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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

I will leave hazarding a guess to the Home Secretary, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. The simple truth is that we have been asking for these numbers for some time, and we are not the only ones: so have several public bodies. For a very long time, the Home Secretary, his predecessor and his predecessor’s Ministers all denied that it was even possible to assess such numbers—and at a time when the Prime Minister had actually summoned those numbers from the Home Office. So the hon. Gentleman has not got much to go on in this regard. Last year, this approach to policy and its public handling played a part in the resignation of two Home Office Ministers. By now, the Government should have learned the lessons of those events, but the latest revelations from the Home Office have a ring of déjà vu. It would be more than generous to the men concerned to accept that they genuinely had no idea about the true figure on the numerous occasions in the past that they had denied it. But ignorance of such an important fact should be no defence; it merely confirms people’s suspicions that this Government have let the immigration and asylum system run out of control, and are clueless as to how to put it right. [Interruption.] The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality says from a sedentary position, ““Go read the documents.”” He should spend a little while reading last year’s newspapers, which would tell him a bit about this issue. Time and again, the Government’s left hand has not known what their right hand was doing. First, we had the chaos of the eastern European immigrants, who unveiled the breakdown in relations between the head office of the Home Office and the immigration and nationality directorate. A whistleblower revealed that immigrants from eastern Europe were being waved into Britain without proper checks. The then Immigration Minister first denied that it had happened—until it was proven to be true. Then, she blamed junior civil servants—until it turned out to be the work of senior officials, with ministerial acquiescence. Next, she said that such cases were rare and untypical—until they were shown to be widespread. Then, the whistleblower was sacked, but the Minister stayed. Secondly, we had the scandal of the migrant scams in Romania and Bulgaria, which were brought to light by our consul in Bucharest. This incident revealed a complete lack of communication between the Home Office and the Foreign Office. Our consul warned the Government that groups in Romania and Bulgaria were making fraudulent claims, yet Home Office officials granted such people visas anyway, knowing their claims to be false. Again, the consul was sacked, the Minister stayed. The Minister was finally forced to go, but only because of the utter chaos and lack of communication in the Home Office itself. She claimed not to know of any of these scams; it turned out that she had been warned a year before by her own Home Office colleague. If ordinary people behaved like that in their daily jobs, they would be sacked straight away—and rightly so. Within this Government, however, there is no such sanction: if a Minister fails, cover it up; if that fails, blame someone else; only if that fails will a Minister give in and go. In the light of the Government’s capacity for incompetence and irresponsibility, it is little wonder that people hold politicians in such low regard. While we are talking about numbers, let us consider what the Government promised.