The UK Border Agency has failed to create a “hostile environment” for employers of illegal migrant workers, collecting only a fraction of the fines imposed by adopting “too accommodating” an approach towards appeals.
According to John Vine, the independent chief inspector of immigration, the Agency has collected only £5.6 million of the £40 million in fines imposed since February 2008, calling into question coalition government claims that the UK was now a “hostile environment” for those seeking to benefit from abusing immigration controls.
Vine’s report also said that Parliament had granted powers to UKBA staff to crack down on illegal workers so it was “disappointing to find that the UK Border Agency had a largely passive approach towards the civil penalties scheme” and was “too accommodating” towards attempts by employers to reduce penalties.
The problem was that: “We seem to have adopted the ‘customer is always right’ approach when dealing with objections and appeals because we accept everything at face value,” the report said.
But this situation meant that, rather than being a deterrent to employing illegal workers, “we believe that this leniency and perceived passivity may have had the opposite effect”.
It also “most certainly did not constitute a ‘hostile environment’ for employer or illegal workers, and until the civil penalty compliance team has a way of measuring efficiency and effectiveness, the true level of performance of the team will remain an unknown quantity”, the report continued.
The study looked at the Agency’s running of the scheme in the North West of England and found that, while it exceeded targets during the last financial year, they were not ambitious enough and nor was the system either swift or effective. In fact, in some instances, it could be described as “slow, passive and cumbersome”.
The report also revealed that financial information published by the UKBA was misleading and lacked transparency. While staff were recording the total amount of fines issued, 70% led to an objection and 23% resulted in penalties being reduced or cancelled, with the new, unpublished figures being labelled as net recoverable debt.
An analysis of the 74 cases in question saw 18 having their penalty reduced or cancelled, with four of them having the initial fine cut by more than £12,500.
