Deportation backlog angers MPs

They include more than 600 offenders who were released from jail between 1999 and 2006, 57 of whom border officials have failed to trace.

The agency is also yet to clear a backlog of more than 500,000 asylum cases dating from 2006, and it could take another four years to deal with tens of thousands of applications from people officials cannot find.

The worrying findings are published today in a damning report by MPs, who say the agency appears “unable to focus on its key task of tracking and removing illegal immigrants”.

Other failures highlighted in the Commons Home Affairs Committee report include the £9.1m cost of iris recognition airport security scanners, which are being closed down after only six years.

MPs calculated the money could have been used to employ 60 immigration officers over the same period.

Committee chairman Keith Vaz said: “The reputation of the Home Office, and by extension, the UK Government, is being tarnished by the inability of the UK Border Agency to fulfil its basic functions.”

The report studies the agency’s performance since 2006, when it emerged that 1,013 foreign criminals who had served their sentences had been released back into the community without being considered for deportation.

Only 397 of these “Foreign National Prisoners” have been removed, and the agency has admitted it does not know where 57 of the offenders are.

The committee also heard that 520 foreign criminals who completed their sentences during the financial year 2010-11 had been allowed to remain in the country.

When MPs questioned the agency’s chief executive Rob Whiteman about these criminals, they found he had “difficulty” following the data his own organisation had provided.

“It is difficult to see how senior management and Ministers can be confident that they know what is going on if the agency cannot be precise in the information it provides to this committee,” the report says.

It adds there are still 17,000 asylum cases outstanding from a backlog the Government first identified in 2006, and the agency appears to be discovering more cases.

The committee said it was concerned about the size of a “controlled archive” of 119,000 cases where officials have been unable to trace the applicant.

Only 5,000 such cases have been resolved since the MPs’ last report on the issue was published in November last year.

Mr Vaz said: “UKBA appears unable to focus on its key task of tracking and removing illegal immigrants, overstayers or bogus students from the country. The so-called ‘controlled archive’, the dumping ground for cases where the UK Border Agency has lost track of the applicant, will take a further four years to clear at the current rate... This is unacceptable.”

MPs also raise doubts about the Government’s e-Borders programme – a plan to collect electronically information on all passengers entering or leaving the UK. They say it is “hard to see” how the agency could achieve its aim of having the scheme in place for all rail and sea passengers by December 2014.

The committee’s findings come a month after the Yorkshire Post revealed that more than £1m in compensation was paid to foreign criminals last year because of the agency’s failures.

In a statement Immigration minister Damian Green said:

“At the same time as clearing up the mistakes of the past, we are taking the action necessary to ensure the same errors will not be allowed happen in the future.

“We are starting the deportation process earlier and removing foreign criminals more quickly than ever. We are now making better asylum decisions, ensuring cases are properly tracked, improving intelligence and speeding up removals.

“This Government has chosen to publish more information than ever before, information which members of the public and Parliament can use to analyse our performance and hold us to account.”