A former borders and immigration chief said it was “disingenuous” for Home Office ministers to suggest they did not know targets existed for removing people from Britain.
Rob Whiteman, a former chief executive of the now-defunct UK Border Agency, said “of course” ministers knew about such targets, but they would not have influenced the problems faced by the Windrush generation. Rather, “poor policy” was to blame for the scandal.
His comments came after the home secretary, Amber Rudd, denied the existence of removal targets before admitting they were in place, and then finally pledging to scrap them.
“Targets are set operationally by managers but of course ministers would know there are targets,” Whiteman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “They are intelligent people and they will see performance reports, bids to Treasury for resources, the departmental plan, which would cover the targets that are being set for individual services.
“So fair’s fair, ministers could say we don’t actually set these targets, they’re being set by the operations, but it’s disingenuous surely to suggest they don’t know they exist because they would have seen them in performance reports and other internal documents.”
MPs have repeatedly raised serious concerns about the target-driven culture of the Home Office, which some said could have led enforcement officers to target “low-hanging fruit” – people living in the UK legally but without the correct documents, such as many of the Windrush generation.
Lucy Moreton, head of the immigration workers’ union, told MPs on Wednesday that removal targets “translated down” from the government’s headline net migration target set as a political goal in 2010.
But Whiteman insisted it was the policy and its implementation, not targets, that was behind the crisis.
“If there had been no targets, I think this would have still happened,” he said. “I think this is more about the culture and the tone within the Home Office and either badly thought-out policy or bad implementation.
“I don’t believe it’s driven by targets and of course you have to be careful with targets, you mustn’t be driven by them, but I don’t think that’s the problem.”
