Asylum and Migration

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this is a Government choice. Does the Minister think that spending £3.2 billion on asylum accommodation in the UK is an appropriate use of the ODA budget? What does he say about the FCDO having to cease all its non-essential programmes, which could be important to ensuring that people stay in their home country, rather than feeling that they have to become a migrant? Does he have a plan for how the Home Office will fund asylum accommodation if it can no longer take money from the ODA budget?

One of the Home Office’s alternative approaches to accommodating some asylum seekers—a maximum of around 500 at a time—is the Bibby Stockholm barge. In January 2024, the Home Office’s permanent secretary informed the Home Affairs Committee that it costs £120 a night to accommodate a man on the Bibby Stockholm, as compared with £140 a night in a hotel. That figure is based on full occupancy, but the barge was not fully occupied when we visited in January, and we were led to believe that it will never reach its full capacity of 500. We are also aware that the initial figure did not include the barge’s set-up costs, which amounted to around £22 million. The permanent secretary assured us that when set-up costs were included,

“there is a total-life saving from use of the Bibby Stockholm of £800,000.”

However, we understand that the contract for the barge is for only 18 months. Can the Minister say over what period the total-life saving is calculated? At what level of occupancy does the Bibby Stockholm cease to be value for money? What figures has the average cost per person per night fluctuated between over the past year?

We put all these questions to the permanent secretary, and I am aware that the National Audit Office is conducting a value-for-money audit of asylum accommodation, which will not be published until 22 March. In recent oral evidence sessions with Ministers, the Home Affairs Committee has repeatedly asked about the finances of the Bibby Stockholm and other asylum accommodation sites, but sadly with few meaningful replies.

What specifically is driving the capital budget increase in asylum costs? In the Home Office’s proposal, the capital departmental expenditure limit budget will go up to £1,399,800,000—an increase of £468.5 million. That is a more than 50% increase on the initial budget of £931.3 million. Is that due to the Prime Minister’s announcement in June 2023 that two other barges had been procured, in addition to the Bibby Stockholm—there is no explicit reference to that in the estimates memorandum —or is it for the additional detention facilities required under the Illegal Migration Act?

Secondly, why did the cost of processing an asylum claim go from £9,000 in 2019 to £21,000 in 2022-23? That is a real-terms increase of 109%.

Again, Home Office spending on the UK-Rwanda partnership is a familiar story. The Home Affairs Committee has finally been able to glean that large sums of money have been committed to this scheme, but largely via retrospective disclosures and an accidental leak in an International Monetary Fund board paper in Rwanda. The Committee has, once again, had to join forces with the Public Accounts Committee to ask the National Audit Office to find out the costings of the scheme. I reiterate that it is very unsatisfactory that when we have been holding our normal scrutiny sessions with Ministers and officials to try to get detail on spending and any further commitments, we have repeatedly been met with silence from Ministers and been told to wait until the accounts for the Department are published at the end of the financial year.

Let us be clear: the failure to respond to our requests is not because anyone behind the scenes has judged the value-for-money test of this policy to be so overwhelmingly watertight that disclosures to Parliament are completely unnecessary, unsatisfactory as that would be. On the contrary, the permanent secretary required a ministerial direction in April 2022 to start implementation of the Rwanda partnership, because he judged that there was insufficient evidence of the deterrent effect that had been suggested, and therefore of the scheme being value for money. That ministerial direction has not been revoked, and it is in force today, with even more money being committed to this scheme. As the Institute for Government points out, permanent secretaries have a duty to seek a ministerial direction if they think a spending proposal breaches the value-for-money criteria—that is,

“if something else, or doing nothing, would be cheaper and better”.

That makes it even more important that Parliament can scrutinise this scheme and have the full costs available.

Less than two weeks ago, we learned, via the National Audit Office investigation that the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and I had sought, that the UK Government have committed to making payments to cover asylum processing and operational costs, and an integration package, for each individual relocated to Rwanda, and that these payments can last for five years and total £150,874 per person. Ministers had previously indicated that the per-person payments in the Rwanda scheme would be similar to the per-person cost of processing claims in the UK. Asked at the Home Affairs Committee what the UK processing cost was, the then Minister responsible for illegal migration said that it was £12,000, although we now know that it is £21,000.

Here is what else we have learned: the Home Office has committed to pay the Rwandan Government £370 million under the economic transformation and integration fund. It will also pay an additional £20,000 per individual relocated, and a further £120 million once 300 people have been relocated. That is in addition to the £150,874 per person for asylum processing and operational costs. On top of that, we also have the direct costs incurred by the Home Office in managing and overseeing the scheme and transporting people to Rwanda. As of February 2024, the Home Office had incurred costs of £20 million, which it expects to rise to £28 million by the end of 2023-24. The Home Office estimates that it will incur further costs of approximately £1 million per year in staff costs and £11,000 per individual for flight costs. It would be helpful if the Minister could let the House know whether he now has an airline available to remove people to Rwanda, because that is another question to which we have not been able to get an answer.

