The Home Office's immigration enforcement is "anecdote, assumption and prejudice", report says

The public accounts committee says that the Home Office's immigration policies are based on "anecdote, assumption and prejudice" rather than evidence.

The parliamentary committee also said that the department was unaware of the failures and damage on "both the illegal and legitimate migrant populations" caused by the policy.

In a report examining Immigration Enforcement which was published today, the cross-party committee said that Priti Patel's department was clueless on what it's annual spending on immigration enforcement, which is a total of £400 million, actually achieves.

The chair of the committee, Meg Hillier, stated that the Home Office showed "no inclination" to learn from the department's mistakes, "even when it fully accepts that it has made serious errors".

She added: "It accepts the wreckage that its ignorance and the culture it has fostered caused in the Windrush scandal – but the evidence we saw shows too little intent to change, and inspires no confidence that the next such scandal isn't right around the corner."

This comes as the National Audit Office (NAO) report was released in June, a report which analyses the public spending for parliamentary departments.

The NAO report revealed that the Home Office did not know the size of the illegal population in the UK, despite years of "public and political debate and concern".

The committee referenced the NAO report, as they brought up concerns that "potentially exaggerated figures calculated by others could inflame hostility towards immigrants".

The committee report also stated: "Only one member of its executive committee came from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background. The department described the benefits of greater diversity at senior levels for its decision-making, leadership and governance, but acknowledged diversity as being its biggest issue,"

After this analysis, the Home Office now has six months to make a detailed plan to ensure decisions and policies are driven by data and evidence, especially when dealing with illegal migration.