I called on the Home Office to work with the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, to get a grip on their core responsibilities after he had said that it was outsourcing immigration operations “on the cheap”, raising concerns about the control it retained over its own functions.

I recently asked the National Audit Office to investigate the Home Office’s partnership with Sopra Steria, which it had awarded a £91 million contract to provide visa services. As reported in The Independent, I said that ”these services make decisions which change lives. It is simply not good enough for the Home Office to use public money to pass the buck to private companies, who can make millions of pounds of profit from immigration detention and visa processing”.

The Inspector confirmed the dangers of the Home Office’s approach in outsourcing immigration services – it’s a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and doing it ‘on the cheap’.