The Home Office will also incur costs to escort individuals to Rwanda, including training costs of £12.6 million in 2024-2025 and £1 million per year thereafter in fixed costs, plus further escorting costs that are dependent on the number of flights required. That does not include the wider costs of implementing the Illegal Migration Act 2023, such as the cost of providing sufficient detention facilities to hold people before they are relocated. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain what arrangements are in place for that; that is linked to my question on capital costs.

Will the Minister comment on whether it was a mistake not to make the full set of costs I have just listed known to Members of this House, especially given that Members were legislating on this policy but did not have the information available on cost to make a judgment on value for money? Why did it require an investigation by the National Audit Office to get basic, factual information? Does the Minister think that the permanent secretary is wrong in his assessment that there is insufficient evidence

“to demonstrate that the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough”

to justify its cost? Is the Minister also able to assist the House on the number of people who will be sent to Rwanda under the Illegal Migration Act after the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill is enacted?

In recent days, it has appeared that the Government will offer asylum seekers whose applications are unsuccessful £3,000 to relocate to Rwanda voluntarily, alongside those forcibly removed under the scheme, and that they too will be entitled to support for five years.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right: the justification that we hear time and again from those on the Government Benches for the Rwanda scheme is that it will break the business model of the people smugglers and traffickers. Does she think that providing a voucher scheme for people traffickers is going to break their business model?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

The right hon. Gentleman makes his point very clearly. To go back to that new development that we have heard about in recent days, will the Minister be clear with the House about what offer is being made for voluntary relocation? How many individuals will be eligible for the scheme? How much has the Home Office budgeted in total for support costs? The press are reporting that Home Office officials are calling asylum seekers to ask them if they would like to be sent to Rwanda. Is that correct?

In conclusion, for Parliament to be able to do its job, we need a major culture change at the Home Office. Calls for financial information must never be treated as irritating requests to be swatted away; they should be treated as part of the effective lifeblood of scrutiny and good governance. Big question marks hang over Ministers’ spending decisions on asylum and migration, particularly on accommodation and the UK-Rwanda partnership. If the Home Office is confident about how it plans to spend public money, it should have no problem letting Parliament see the full details in advance of how that money will be spent. If it is not confident, then it must change tack, let the light of scrutiny into the Home Office, and develop spending plans that it is willing to share with Parliament and the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this necessary and timely debate. It is necessary because the common thread that has run through just about every contribution is the lack of transparency and accountability in the way the Home Office goes about its business, and in how it accounts to this House for the way in which it goes about its business. It is timely because, as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said, The Guardian has published an article today about Home Office immigration database errors that affect more than 76,000 people. The hon. Lady, I think, said that it was a guddle. If I may say so, I think that is an uncharacteristic understatement on her part; in fact, it certainly meets the test for being called a right bùrach.

At the heart of the system, the Atlas tool is used by immigration officers and Home Office officials for processing any asylum or immigration dealings. That is underpinned by the snappily titled person centric data platform, which stores a migrant’s interactions with UK immigration systems over time, including visa applications, identity documents and biometric information. It stores the records of 177 million people and is part of a Home Office project to digitise fully visa and immigration systems that has cost more than £400 million since 2014. The PCDP records feed into Atlas, so that Border Force officials can view information and some people seeking to track their own applications can access them—and that is where the problems come to light.

There is an issue of something called “merged identities”. Essentially, merged identities, as I understand it, are of two ordinary people; for example, Madam Deputy Speaker, you may have an application that is live, so you might go in and find my picture attached to your data, or vice versa. How on earth can a Home Office official processing applications possibly hope to make sense of that? Indeed, the person accessing this information online will of course immediately be upset and alarmed at what they are finding; this is something that can bring up very profound feelings. It is an issue not just of data mismanagement—as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central said, the Information Commissioner’s Office is looking into this—but that strikes at the right and opportunity of an individual to access some of the most basic services, rented housing, accommodation, healthcare and so much else.

There is a substantive matter here. Clearly, this is yet another botched Government IT project, but the issue of process matters as well. Members of the House have been asking about the operation of Atlas and the PCDP and they have been given assurances by Ministers. The Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), who I had hoped might be in the debate today—fortunately for him, he is not—has given said in a written answer that no “systemic issues” have been identified with Atlas, but the documents that have been seen by The Guardian today clearly contradict that. Either the Minister has been misled by his officials, or he has been told something by his officials that he did not think would be advantageous for Parliament to hear, so the information and the answers have been framed in a particular way. Either way, it is clear that the culture within the Home Office is one that does not respect parliamentary accountability.

I hope that, when the Minister for Countering Illegal Migration, the right hon. and learned Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), comes to reply to the debate, he will tell the House what the Government knew about the problems with the Atlas system and the person centric data platform that underpins it, when they knew that, and why they have not brought information about it to the House. The Guardian has done a tremendous service to this House by exposing the full extent of Home Office failure, but that should not be necessary. We should not be relying on investigative journalists and on people blowing whistles from inside the Home Office; we should be able to take on trust what we are told, but we are told very little, and, on the basis of what we have read in The Guardian today, it seems that we can cannot even trust that.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.