Civil service needed ‘culture shock’ to tackle asylum backlog, says ex-minister
Robert Jenrick said stronger efforts were required to stop small boat arrivals in the first instance.
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Your support makes all the difference.Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick said it was a “culture shock” to civil servants when failures to tackle the asylum backlog were challenged.
It comes after the Home Office said the Prime Minister’s target of clearing the legacy asylum backlog had “been delivered” despite thousands of cases still awaiting a final decision.
The Home Office said all 92,000 applications made before June 2022 had been reviewed, with 86,800 decisions made — but 4,500 so-called “complex cases” have been highlighted that “require additional checks or investigation for a final decision to be made”.
With official figures on the legacy backlog due to be published on Tuesday, Mr Jenrick said clearing the backlog had been a “promise kept”.
But the Conservative MP said the work had been about “managing the symptoms of the problem, not solving it” as he repeated his call for tougher action on stopping the boats.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made putting a stop to migrants crossing the Channel to enter Britain without permission one of his top pledges to the electorate ahead of a likely general election this year.
Figures published on Monday showed small boat arrivals were down by almost a third last year compared to 2022.
The Tory Party leader told the Daily Express on Tuesday that numbers had been cut through “relentless action” and that he was “determined to end the burden of illegal migration on the British people”.
Part of Mr Sunak’s plan for further clamping down on crossings is to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The Supreme Court ruled in November that his policy was unlawful, with the Prime Minister responding by signing a new treaty with the east African nation and introducing new legislation deeming it a safe country.
But Mr Jenrick, once a close ally of the Prime Minister, quit his Home Office role in protest at the plan not going far enough.
Posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday, Mr Jenrick said he had initially been told it would be “impossible to clear the asylum backlog” while at the same time maintaining “rigour” when he was still in office.
“But we did it, processing record number of cases while reducing the grant rate,” he tweeted.
“Central to achieving this has been the revolution in performance and accountability.
“We cut out reams of unnecessary paperwork and held decision makers to account. Expectations were made clear.
“Top performers were rewarded. Failure was challenged for once.
“Accountability was a culture shock. It made people uncomfortable. But it was desperately needed.
“The civil service more generally would benefit from more honest conversations about individual performance, placing the interest of the public we serve over an easy life.
“Decision makers who focussed on specific nationalities were better able to pick apart the myriad of lies used by illegal migrants to game the system.
“Wherever we could, we re-examined country guidance and challenged lazy assumptions about the safety of countries.”
Mr Jenrick, who served under sacked home secretary Suella Braverman, went on to warn that those asylum seekers who have had their claims rejected will “appeal and frustrate their removal”, with “many ultimately using” the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Hardline right-wing Tories have advocated for the UK to withdraw from the ECHR in order to prevent international courts from blocking deportations.
However, Mr Sunak was reluctant to go that far when putting forward his emergency legislation to address the Supreme Court judges’ concerns about his Rwanda policy.
Mr Jenrick said those granted asylum after coming to Britain via unauthorised routes were “overwhelmingly low-skilled men with poor literacy who will remain dependent on the state for decades to come”.
He cited a University of Amsterdam study that estimated that the average asylum seeker from the Middle East or North Africa costs the Netherlands almost £550,000 (625,000 Euros) over their lifetime.
“The immense cost to taxpayers and the damage to our communities will continue until we take the most robust steps possible to stop the boats and secure our borders,” he continued.
“That is why I feel so strongly that the ineffective Rwanda Bill needs to be changed or else the cycle goes on.”