Report finds Home Office managing scheme "relatively comfortably" but more help needed for vulnerable applicants
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, last week released his second report examining the EU Settlement Scheme.
You can read the 69-page report here.
The Home Secretary announced earlier this month that there have been more than 3 million applications to the Scheme. Priti Patel said: "It's the biggest scheme of its kind in British history and means that EU citizens can evidence their rights for decades to come."
According to the Home Office, caseworkers have been processing up to 20,000 applications a day, with the highest number of applications coming in October 2019 (over 400,000).
Whilst it was only released last week, the Independent Chief Inspector's report was authored last year and sent to the Home Office last September. Nevertheless, David Bolt says he believes that the bulk of the findings and recommendations in the report remain current.
Overall, David Bolt found that the Home Office was coping "relatively comfortably" with the Settlement Scheme, and the largely well-managed lead-in to the Scheme found in his first inspection report had been maintained as it went live.
The report also found, however, that there were a number of areas where the Home Office needs to make improvements.
Media articles, including BBC News and the Financial Times, headlined the Independent Chief Inspector's finding that, in particular, more needs to be done to reach vulnerable EU citizens.
The Financial Times noted: "there are concerns that some groups of European citizens may be unaware that they need to apply or might struggle to do so. The hardest-to-reach groups are thought to be the elderly, those in hospital and children in care. It is unclear how many such people there are in the UK."
The Independent Chief Inspector stated: "The Home Office has accepted or partially accepted eight of my nine recommendations. Most of the recommendations were aimed at improving the way the Scheme operates for vulnerable and hard-to-reach individuals, and applicants who are finding the process difficult. Given the Home Office's considerable efforts to date to make the EUSS a success, I imagined that I would be pushing at an open door. Some of the responses are less positive and constructive than I had hoped."
David Bolt was also concerned over the scale of data breaches.
He said: "The information provided to inspectors regarding data breaches is concerning, not least the increase in breaches each month between April and July 2019 with a slight dip in August 2019, albeit most of those in June were due to a postal company rather than EUSS staff or processes. Data breaches damage public confidence, and applicants will blame the Home Office, whether or not this is fair. It is therefore important for the Home Office to do everything it can to keep breaches to a minimum. Most appear to have involved document handling errors and these should be easiest to prevent with clear instructions and good organisation."
The Independent headlined that finding in its article on the report, noting: "The Home Office has been responsible for more than 20 data breaches a month in the administration of the EU settlement scheme, including losing passports and sending ID cards to wrong addresses."
Maike Bohn, co-founder of the3million group which represents EU citizens, told BBC News that the Independent Chief Inspector 's report "echoes our key concerns that not enough has been done to reach, inform and assist EU citizens through this crucial process. Like David Bolt we hoped for more positive and constructive responses from the Home Office."
The group Migrant Voice said: "We're pleased that this ICIBI report shines a spotlight on some key concerns relating to the EU Settlement Scheme, such as the hidden costs of applying, a lack of transparency and detail in the Home Office data, and the need for consistency in how applications are processed.
"We know that the Home Office has been failing to fully recognise and respond to concerns regarding vulnerable EU nationals and it's good to see the Chief Inspector advising the department to rectify this (although concerning that such obvious advice is still needed)."
In response to the Independent Chief Inspector's report, a Home Office spokesman was quoted by the BBC as saying: "We're pleased that the inspector praised the Home Office's management of the EU Settlement Scheme and recognised the wide range of support available online, by phone, and in person."