Very frustrating interviews on @BBCR4Today this morning on Amber Rudd and #windrush. Shows how hard it is to make accountability work in the UK system - @instituteforgov on this instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/a…
Rudd linked the treatment of #windrush to the culture of the Home Office – failing to look at people. (That’s the reason why she is now the victim of leaks – not right but not surprising).
So the question is why do officials do that. One reason is that they feel pressure to meet targets for performance Ministers have set. And as Diane Abbott said it matters what the target is. (lots of work on how targets drive behaviour..)
A numbers target like this drives the department to classify people as illegal immigrants – and that seems to be how the Home Office was treating people without documentation – like #windrush
And it was part of the overall hostile environment approach – which put the burden on individuals to prove their entitlement. We saw last year numbers of EU citizens also falling foul of that approach.
Minister would have known of the individual impacts from letters from MPs
There is an immigration implementation task force - a Cabinet cttee - to which the Home Office would report progress on a regular basis - including on targets. national targets need to be cascaded to the frontline.
The private office might or might not have shown this memo to the Home Secretary – but if they thought there was something that would surprise her or she would be uncomfortable with, it would be a very hapless private office that didn’t show it to her.
ditto special advisers
The fact that the senior official at the Home Affairs Committee also said he did not know about the targets suggests a worrying divorce between policy and enforcement (aka implementation)
Yvette Cooper was right that a lot of these issues are for the permanent secretary as much as for the Home Secretary.
So this is a saga where everybody comes out badly.
Parliament which passed a policy with an impact assessment from the department warning of the risks.
Parliament which passed a policy with an impact assessment from the department warning of the risks.
Ministers who were happy implementing the policy until they were found out – and senior officials who appear complicit in doing something which was having perverse impacts.
A government very slow off the mark to respond and behind the curve at every turn. (though the last interview on Today was v heartening)
The EU has insisted an Independent Monitoring Authority on EU citizens rights after as part of the EU withdrawal deal. As @jl_owen has said, this case makes it look as though we need a more general oversight agency. instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/home-offi…
