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A “secret” and potentially unlawful policy in effect blocked Afghans fleeing the Taliban from relocating to the UK in the wake of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to clamp down on migration, according to an independent Home Office watchdog.
The findings in a report by David Neal, the chief inspector of borders at the time, relate to a decision taken in November 2022 to stop issuing visas under two resettlement schemes, including one for Afghans who had worked for the UK authorities.
The halt was initiated due to a shortage of temporary accommodation for new arrivals. It continued after a speech by Sunak in December 2022 where he set out a “political directive” to clear the asylum backlog and to stop using temporary accommodation, according to the report.
Neal, who was recently sacked after publicly criticising the Home Office, said the decision amounted to “effectively operating a secret policy” because officials failed to disclose it to his inspectors for several months.
Referring to a 2011 Supreme Court ruling, he added that the Home Office’s “operation of an unpublished or ‘secret’ policy contrary to its published policy has been found to be unlawful in the past”.
Neal said that no written instruction had been issued to the Home Office by Downing Street, while internal documents revealed officials warned ministers in January 2023 that the Home Office was operating an unpublished policy and this should be remedied.
About 600 applications made by Afghans were paused as of the end of February 2023, according to the report. It took the government until March of that year to publicly admit the ban on the use of temporary accommodation for asylum seekers would affect the Afghan resettlement schemes.
In its official response to Neal’s report, the Home Office said that it notified applicants of a pause on entry clearance in May 2023, six months after it took the decision. It said it resumed issuing visas in July.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the decision had forced those affected to seek unsafe alternative routes. “These failures left men, women and children in limbo facing terrible uncertainty,” he said.
Sir Stephen Timms, a Labour MP who works closely with Afghans resettled in the UK, said the schemes “were set up with good intentions, to provide sanctuary to those fleeing the Taliban” and called on ministers to provide an urgent explanation.
The two schemes were established in the aftermath of the Taliban seizing Kabul in August 2021.
The report was submitted to the Home Office in June 2023 but only published last week, along with 12 other reports compiled during Neal’s tenure at the immigration watchdog.
In an interview with the Financial Times last month, Neal was highly critical of the government’s immigration policy and accused the government of sitting on more than a dozen reports he had submitted since last April.
Neal, who rose to a senior role in the military police during his 26 years in the army, was sacked days later after a string of critical press interviews. The government said at the time that he “breached the terms of [his] appointment and lost the confidence of the home secretary”.
In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the Home Office unlawfully detained three foreign nationals pending deportation as the actions were carried out in accordance with a “secret policy”.
The Home Office said in a statement: “We’re pleased that we managed to get the significant number of Afghans who were in hotels into settled accommodation.”
