‘Guess who’s going to be fostered?’: Staff play cruel ‘game’ with child asylum seekers about care places

Labour accuses government of ‘trying to hide shameful information’ after thirteen reports from former chief inspector published at all once

Staff at asylum seeker hotels made unaccompanied refugee children guess who was going to be fostered next in a cruel game uncovered in a report by the former borders chief.

The Home Office launched a full investigation after inspectors discovered the practice during a visit to hotels housing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Kent. One team leader said they would make the children guess who was going to leave the hotel for a foster placement next, explaining that they were “making a game of it”.

The game was described as “insensitive in the extreme and undoubtedly upsetting to the children” by the inspectors.

The shocking incident is just one revelation from a total of thirteen reports from the former inspector of borders and immigration that the Home Office published at all once on Thursday afternoon. Labour accused the government of “trying to hide shameful information” by dumping the reports.

The former inspector, David Neal, was dramatically sacked over Microsoft Teams last week for apparently breaching his contract by speaking to the media about alleged border security failings at City Airport.

He had submitted fifteen reports to the Home Office over the past year but, despite an agreement to publish the reports within eight weeks, none had been made public until Thursday.

Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said that government was “trying to hide shameful information” by publishing thirteen of the reports at the same time. She added: “It’s totally chaotic, it’s trying to hide things. I think it’s totally irresponsible.”

Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Dame Diana Johnson, said: “This is wholly inadequate and raises serious questions about what the Home Office has been doing all this time.” She asked: “Has the Home Office just been sitting on them?”

But Downing Street downplayed suggestions this was a deliberate move.

Former chief inspector David Neal spoke in front of MPs after his sacking (PA)

A No 10 spokeswoman said: “We wanted to publish them as swiftly as possible following the necessary and appropriate due diligence.”

Mr Neal’s reports found:

• Border security at UK airports is “neither effective nor efficient” with some posts left unstaffed.

• Quality of asylum decisions has been “sacrificed” in an attempt to slash the backlog, with decisions to withdraw claims sometimes made in error.

• Between July 2021 and September 2023, there have been 467 episodes of asylum-seeking children going missing from the hotels.

• Home Office operated a ‘secret policy’ when they stopped relocating Afghans from Pakistan to UK to limit use of hotels.

• The Home Office has a “culture of defensiveness” and “will not change” if it does not want to.

Here is a summary of some of the reports’ most important findings:

Quality of asylum decisions ‘sacrificed’ to slash backlog

Routine checks of the quality of asylum decisions have been “sacrificed” for increased productivity, a report by the former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has found.

This will likely increase the number of appeals made by asylum seekers “as a result of poor-quality refusals”, Mr Neal found - creating another backlog.

The number of asylum claims being “withdrawn” by Home Office officials has soared, yet only one of these decisions was quality assured, the report found.

Morale among asylum decision-makers is “extremely low” and 60 per cent of workers surveyed said they wanted to leave their role as soon as possible or within the next year.

They told the inspector’s team that “the pressure to meet targets affected their mental health”. In response to this, a “dedicated wellbeing hub” had been created on their internal communications platform.

In order to incentivise asylum decision-makers to hit targets, the department introduced a number of reward schemes. In one scheme, any member of staff who exceeded their target by 10 per cent was eligible for a £100 bonus.

With the government struggling to get their flagship Rwanda policy off the ground, 72 per cent of some 28,560 asylum claimants who were initially deemed ineligible for asylum in the year to June 2023 were then later admitted into the asylum process.

At the time of the inspection into asylum casework in June to October 2023, some 7,500 people were earmarked for removal to Rwanda.

Mr Neal was told by Home Office officials at the time of his inspection that no action would be taken on their cases until the Supreme Court ruled on the legality of the policy. Mr Neal described their cases as being “effectively in indefinite limbo”.

A ministerial decision was also made to prioritise asylum claims from Albanians, with staff telling inspectors that this had “delayed the processing of claims from other nationalities”.

No accurate data for Afghans who arrived during Operation Pitting evacuation

The Home Office does not have a “single accurate dataset” for Afghans who arrived during Operation Pitting, the military evacuation of Afghans and UK citizens after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, the chief inspector found.

The inspector noted that Home Office officials had resorted to contacting arrivals by phone to establish their immigration status. He said a number of British citizens had been incorrectly given temporary leave to remain as a result of the faulty data.

Mr Neal also criticised the Home Office for failing to announce that they had effectively halted Afghan relocations to the UK in November 2022, following a political decision to end the use of hotels in the UK.

The independent inspector did not find out about the decision until 7 March 2023, despite carrying out an inspection into Afghan resettlement.

The Independent revealed in April 2023 that hundreds of Afghans deemed eligible to come to the UK had been abandoned in Pakistan as a result of the decision to stop relocations.

Home Office is continuing to run ‘unregistered children’s homes’, with 467 incidents of children going missing from hotels

Borders chief Mr Neal said that the Home Office has been “running unregistered children’s homes for two years now”, in a report submitted in February this year.

The report focused on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who are being housed in hotels in Kent and are under the care of the Home Office.

He pressed the government to put the children “in the immediate care of Kent County Council”. He also raised concerns about a lack of checks of DBS clearance for staff at the hotels, with the Home Office only carrying out “periodic spot checks”.

The Home Office reported that between July 2021 and September 2023 there have been 467 episodes of children going missing from the hotels. In 320 of the incidents, the child was found but 147 children remained unaccounted for.

Home Office staff attributed the increase in missing children to an increase in the number of Albanian children entering the hotels, who are at much greater risk of disappearing.

As part of the inspection, Mr Neal visited two hotels in September 2023, both of which were in Kent. The children living in the hotels had little access to help, with no written information in their own language about the asylum process or where they would be transferred to, the report said.

Despite a court finding that housing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels was unlawful, there was no “exit strategy” detailing how the situation could be changed.

Home Office has a ‘culture of defensiveness’ and ‘will not change’

The Home Office has a “culture of defensiveness” and “will not change” if it does not want to, the borders and immigration watchdog warned in a report produced before he was fired.

In his annual report, covering April 2022 to March 2023, Mr Neal said the Home Office had a “reluctance to engage” with recommendations for improvement and he had experienced “significant pushback” while drafting inspection reports, including responses which “have gone way beyond” just checking factual accuracy.

“Some of this is perhaps down to a culture of defensiveness, but it is not good”, he said, although he noted many senior officials “embrace the independent oversight”.

He expressed fears that some officials would be “content to polish and put a positive gloss on far too much, which results in a failure to deliver real change”, adding: “To put it bluntly, if the Home Office does not want to change, it will not.

“The only meaningful way of determining whether a recommendation has been delivered is to review it as part of another inspection”.

Mr Neal also said he senses a “reluctance for some officials to get out on the ground and speak to people”, adding: “Part of that is a legacy of the pandemic, but the bigger part is a lack of self-confidence and a culture that prioritises office-bound policy over on-the-ground experience.”

Stansted border force caseload ‘increased 400 per cent after Brexit’

Border force managers at Stansted Airport told inspectors that their casework had increased by 400 per cent since the UK’s departure from the EU, with most of the cases coming from e-gate referrals.

The sacked border watchdog Mr Neal said that following his re-inspection of electronic passport gates “basic stuff” was “not being done well”. He added that the protection of the UK’s border was “neither effective nor efficient”.

Mr Neal added: “Inspectors saw border posts left unmanned while officers signalled for attention from their managers. This is unacceptable and needs to be addressed urgently”.