Shabana Mahmood says Home Office ‘not yet fit for purpose’

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said her department is “not yet fit for purpose” after an internal report labelled it dysfunctional and detached from its core functions.

Mahmood, who took office last month, said the Home Office had been “set up to fail” but said she was working to rebuild it so it “delivers for this country”.

Her comments come after a “damning” report uncovered by The Times newspaper found a “culture of defeatism” on immigration and failures making it harder to tackle crime and small boats crossings.

The report, by the former Home Office special adviser Nick Timothy – who is now a Conservative MP – was commissioned in 2022 by the then home secretary Suella Braverman.

Timothy was given access to the department and officials to carry out a two-month review of its effectiveness.

He found “too much time is wasted” on identity politics and social issues at the Home Office, including “listening circles” in working hours in which civil servants meet to discuss their feelings about social and political issues.

He warned that the department’s performance was “uneven” with fragmented structures and no single official responsible for the immigration system as a whole.

Among the most serious criticisms was the handling of asylum and immigration. The report described the system as “lethargic”, with a backlog of 166,000 asylum cases and interviews often delayed for up to two years.

Timothy found many civil servants refuse to work in immigration because they were either “ethically” opposed to controlling borders or fear the blame when things go wrong.

It said the asylum process took an overly “defensive approach”, with “assessments of likely legal challenge, and even the possibility of defeat” used “as a reason not to do something”.

He also highlighted chronic problems with data and technology, warning that the department relied on outdated systems that made it “impossible to answer straightforward questions quickly”.

Timothy dismissed calls to split up the department, calling it a “distraction from the delivery of core business”.

Instead he called for urgent investment in modern, interoperable systems to improve decision-making.

“This report, written under the last Government, is damning. To those who have encountered the Home Office in recent years, the revelations are all too familiar.

“The Home Office is not yet fit for purpose, and has been set up for failure. As this report shows, the last Conservative government knew this, but failed to do anything about it.

“Things are now changing. I will work, with the new permanent secretary, to transform the Home Office so that it delivers for this country.”

Mahmood’s words echo those of former Labour Home Secretary John Reid, whose warning two decades ago sparked one of Whitehall’s biggest shake-ups.

In May 2006, Reid told MPs the immigration system was “not fit for purpose” following revelations foreign prisoners had been released without being considered for deportation.

Reid’s warning triggered major reforms that created the Ministry of Justice to run prisons and probation.

A senior source told the BBC that Permanent Secretary Antonia Romeo aims to make the Home Office “the ‘blue-chip’ department of Whitehall, and the destination department for top talent”.

“Antonia will be relentless in transforming the Home Office to get it match fit,” the source said.