If only Theresa May could distinguish the desirable from the important

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/11/theresa-may-health-tourism-asylum-seekers

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Before he was knocked off his bike and thus redeployed to dispense advice on the celestial plane, the self-help guru Stephen Covey left many insights. One of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he said, was the ability to identify important things that need attention, but more importantly, the need to prioritise. Habit 3: put first things first. Has Theresa May, the home secretary read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? One assumes not. It might be worth her while to invest in a Kindle.

One priority becomes apparent today in the form of the home affairs select committee's review of how we deal with vulnerable asylum seekers. It finds a woeful standard of decision-making by the UK Border Agency: 30% of appeals were successful in 2012; a backlog of 32,600 asylum cases that should have been dealt with in 2011 has yet to be cleared. Things seems to be getting worse, not better. The number of asylum seekers awaiting an initial decision after six months rose by 63% last year.

While they wait, some for up to 16 years, asylum seekers languish in housing condemned by the committee as, in some cases, "appalling". Not just a shambles, degrading also. The committee was rightly outraged by testimony from gay and lesbian asylum seekers, some of whom were required to go to extraordinary lengths to establish sexuality. Having exhausted all reasonable ways of making a case, a few resorted to handing over photographic and video evidence of "highly personal sexual activity". Is this a system we can be proud of? The anti-war slogan comes to mind: not in my name.

And yet – confronted by the need to distinguish the desirable from the important – the home secretary seems some way from being able to prioritise effectively. With the asylum shambles rumbling in the background, there she was on the Today programme yesterday trumpeting another crackdown – via a new immigration bill – on health tourism. How much health tourism abuse goes on, she was asked. She didn't have a figure and she really didn't want to get into that but in fact the figure in 2012-13 was £12m, just 0.01% of the total NHS budget of £108.9bn. The website Doctors of the World notes: "This should also be seen in the context of the £18bn overseas visitors spend in the UK each year and £3bn they pay in taxes. Additionally, migrants to the UK contribute £16.3bn to the UK economy (1.02% of GDP), according to the OECD. And don't forget that all migrants, working or not, contribute to the health service by paying VAT."

So two issues have emerged for the home secretary in recent days: one issue seems pressing, the other not so much in the scheme of things. She won't get her back slapped making life less awful for asylum seekers, but she might for turning a beady eye on the NHS and foreigners. Regrettable, but that seems to be how they set priorities at the Home Office these days.

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