Shabana Mahmood’s new unit in the Home Office to deal with small boats has still not been set up. Back at the start of September Guido reported that Shabana Mahmood was reorganising the Home Office to form a new “asylum taskforce.” Permanent secretary Antonia Romeo told staff:
“I have agreed with the Home Secretary and No.10 that we will establish a new Asylum Taskforce which, with support and resource from No. 10, MOD, MHCLG, and AGO, will be dedicated to delivering the Government’s commitment to exiting hotels and to reducing the supported population. Visas, Passports and Citizenship Services will now form a separate DG-led group… Simon and I are in the process of appointing a DG who will lead the Asylum Taskforce.”
Three months later Guido can report that the unit has still not been established. Working at a snail’s pace…
A Director General – Marianthi Leontaridi – was hired on 3 November on between £130,000 and £209,000. Leontaridi was Director General of Aviation, Maritime and Security Group in the DfT from June 2022 to November this year. Her time there is described as overseeing “decarbonisation, growth, safety and security policies across aviation and maritime, as well as wider national security and resilience policy and operations in DfT and sponsorship of the Maritime Coastguard Agency.” Each small boat migrant to be made carbon neutral…
The Home Office says its “Taskforce has not been completely set up” and there will not be a “fixed number” of staff working in it anyway. Asylum seeker hotel numbers have increased 13% since June. Clock is ticking…
Yet another ‘deported’ migrant under the ‘one in, one out’ deal has returned to the UK in a small boat, according to GB News. Just days after the first ‘hokey cokey’ migrant was finally deported for a second time – having spent 18 days in the UK – the Home Office admitted a second individual made the journey on Remembrance Sunday. Once again, they’re keen to stress his case will be ‘expedited’ like the last time…
“Anyone looking to return to the UK after being removed under the UK-France agreement is wasting their time and money. This individual was detected by biometrics and detained immediately. His case will be expedited, and he will be returned to France as quickly as possible. The message is clear: if you try to return to the UK, you will be sent back.”
In, out. In, out. Shake it all about…
The ‘Hokey Cokey’ migrant who returned to Britain in a small boat after being sent to France under the ‘one in, one out’ deal is still in the UK, two weeks on from his arrival in Dover. According to the Home Office, they are still working to “expedite” his removal to France for the second time. The same line Number 10 used nine days ago…
While the Home Office works at a glacial pace to remove him, other ‘one in, one out’ migrants are plotting the same stunt. So far, 75 migrants have been sent back to France as part of the deal… and roughly 11,000 have arrived since the deal launched (albeit as a ‘proof of concept’) in the first week of August. Just the 10,925 to go, assuming they don’t do the Hokey Cokey…
The Home Office has flushed away billions in taxpayer cash on asylum seeker accommodation, according to a damning new report from the Home Affairs Committee. The report says the anticipated total cost of asylum accommodation contracts from 2019 to 2029 has exploded from £4.5 billion to a whopping £15.3 billion. MPs blasted the “failed, chaotic and expensive” scheme rife with “flawed contracts“, “incompetent delivery“, and “failures of leadership at senior level” across the Home Office. This comes just days after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood admitted her own department is “not yet fit for purpose”…
Chair of the Home Affairs Committee Dame Karen Bradley said:
“The Home Office has presided over a failing asylum accommodation system that has cost taxpayers billions of pounds. Its response to increasing demand has been rushed and chaotic, and the department has neglected the day-to-day management of these contracts. The Government needs to get a grip on the asylum accommodation system in order to bring costs down and hold providers to account for poor performance.
[…]
“The Home Office has not proved able to develop a long term strategy for the delivery of asylum accommodation. It has instead focused on short term, reactive responses. There is now an opportunity to draw a line under the current failed, chaotic and expensive system, but the Home Office must finally learn from its previous mistakes or it is doomed to repeat them.”
The Home Office has insisted this morning that “the government is furious about the number of illegal migrants in this country and in hotels“, and vowed once again to “close every single asylum hotel“. They’re promising to close them all… by 2029.
Read the full report below:
Continue reading “REPORT: Home Office Squandered Billions on Migrant Hotels”
The General Secretary of the FDA Union for senior civil servants has insisted ’emotional listening circles’ in the Home Office are “part of the process” for staff to provide a “check and balance” on policies they don’t like. Apparently this is a necessary response to the Windrush scandal…
Dave Penman had the following absurd conversation with Kate McCann on Times Radio this morning:
Kate McCann: “Groups of staff in work time, during office hours sitting in circles together, talking about their feelings about the policies that they are coming up with. On what level would that serve a purpose?”
Dave Penman: “Part of the reason why they’re doing that is because of the criticism around what happened under Windrush… where civil servants were slavishly following the political approach of a hostile environment and hadn’t checked and balanced that around how they were implementing it.”
Kate McCann: “But civil servants are there to deliver what ministers set as a direction of travel in terms of policy. They’re not there to decide whether or not they think the policy is worth following and then ignore it.”
Dave Penman: “No, but they are encouraged to understand what that policy is and the implementation of a policy… the Windrush scandal is a perfect example of this…”
[…]
Kate McCann: “… These listening circles are not ministers sitting down with staff explaining what they want. These are staff together in a group, not with ministers, talking about their emotions…”
Dave Penman: “…It’s part of a process… I don’t know whether a listening circle in the Home Office is a good thing or not… this whole bring yourself to work thing is not a Home Office invention.”
No wonder Shabana Mahmood has claimed the Home Office is “not yet fit for purpose“. This is the boss of a trade union, representing almost 25,000 civil servants, defending Home Office staff who sit in circles and sing kumbaya together whenever the pressures of actually implementing policy are too much to bear. He also dismissed claims that too many civil servants work from home. At least you can mute the dullest listening circle contributions over Zoom…
Lucy Powell on LBC, asked by Tom Swarbrick for her reaction to Labour MP Samantha Niblett’s call for a ‘summer of sex’ debate in Parliament: “I personally don’t own any sex toys, but each to their own… I’m not really sure that’s the right place for it, no.”