Amber Rudd summoned to parliament over Home Office report showing deportation targets

Amber Rudd is under renewed pressure to resign after denying the Home Office imposed targets for the number of people it wants its enforcement teams to deport – only for a report to appear to contradict her.

The Home Secretary will have to explain herself to Parliament after being summoned by Labour to answer an urgent question on the issue.

Questioned about the Windrush scandal on Tuesday, the Ms Rudd had told MPs on a powerful parliamentary committee that there were no targets for deportations, adding: “That’s not how we operate”.

But questions were raised about her evidence to the Home Affairs Committee after a government document from 2015 emerged showing that targets for "voluntary" deportations did exist.

Ms Rudd’s claims also contradicted evidence given to the same committee by representatives of immigration staff, who insisted employees are given targets for how many people they should deport.

Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Service Union, told the MPs the Home Office had set a “net removals target that enforcement teams have to meet, so they are aiming to remove a certain number of individuals in any given month".

Asked about this, Ms Rudd said: "We don't have targets for removals.

"I didn't hear the testimony, I'm not sure what shape that might be in. If you ask me, 'are there numbers of people we expect to be removed?', that's not how we operate.

"I do think it is right... where there are people here illegally that we do try to remove them."

The Home Secretary faced fresh pressure after the emergence of a 2015 report by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration that appeared to confirm Ms Moreton’s claims.

According to the document, in 2015-16 the Home Office asked its 19 enforcement teams across the UK to aim for 12,000 "voluntary" departures of people with no legal right to remain in the country.

Ms Rudd’s apparent confusion over whether her department imposed targets led the committee chair, Labour MP Yvette Cooper, to demand the issue be “cleared up” immediately.

The Home Secretary promised to “certainly take a look” at Ms Moreton's claims that enforcement teams are working to specific targets.

The Home Office later said it had never been government policy to take decisions arbitrarily to meet a target, but did not deny that targets existed.

The culture secretary, Matt Hancock, also refused to deny that enforcement teams were given targets.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “As far as I understand it, it has never been Home Office policy to take decisions arbitrarily to meet the target.

“There are rules around immigration. Immigration needs to be controlled but the rules also need to be fair.”