UK Border Agency axed after litany of failure

The “troubled” agency will be split into an immigration and visa service and an immigration law-enforcement organisation, Home Secretary Theresa May said yesterday.

After a raft of damning inspections and reports, the Agency will return to Home Office  supervision rather than running at arm’s length under the control of a chief executive.

But in a leaked memo, the top civil servant at the Home Office, permanent secretary Mark Sedwill, told staff they will “still be doing the same job” despite new reforms. The opposition said “splitting the organisation again and again” was not enough, while Mrs May said the government was “getting to grips” with the system it had inherited.

“The agency has been a troubled organisation since it was formed in 2008 and its performance is not good enough,” the Home Secretary said.

The move came after a group of MPs warned it would take the UKBA 24 years to clear a backlog of asylum and immigration cases – the size of Iceland’s population.

The home affairs select committee launched a scathing attack on former UKBA chief Lin Homer, now the head of Britain’s tax office, for her “catastrophic leadership failure”.

Mrs May also ordered an overhaul of the agency’s “inadequate” IT systems and brought forward plans for an Immigration Bill to make it easier to remove illegal immigrants.

Last year, the Home Secretary hived off the UK Border Force, which is responsible for frontline controls at air, sea and rail ports, from the wider UKBA.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “The Home Secretary has already split the UKBA once, just 12 months ago, and the performance of the agency has got worse since, with growing delays in dealing with asylum cases, visas and foreign criminals.

“We have called for action to improve enforcement and effectiveness of the system, but simply cutting and splitting the organisation again and again aren’t enough.”

In its report into the work of the UKBA between July and September last year, the committee said the backlog of cases stood at 312,726. The committee said it was “astounded” that Ms Homer was promoted to the £180,000-a-year role of chief executive of HM Revenue and Customs.

And current UKBA chief executive Rob Whiteman was also criticised for failing to inform the committee that the agency had been supplying parliament with incorrect information since 2006.

The Home Secretary said a board would be formed to oversee all the organisations in the immigration system, immigration policy, the passport service, border force and the two new entities.