The meeting was focused on how Home Office processes and policies are developed and how the department is held to account for its actions.
Chair: Baroness Mary Goudie
Deputy Chair: Ruvi Zeigler, Chair, New Europeans UK
Secretary: Else Kvist, New Europeans UK
Speakers:
Mihai Calin Bica and Raluca Dumitru, Roma Support Group
Helena Geach and Rhys Davies, Independent Monitoring Authority
David Neal, Former Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (2021-2024)
The meeting was attended by various groups and organisations supporting EU citizens.
In-person attendees:
Roger Casale, CEO, New Europeans UK
Tamara Flanagan OBE, New Europeans UK
Myriam Watson, EU Delegation in the UK
Dr Roxana Barbulescu, University of Leeds
Monique Hawkins, The3million
Dr Gilberto Estrada Harris, Settled
Angela Newey, Citizens Advice NW Kent
Indrani Currie, Citizens Advice NW Kent
Kate Willoughby
The APPG discussion
New Europeans UK had surveyed agencies working with vulnerable EU citizens via the EUSS Alliance, and together with its own history of eight years’ case work, proposed that the APPG take evidence from agencies and individuals working with the Home Office.
The survey found sector representatives expressing the view that the Home Office’s development of policy was not evidence-based, no impact assessments were made, or at least not shared, and policy development proceeds without consultation, and staff appear reluctant to admit or rectify mistakes. They also expressed the view that mistakes, delays and system outages adversely impact citizens all the time, with the Home Office maintaining these are unusual occurrences.
The APPG heard from the Roma Support Group, who have worked alongside the Home Office since 2019, when the process of developing the EU Settlement Scheme was collaborative. More recently, they pointed to the number of vulnerable citizens from those communities, including children, whose ability to acquire status appears limited, the lack of clear information and the number of individuals from the Roma Community awarded pre-settled status, which is much higher than the average among other populations, despite their presence in the UK for many decades.
The IMA described its role as monitoring legislation and engaging with the Home Office, as well as investigating consequences of policy actions which are raised with them by citizens and groups, and working with the advice sector to identify issues and collect data with a view to improving the quality of policy decisions. The IMA equally talked about working ‘upstream’ to help the HO implement decisions and inform policy development. They talked about the availability of data being limited by the Home Office, which is, at times, unhelpful.
The former Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (2021-2024), who produced the last report on the EU Settlement Scheme covering 2020/2021 (published in 2022), also gave evidence. That report was focused on how the Home Office responded to vulnerability and included seven recommendations, which included making better use of data on vulnerability and protected characteristics, and completion of a lessons learned review of the EUSS to ensure learning is applied to other parts of the Home Office. He pointed to the limited extent to which those external to the Home Office can influence policy decisions and actions, noting areas highlighted for improvement in reports and recommendations were accepted, but were not always acted upon and/or followed up.
He also pointed to reports by others, including parliamentarians (Nick Timothy MP), on the culture of poor management in the Home Office.
He suggested that groups work together to raise issues with parliamentarians and select committees, taking every opportunity to give evidence to committees to raise issues and influence policy.
Members of the audience raised questions about the Home Office’s unwillingness to respond to questions about extremely delayed decision-making; service entanglement and outages, which had had a devastating impact on citizens’ everyday lives, and conflicting information about the validity of Certificates of Application, not accepted by Border Force agents, leaving folk stranded at borders.
It was concluded that a report bringing together examples of these concerns would be produced for the members of the APPG with a briefing which could be used to inform questions to the Home Office Ministers.