Immigration Staff: Recruitment

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the noble Lord asked a number of questions, one of which was about border staff. He will know that we have recruited almost all the 900 staff that we undertook to recruit in preparation for Brexit. I will write to him with a longer answer on the inspectorate because I do not have the details at my fingertips today.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, is the real problem at the Home Office not the culture, which is still being driven by trying to achieve the target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands? This House has recently passed legislation that effectively continues free movement of EU citizens in the event of a no-deal Brexit. So, the only way that this ridiculous target can be achieved is by the ruthless pursuit of anyone who can be deported, even for the most minor of reasons. Does the Minister not agree that the hostile environment may have changed its name, but it persists?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

As I have said before, the hostile environment started under Alan Johnson and ended under my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. The noble Lord has made the point about culture before, and he is right that the culture of an organisation is key to the way its policies operate. There are no targets of the kind that the noble Lord described. We have a general ambition of reducing net migration but targets—particularly in the hostile environment, as the noble Lord referred to it—no longer operate.