Home Office has struggled to deal with crises, says Shabana Mahmood
The Home Office has failed to meet the challenges of the “crises” it has faced for several years and is “not yet fit for purpose”, the home secretary told the BBC.
Shabana Mahmood acknowledged last month that the department she was seconded to had “a number of problems”, including contract procurement and retaining senior staff, but said she was “determined to deliver”.
Mahmood was speaking to the BBC as he led a police operation on a south London high street aimed at tackling immigrants working illegally in the UK.
The crackdown is “starting to work,” he said, adding that 8,232 people were arrested for illegal work last year, a 63% increase.
The ministry faces numerous challenges, including housing refugees in hotels.
Mahmood said the Home Office “clearly deals with emergency and crisis issues on a regular basis and I think for a long period of time it has failed to live up to the scale of the challenges of these crises and emergencies”.
On the issue of illegal work, the home secretary said: “It is clear that enforcement of our rules has been lacking and was not good enough or strong enough under the last government… The law has not kept pace with changes in the way people get into work.”
He added: “The numbers are still not where I want them to be. I want to go further and faster but I think we are making progress and at the moment the numbers are going in the right direction.”
The BBC spent two hours with officers carrying out spot checks on gig economy workers, including delivery drivers. At that time, no one was arrested for working illegally, but one person was detained for other crimes.
Ministers believe a crackdown on illegal work will help reduce the pull factors that encourage people to enter the UK illegally and seek asylum.
A report prepared by MPs this week said billions of dollars were wasted on hotels where asylum seekers stayed and urgent action was needed to reduce the bill.
Mahmood confirmed wanted to settle some immigrants in army barracks in Inverness and East Sussex by the end of the year.
He said: “I know that asylum hotels are a disaster for our communities. I know that these are places where there is great tension in societies.
“We are working rapidly to establish new sites. I hope to be involved in two new military facilities by the end of the year. Discussions are ongoing and are well advanced in terms of planning for these moves.”
Mahmood did not say the move would save taxpayers money.
Asked whether the government might introduce a break clause in contracts with hotel providers next spring, he said “all options are on the table.”
He continued: “I will need to look very carefully at the legal regulations in these contracts and the options available to us, and act in the best interests of both our country and our taxpayers.”
Some suspect the government may find an alternative solution that would allow it to violate the contracts.
Mahmood’s department has also faced intense pressure on other issues in recent weeks. grooming gangs investigation, the “One for one out” agreement with France, small boat crossings and more.
The minister said the Home Office had “a number of problems” but that he would work with the department’s new senior civil servant, Antonia Romeo, to resolve them.
One of these problems was the mistaken release of Hadush Kebatu, an asylum seeker convict who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and a woman while living in the town’s Bell Hotel in Epping.
It was kebatu He was deported on Tuesday eveningTo Ethiopia. Conservative MP for Epping Forest Dr. Neil Hudson said the community was “hugely relieved” but the error was “incredibly frustrating” and the government must now “address the issue”.
Hudson said the Conservative government closed the Bell Hotel but Labor reopened it “without any consultation, without speaking to anyone locally” and despite “significant management and conservation issues”.
“The hotel needs to be closed; it’s the wrong hotel in the wrong place, right next to the forest, right next to two schools,” he told the BBC.
Speaking on Monday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said “mistakes were made” at the Home Office under the previous Tory government, but added Labor’s decision was: cancel the Rwanda plan It has increased illegal immigration – aimed at deterring asylum seekers from coming to Britain on small boats.
“Cancelling this plan removed the deterrent and meant small boat crossings increased by 40%.”
