Is the Home Office fit for purpose?

The mistaken release of convicted sex offender Hadush Kebatu last week from Chelmsford Prison was the result of a shocking breakdown between the Prison and Immigration Service. Kebatu’s crime ignited communal concern and put Epping in the unwanted role of ground zero in an immigration culture war.

It also highlighted the risk of sending asylum applicants to hotels on the high street in our towns and cities. This was in the same week that the Home Affairs Select Committee said the cost of Home Office contracts to house asylum seekers in hotels has tripled from £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion.

The failure to deport foreign national prisoners was the dark origin story of the Department of Justice and led Home Secretary John Reid to declare in 2006 that the Home Office was not fit for purpose.

Prime Minister Tony Blair decided it was too big a behemoth to manage properly and broke it up in 2007 placing the prisons and probation system in the new Justice Department. That was supposed to usher in a new era where the Home Office could focus properly on tackling immigration.

How is that going? Of the 16 people who have been Home Secretary since 1997 only four have served for more than 3 years. Only one immigration minister has done the job for more than two and a half years.

The job of Home Secretary is still daunting in its volume and complexity. The day to day pressures of tackling serious crime, overseeing 43 police forces, leading the fight against terrorism and managing the work of MI5 must compete for attention with preventing illegal immigration, disrupting the organised crime gangs that traffic people across borders, running a massive immigration casework system and managing housing and support for 112,000 asylum seekers, 32,000 of whom are currently in hotels.

Last week the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said her department was not yet fit for purpose in response to a highly critical report by former conservative special advisor Nick Timothy.

He told LBC’s Andrew Marr show that there was not enough joined up thinking and officials wasted hours attending meetings to talk about bringing their whole selves to work.

Former Home Secretary Amber Rudd speaking on Global’s The Crisis Room podcast said the department does policing and counter-terrorism well but it is very hard to get good people to work in immigration. She suggested the immigration service needs a shake up in senior recruitment.

There are almost 30,000 Home Office staff working on immigration with 10,000 working at our borders and on immigration enforcement operations. They are trying to deal with the estimated 1m people here illegally, the 38,000 people who arrived this year on small boats and the 111,000 people who claimed asylum. On top of this 948,000 people came to the UK legally in 2024, mostly to work, study or join family already here.

These are not traditional civil service jobs that can be adequately done by a smart jack of all trades. At the senior level the Home Office needs experts who can design efficient casework management systems that can turn around cases fast using the latest AI and customer management software.

It needs legal problem solvers who can creatively tackle those gaming the system and dragging out appeals.  It needs experienced commercial negotiators who can design and manage major property contracts leveraging economies of scale to get a good deal and not be ripped off.

On enforcement it needs experts in organised crime and illegal working who have years of experience running operations with police and intelligence agencies across the world.

To become properly fit for purpose the Home Office must recruit people with these skills and find the right mix of culture change and incentives to keep them there.

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James Sorene is a commentator and writer.

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