Good morning. The Home Office is under fire from government critics almost constantly at the moment, but this morning it is publicising what, by the department’s standards, counts as rare good news; it says arrests for illegal working have reached their highest level since records began.
Here is the PA Media write-up.
Immigration enforcement visits have reached their highest level since comparable data began in 2011, data shows.
Some 21,858 visits were recorded in the 12 months to September this year, according to Home Office figures.
This is up 38% from 15,894 in the previous 12-month period, and an increase of 56% on 13,990 visits that were carried out in the same period up to September 2012.
A previous peak of 20,989 was hit in the year to September 2015.
Enforcement visits from officers can be to businesses or home addresses to check on someone’s status, or on illegal working or other immigration crimes.
It comes as further figures show visits for illegal working totalled 11,052 up to September, a rise of 51% on the previous 12 months when 7,343 were carried out.
The drive comes as ministers are seeking to crack down on illegal working in the UK, as part of efforts to deter those coming to the country illegally.
Immigration enforcement was handed £5m to arrest, detain and remove migrants working illegally at sites such as takeaways, beauty salons and car washes.
Elsewhere, data shows there were 8,232 arrests of illegal workers in the year to September, up 63% on 5,043 in the previous 12 months.
But, in rather confusing messaging, Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary has also given an interview to the BBC where she confirmed that her department is still not functioning properly. In 2006 John Reid, another Labour cabinet minister appointed home secretary on the assumption that he would be more hardline than his predecessor, famously said the department was “not fit for purpose”. Almost 20 years on, the description still applies, Mahmood said.
She told the BBC:
I’ve already said the Home Office is not yet fit for purpose …
The most recent report [written by Tory MP Nick Timothy] was very familiar to me in the sense of what I’ve seen just in the few weeks I’ve been in this job. It’s obviously a department that has a range of problems, whether that’s procuring contracts, whether that is holding on to senior staff, it obviously deals with emergency and crises issues on a regular basis, and I think over a long period of time has been found not to be able to rise to the scale of the challenge of those crises.
Mahmood was referring to this report by Timothy, an adviser to Theresa May when she was home secretary, and her response to it.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.45am: Lord Hermer, the attorney general, and Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister, give evidene to the joint committee on national security strategy on the China spy prosecution that collapsed.
10am: The Reform UK Lee Anderson and Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy, speak at a press conference. It is the third press conference the party has held this week.
10.45am: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, speaks at the IPPR Scotland conference. Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, is speaking at 12.30pm.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
After 12.30pm: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is using the 10-minute rule procedure to propose a bill to take the UK out of the European convention on human rights. Another MP is likely to give a speech opposing the bill, and there is likely to be a vote.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
