The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has welcomed the Home Office's “renewed focus” on tracking its progress on implementing the watchdog’s recommendations – but has once again warned that delays in publishing inspection reports undermines the inspectorate's work.
David Bolt, the interim ICBI, has used the annual report to once again urge the Home Office to start meeting a ministerial commitment to publish his reports within eight weeks of receiving them.
Bolt, who was ICIBI from 2015 to 2021, returned to the role – in which he is responsible for overseeing inspections of asylum accommodation, the work of the Border Force and other areas of the Home Office's work – in May. His predecessor, David Neal, had been sacked three months earlier over comments he made in the press about border security.
In an annual report that highlighted the challenges brought about by this three-month vacancy, Bolt said he had been pleased to hear of a “renewed focus within the department on tracking progress with implementing recommendations from the ICIBI and from other bodies”. The Home Office also began giving ICIBI regular updates on its work last year, as it had done up until 2019.
“As well as providing some measure of ICIBI’s impact, this should be a useful indicator of where future inspections could add value,” Bolt said.
However, he sounded a note of caution when summarising the Home Office’s response to the 21 reports Neal submitted last year, which contained 104 recommendations.
The Home Office accepted more of those recommendations (74%) than in the previous year (69%). It partially accepted 20%, compared to 29% the year before. And it outright rejected six of the recommendations in Neal's reports, compared with only one in 2022-23.
“While the statistics suggest that [ICIBI’s] recommendations largely hit the mark, as ever, the numbers tell only part of the story. Acceptance is not the same as implementation, as the inspectorate has too often found when it has returned to re-inspect an area, and again in 2023-24 re-inspections identified that earlier recommendations had been accepted but had not been implemented,” Bolt said in the foreword to his report.
Bolt used the foreword to once again highlight “longstanding problems” with the time it takes the Home Office to publish inspection reports. On average, it took the Home Office 18 weeks from the time it received a report from ICIBI to make it public, with one published 44 weeks later.
He noted that just three of Neal’s 21 inspection reports last year were published within the eight-week timeframe ministers had committed to. All of the three on-time reports were published “at a time when questions were being asked in both Houses of Parliament and in the media about the number of unpublished reports”.
Bolt noted that his predecessor had “made no secret of his frustrations with the delays”, and had been concerned about the extent to which the Home Office sought to use the formal process of checking the factual accuracy of draft reports to push for changes to ICIBI’s conclusions.
Two years ago, Neal used ICIBI’s 2021-22 annual report to warn that continued delays in publishing reports “begins to devalue the purpose of independent oversight” and damaged his independence. Bolt himself has also previously said delays “undermine the impact and value” of the watchdog’s work.
Neal also felt a provision in the UK Borders Act 2007 that enables the home secretary to make redactions on national security grounds “had become overused". Bolt noted that 10 of the 21 inspection reports published last year contained redactions, which were “extensive” in some cases. Putting the figures into context, he pointed out that between ICIBI’s creation in 2008-09 and 2022-23, only 11 out of 179 inspection reports had ever contained redactions.
“The negative effects of delayed publication have been well-rehearsed, including by the first independent chief inspector, John Vine, and by me in previous annual reports, in particular how it is seen to undermine ICIBI’s independence and to reduce the impact of the inspections, especially where it is evident from the Home Office’s published response that it has not used the time since it received a report to make necessary improvements,” he said.
Bolt said that during his time as interim ICIBI, he planned to press for the timely publication of reports, as well as encouraging the Home Office not to wait until a report is published before implementing its recommendations.
He said he would challenge redactions "where I believe them to be unwarranted, accepting that the judgement of what is a national security concern rests with the secretary of state".
"From experience, I do not expect navigating these issues will be easy, and no doubt there will be disagreements, but I do firmly believe it is in the interests of the Home Office as well as of the ICIBI, and of our many stakeholders, to try to make it work," he said.
'The last few months have not been easy'
Bolt also shared concerns about the temporary nature of his role, saying the interim appointment "has affected the forward-looking parts" of the annual report. Ordinarily, ICIBI would prepare an inspection plan for the upcoming year setting out which areas of the Home Office's remit they planned to subject to scrutiny.
However, he said he had opted not to do this "in order not to tie the hands of the incoming independent chief inspector" and had instead focused on finishing inspection work that had begun under his predecessor.
"Instead, I intend to use my time in post to work with stakeholders, the Home Office, and ministers to identify the areas and topics where a future inspection would add most value, in order to help inform the new independent chief inspector’s thinking," he said.
Bolt said that as he was writing the report, recruitment for the next independent chief inspector was on hold as the general election was approaching. The timing of a new appointment was "uncertain", he said.
He said the last few months had "not been easy" for the inspectorate, which has 27 full-time members of staff at present. But he said that while he had been concerned about the impact the vacancy at the top of the inspectorate might have on morale and retention, he "found that morale was high and that a lot of useful work had been done to ensure that the inspectorate remained ‘match fit’".
"The entire team should take credit for the professional way it has dealt with this period of uncertainty, with particular recognition due to ICIBI’s chief of staff, Lamees Abu-Hayyeh, for her calm and positive leadership," he wrote.
"I believe that David Neal also deserves recognition for having built a strong and resilient group of staff who are fully committed to the important work that the ICIBI is charged with doing. I am very much looking forward to working with them."