Home Office has no idea how many illegal immigrants are in the UK, says National Audit Office

The Home Office has no idea how many illegal immigrants there are in Britain, the National Audit Office (NAO) has warned.

In a critical report on its management of illegal immigrants, it said the Home Office’s last estimate was 15 years old, when it was 430,000 in 2005.

Subsequent studies by other groups suggests it has doubled but the NAO said the Home Office “does not have an up-to-date estimate of how many people have no right to remain in the UK.”

The NAO, the official spending watchdog, acknowledged there would be “significant uncertainty” around any estimate because of the complexity involved.

But it said such an estimate would help the Home Office demonstrate whether it was being effective in deterring attempts to enter or remain in the UK illegally.

Figures provided to the NAO revealed the Home Office detected 46,900 attempts by migrants to secretly enter the country in the year to October 2019, up 12 per cent on the 40,800 in 2018.

However, the Home Office did “not know whether this reflects detection of a higher proportion of attempts or if the number of attempts is increasing.”

The NAO said the Home Office was also deporting fewer illegal immigrants largely due to successful legal challenges, yet the department did not have any strategy to tackle it. Enforced returns were down by 40 per cent in 7,400 from 12,380 in 2017 with fewer than half of the returns planned by the Home Office in 2019 going ahead.

The NAO said: “The Department tells us that this is mostly explained by spurious late challenges to removal, but we have not seen evidence it has tried to actively understand and manage these challenges and it has no strategy...to reduce their frequency.'

The number of people the Home Office persuaded to return voluntarily also fell from an average of 1,200 a month in 2015 to approximately 460 in 2019.

The Home Office estimates that it will deal with up to 320,000 deportations or immigration cases requiring enforcement each year but the NAO said “it does not know whether demand is growing or falling.”

“It also has not consistently defined what constitutes “harm” caused by the illegal population and who it affects.”

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “The work of Immigration Enforcement by its very nature is complex and challenging. While the Home Office has introduced significant changes to its enforcement activity, it cannot demonstrate that overall performance is improving.

“The Department needs a better understanding of the impact of its immigration enforcement activity on its overarching vision to reduce the size of the illegal population and the harm it causes.”  

A Home Office spokesman said: “We have taken back control of our immigration system and for the first time in a generation, we will have full control over who comes and stays here. As this report acknowledges, the nature of immigration crime and offending is complicated and we are consistently looking at ways to get ahead of the organised gangs behind it.

“We work tirelessly with international partners and agencies, such as the NCA, to tackle illegal migration, close down routes for people smuggling and return those with no right to remain the UK wherever possible. We make no apology for seeking to deport foreign national offenders and since 2010 we have removed more than 53,000 criminals.