Inspection report published: An inspection of the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority (January - June 2024)
This inspection examined the performance of the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority since its establishment in 2021.
This inspection examined the performance of the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority (IECA), assessing its practices and processes for making decisions, its approach to assuring the timeliness and quality of those decisions, and its management of safeguarding issues.
The inspection was initiated by my predecessor, David Neal, and the bulk of the evidence was gathered in January and February 2024. However, it was not possible to conclude the inspection in the usual manner as there was no Independent Chief Inspector in post from 21 February to 3 June 2024. In June, I asked the Home Office for some additional information and updated evidence. My report, including the Key Findings and Recommendations, reflects both the original evidence and this new material.
The ICEA was created in November 2021 to streamline decisions about modern slavery referrals relating to foreign nationals potentially liable to removal, including those whose asylum claims were deemed inadmissible, foreign national offenders, and those held in immigration detention. The IECA’s role is to assess the evidence and determine whether the person is entitled to the support and protections set out in the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
When the IECA was created, the then Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and others raised concerns about the conflating of enforcement action and removals with the safeguarding and protection of vulnerable people. They saw IECA’s position within Immigration Enforcement as creating a conflict of interest. In conducting this inspection, the ICIBI bore these concerns in mind.
However, where the inspection found issues with decision quality it was not the result of any discernible bias in favour of enforcement action but because of problems with training, advice and guidance, and with the quality assurance regime, alongside changes in legislation and ministerial priorities.
In January 2023, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (NABA) raised the burden of proof threshold for someone seeking to be recognised as a victim of modern slavery. This led to an immediate, steep increase in negative Reasonable Grounds (first stage) decisions for NRM referrals decided by the IECA. A successful legal challenge to the new threshold saw refusal rates fall from the middle of 2023, but they settled at around 50%, much higher than they had been before the NABA came into force. The picture for Conclusive Grounds (second stage) decisions was even more stark. In 2022, 82% were positive. In 2023, 70% were negative, and this increased to 80% in the five months to May 2024.
In light of the significant increases in negative outcomes at both stages of the NRM process, I would have expected the IECA to have shown greater interest in ensuring, and being able to demonstrate, that it was making ‘right first time’ decisions, especially given the life-changing nature of NRM decisions. However, the quality assurance regime, in particular, did not take sufficient account of the potential impact on individuals of poor-quality decisions. The same was true of the IECA’s response to safeguarding issues, which was both under-developed in its thinking and under-resourced.
The ICIBI has raised similar concerns in numerous previous inspection reports and while my recommendations here are focused on the IECA the rest of the Migration and Borders System needs to consider where they are relevant and adopt them.
There are also lessons for the wider Home Office in the way the IECA was created. Between November 2021 and June 2024, the IECA workforce grew from 78 full-time equivalents to 374. Recruiting and assimilating staff on this scale and at pace is challenging, and it is to the IECA’s credit that it has created a working environment in which staff now feel supported and find managers approachable.
However, poor sequencing of recruitment to different roles meant that during 2023 the onboarding of technical specialists, who provide quality assurance and technical advice, did not keep pace with the recruitment of decision makers. As a result, the support available to the latter, who were mostly new and inexperienced, was inconsistent or too slow. There was a similar problem with filling key management roles, leading to gaps in governance and oversight, so that systems that should underpin any operation, such as a risk register and bespoke standard operating procedures (SOPs) were not in place.
IECA was not the first Home Office business area to have to manage large-scale recruitment quickly (e.g. Asylum Operations), or to have to cope with uncertainties over workloads (due here to delays in the implementation of the Illegal Migration Act 2023), nor is it likely to be the last. The department should therefore be doing more to learn lessons, identify pitfalls, and share ‘best practice’ about workforce planning, and I have made a recommendation to this effect.
This inspection makes seven recommendations in total, all of which the Home Office has accepted, either fully or in large part.
The completed report was sent to the Home Secretary on 7 August 2024 and therefore publication today falls well outside the agreed 8-week timescale, which is disappointing. However, this delay is mitigated to some extent by the fact that the Home Office has recognised where the recommendations apply more widely than the IECA and has provided a detailed response covering each of the main operational directorates, setting out both the current position and its plans for improvements, which will enable ICIBI and others to monitor and report on progress.
David Bolt, Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration
11 December 2024