Parliament's Home Affairs Committee has today published its latest quarterly report on the work of the Home Office Immigration Directorates.
You can access it here.
The Home Affairs Committee gave the following key findings from the report:
• Despite the number of visa applications falling for consecutive quarters, the number of cases that received by UKVI but have yet to even be entered in the databases continues to rise. This is unacceptable, it is a simple administrative task which should easily be completed. The Home Office's failure to put data on computers is delaying the processing of cases and does not inspire confidence in their ability to manage this caseload.
• Home Office continues to lack an effective and efficient system for managing its immigration casework, a theme the Committee has noted many times over.
• The number of outstanding asylum applications is at an all-time high. Despite repeated warnings from the Committee the Home Office has done nothing to address this situation: it must set out what steps it is taking to tackle this now.
• An unacceptably high number of asylum applications are being dealt with inappropriately – resulting in people being returned to countries like Eritrea which the Government knows is unsafe – or successfully appealed. The Home Office must review its country guidance and how it applies it.
• If the Government continues to fail to reduce immigration detention times in line with the Committee's and the Shaw recommendations, further interventions such as a statutory limit on detention will have to be considered.
The Home Affairs Committee also said in the report that the immigration directorates must be prepared and resourced to deal with the heavy extra demands that will be placed on them by the fallout from Brexit.
It was the Brexit angle that attracted media headlines, with Telegraph reporting that the Committee warned the UK faces a 'surge' in EU migration before Brexit unless a cut-off date is applied.
The Independent said that the report warned the Government must urgently prepare for a possible surge in immigration ahead of Brexit while allaying fears over British and European citizens being used as "bargaining chips".
The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Keith Vaz MP, said: "The biggest issue relating to Brexit is migration. There is a clear lack of certainty in the government's approach to the position of EU migrants resident in the UK and British citizens living in the EU. Neither should be used as pawns in a complicated chess game which has not even begun. We have offered three suggested cut off dates, and unless the government makes a decision, the prospect of a 'surge' in immigration will increase. Multiple voices and opinions from government ministers causes uncertainty, and must stop."