An anonymous civil servant writes that any suggestion migration be reduced is met with horror among staff at the Home Office.
This week has left my Home Office colleagues celebrating. The Supreme Court’s ruling against the Rwanda plan, Suella Braverman’s exit and the appointment of a new untested minister have all uplifted the mood in Marsham Street.
Despite our change in boss, when it comes to controlling Britain’s borders nothing will change. I know this because I have worked for some time as a civil servant on immigration policy, and – in my experience – no priority is further from the Home Office in 2023 than stopping the boats or cutting net migration.
For all her strident bearing, Suella was cringingly apologetic in speeches to Home Office staff. Instead of instilling much needed discipline, she would tell us what a great job we were doing, not that this got her any kind of loyalty. She was mocked and insulted by London-based staff furious at the refusal to extend safe routes to an ever-growing number of countries.
Home Office officials have a moral and legal duty to do everything in their power to deliver the Government’s priorities on immigration. Political impartiality is a central tenet of the civil service code, but this has morphed into a culture of “stewardship”, as our permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft openly admitted in 2021 (when he was recorded telling colleagues there was no need to “slavishly” follow government policy on diversity).
What this means in practice is accepting the bien pensant view that immigration cannot and should not be controlled, overruling the instructions of ministers and thereby their democratic mandates, with many of my colleagues viewing their role as being part of the resistance to what they see as a radical Right-wing Government determined to ignore the rules to punish innocent migrants. This culture of defiance is so widespread that any suggestion of border controls is sneered at or ignored.
There is widespread understanding that our asylum rules are open to abuse. Any Border Force officer or civil servant who works on asylum policy will tell you this openly. Yet any suggestion that asylum rules be tightened or asylum seekers be refused is rejected out of hand as cold-hearted evil.
If I were to walk into a meeting and suggest reducing migration or ask how we could immediately deport small boat arrivals or foreign criminals, my colleagues might think to ring the many mental health services we are provided to check in on my sanity.
Even the most moderate attempts to do anything about migration are met internally as either unreasonable or not legally possible, with discussion being stopped dead by allusion to “international law”.
Instead of dealing with the national crises facing Britain, including record legal and illegal migration, endless time is wasted. Senior staff hold events on Black History Month, Windrush and microaggressions. We are told to attend quarterly “away days” (held online usually, most of us are in the office just one day a week) where we are given prizes and are told by senior civil servants just how wrong any political or press criticism of our work is. In meetings nominally discussing policy, we are forced to listen to HR directors give lectures on diversity and hand out awards about inclusivity. We are patronised and treated like children.
The mood is of self-congratulation and there is a refusal to engage let alone learn from the criticism the department receives, unless of course it comes from the Left or from an incredibly expensive commission finding that we are institutionally racist. There is no self-reflection on the fact we have completely failed to fulfil our democratic duty to reduce migration.
When the Rwanda scheme seemed a millimetre closer to happening, staff message boards were filled with comments vowing they will not work on such an evil project. Senior staff always mollify these messages and tell staff not to resign. Everyone knows that the clock is running down on the current Government and nothing really needs to be done; policies cannot be enacted as they need governance, and the governance needs terms of reference and the terms of reference need to be redrafted and then circulated a few more times before we can hold the first meeting. Many relatively senior officials spend their time dealing with this work, toiling away at things that will never be read or used in an endless round of busywork.
In spite of all this it wouldn’t matter if the Home Office was a finely oiled machine ready and eager to deliver on every possible government priority and determined to protect the UK’s borders. The clear messaging behind closed doors from the Treasury and other departments is that legal migration should be expanded to boost lacklustre economic growth.
For my colleagues, I suspect James Cleverly’s ascension is merely an opportunity to run rings around an inexperienced minister in a new department. And for Britain, our borders will remain uncontrolled.
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