What I see, all the time, is waste of human capital,” Neal said, referring to migrants who waited months or years for an asylum decision, without being able to work or fill their time with meaningful activities.
“It’s a tragedy to see the waste of humankind, when you see doctors, when you see people who are clearly good people, who can’t get on with their lives.”
Neal said relations between the inspectorate and government had improved since James Cleverly became home secretary in November, describing a “change of tone” compared with some of Cleverly’s predecessors who refused to meet him.
Neal also praised the government for reaching its target of recruiting 2,500 asylum caseworkers and for almost entirely clearing the so-called legacy backlog of claims dating from before June 2022.
However, in the rush to clear the backlog, he said the government did not know how many “poor decisions” had been made, which would likely re-emerge as appeals in the future.
He also criticised the government for cutting the inspectorate’s budget by 5 per cent since 2023 to £2.1mn, even as the Home Office’s headcount had jumped 88 per cent since 2008. “We’re suffering the death of a thousand cuts,” Neal said.
A government spokesperson said the Home Office had a “clear strategy to provide sufficient accommodation to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute”, noting that it continues to “meet all statutory and regulatory requirements and residents have access to health and social care services, including mental health support”.
“We’ve made significant progress moving asylum seekers out of hotels by introducing alternative accommodation, maximising space, and clearing the legacy backlog,” they said.
“It is right that we take time to carefully consider independent reports. We continue to support . . . inspection activity and are committed to implementing recommendations.”
Then it’s mind boggling that we still accept them with no plan?
The strategy should be that we aren’t going to house any asylum seekers. That would lower the rate overnight.
They should be sent to a 3rd party country or given a ticket to go back home, they will just keep coming otherwise .
Great to see the ‘send them back’ crowd really getting to grips with this article.
The sensible strategy – spend a chunk of money building modern, well run processing centers in the south of England, ensuring cases are heard swiftly and rejected applicants are deported quickly. Clamp down on ilegal work and abuse of the visa system. Put in place a deal with the EU to replicate what we had pre-Brexit where people could be sent back to the continent, thus stopping the small boats.
The Tory strategy – listen to NIMBYs and build nothing, spend even more money on temporary unsuitable housing that just fuels Farage Ltd, piss off the EU over and over again, explot illegal workers becuase they’re cheap labour, focus all time on energy on this bollocks Rwanda scheme that can cater for a tiny fraction of people.
We need to look after our own first before we burden our tax system even further – There is no money to fund the NHS – No money to put police back on streets – Fire Service running on reduced numbers as well as all the other services I have forgotten.
Price of living gone up but no pay increase.
But we can fund wars and asylum seekers, WE are in a mess never mind taking on anyone else’s problems – UNBELIEVABLE !!!!!
It dosen’t have a stategy for deporting them either. Common theme with this country, no strategy for anything, everything is a shambles.
What frustrates me is that the UK is so very obviously suffering from just an all-round complete lack of even attempting to plan any aspect or element of itself, for well over a decade at this point. We’re a country of tens of millions of people, an economy worth trillions of pounds. And all the people with power act like leaving this to just flail around and sort itself out with no clear direction or oversight is some kind of winning strategy, entirely because of some weird 1980s libertarian ideological bent they just cannot let go of. It has become routine public bodies and services are given a completely unworkable task, with budgets that are just laughable, despite government claiming these are super serious issues it really wants to deal with!
And time and time again, rather than address this, we just seem to blame any vulnerable group we can find and act like really its their fault for existing, and not an entire class and party of people in government who basically either just cannot be arsed or more scarily do not even seem to understand what the role of government is supposed to be in a modern society like our own.
We should spend £140 million on a new purpose built detention centre with single occupancy rooms kitted in the modern minimalist decor of soft mattress, padded walls and a built-into-the-wall water dispenser and separate internet terminal. For health and safety reasons the centre should be smoking free, alcohol free and drug free; food should be vegetarian only consisting mostly salads, soups and fruits or anything that can be eaten without cutlery and served on a paper plate or drank from a paper beaker; and time out of room strictly regulated with each individual chaperoned. Extra time out of room awarded to those who join citizenship classes. The centres should be built in the UK.
Dear asylum seekers and illegal border entrants: take it or leave it. Live in a dorm until your case has been processed, claim asylum through the UN scheme the UK is a signatory of, or stay where you are.
To my fellow Brits, this would stimulate the economy. It would create new jobs for British construction workers, new jobs for chaperones, new jobs for maintenance workers and it would keep asylum seekers off our streets until processed, vetted and either granted asylum or returned home.
Prisoners should be held in similar cosy single occupancy rooms. It’s obviously too practical, too cost effective and too much in favour of the right’s of British citizens not to be straddled with uninvited guests for our politicians to consider it a workable solution. We’ll have to bribe our own MPs to do the right thing.
Yea no shit. We haven’t for ages. Completely inept government
The UK has no strategy for housing *anyone*. Let alone asylum seekers.
I know one guy that was escaping from a muslim nation because he had converted to Christianity, and the UK government housed him *with muslims from neighboring countries*.
Like, c’mon.
Really sounds like the strategy is hoping they die much like the strategy with disability benefits.
Tory policy is to bus them all to the north(and midlands) where the houses are considerably cheaper than the south. It’s startling to walk around towns like Wigan, Bolton and Warrington now. They have completely changed in around 5 years.
I’m convinced having no strategy is the Tory’s strategy.
Can’t claim we’re being overrun by migrants if they’re being properly processed and assessed.
UK government has no strategy for housing its own citizens.
It does have a strategy.
Use Asylum seekers to transfer tax payers money to privatised contractor services. Once money has been made accidently loose them within the UK or try and send them abroad somewhere.
Asking them to stop the boats is like asking a land lord to stop taking on new properties and tenants. We need a nationalised service that will get the job done and then close down once there is no need for it.
The privatised systems in the UK are there for one purpose remove wealth from public purse and provide as little back as possible without any option of retribution.
UK government doesnt even have strategy to house its citizens
>UK has no strategy for housing
Fixed headline for you
It has no strategy for housing anybody for that matter
It’s already bad that these people have to comprehend living and becoming british but without a house as well is crazy
If we don’t have a plan (costed and funded) for additional housing, additional medical facilities, additional schooling and increased prison population, we should not allow anyone in until we do.
They should be getting bused to Tory MP constituencies and put up in social housing within those Tory MP backyards. Let it be said that the Tory MPs care about their constituents.
is there anything the UK does actually have a strategy for?
Well of course it doesn’t!
It’s a wedge issue for Tories!
Yes they do. Put them into hotels passing huge amounts of money to their mates and private businesses. Then pass them to councils who don’t have the money to house them but legally have to do it anyway. All the while spending millions upon millions on a hairbrained scheme to send them to Rwanda. All that money for what is essentially 30,000 people a year. Then people blame the refugees for all the problems even when we are part of the cause for the majority of them being refugees in the first place. Where do people think the Gazans are going to go once the genocide is complete and they are living in tents in the deserts of Egypt?
What stops immigrants from being sold into slavery by companies? Human rights laws? They can be repealed. The wealth of the Empire is more important than the lives of the people. But, when those people are… YOU, Hey, there will be no more laws to protect you.
“The UK has no strategy”. Fixed the headline for you. Thanks, tories!
We have no strategy to house anyone tbh – unsure how this is news.
They actually have no strategy for anything other than wanking off the rich, tbh.
UK has ‘no strategy’ for housing.
There, I fixed the headline.