Labour demands 'go home' text costs

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/18/labour-demands-home-office-immigration-text-costs

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Labour has demanded to know how much the Home Office has spent on sending almost 40,000 texts to members of the public saying they should go back to their home country because they may have overstayed their leave to remain.

But the party was caught out as it tried to dismiss the anti-illegal immigration scheme as a gimmick, only for it to be revealed that the programme had been started in 2007 by the Labour home secretary John Reid.

The controversial text message programme is being undertaken on behalf of the government by Capita, and fresh concerns about its efficiency were revealed this week when it emerged that go-home messages were being sent to British citizens.

On Friday, David Hanson, the shadow Home Office minister, said: "The reports that the government has allowed a private contractor to send British citizens text messages telling them to leave the country demonstrates once more just how shambolic and incompetent the Home Office's border police is under Theresa May.

"Yet again, like the offensive and inappropriate ad vans, the government will be using taxpayers' hard-earned money to offend and alienate its own citizens."

A total of 39,100 text messages have been sent by Capita on behalf of the government as part of a contract to track down about 58,800 people who may not have the right to live in the UK.

The text reads: "Message from the UK Border Agency. You are required to leave the UK as you no longer have right to remain."

It had been reported that as many as 400 complaints had been filed, including from individuals who have lived in the country for decades, and have the right to stay – although the Home Office says the number of complaints is smaller.

But it also emerged that the programme of texting was started in a slightly different form by Labour when the party was in government, prompting complaints from both the then shadow home secretary, David Davis, and the then Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Nick Clegg.

In 2007, the younger Clegg denounced the programme, saying: "If tough rhetoric and gimmicks were enough to sort out our immigration system, we would have the best in the world. The public wants quiet competence, not loud incompetence."

A Liberal Democrat spokesman said the party had been aware of the current text warning system.

Labour has tabled parliamentary questions asking how many of the texts had been sent by Capita on behalf of the Border Agency between May 2010 and 10 October 2013. Hanson has also asked how many were sent in error.

Capita said it was given the phone numbers to target in "regular data drops of information detailing applications with a negative outcome on the Home Office immigration database. This data includes contact details that were provided by applicants at the time of, or subsequent to, making an application.

"Where it is identified that Capita have contacted an individual in error, Capita and Home Office records are immediately updated and contact is ceased. Furthermore, if an error has been made at the triage stage of handling the case, this is fed back, any learning incorporated into training and, where applicable, processes are amended."

The row about texts came as the immigration minister, Mark Harper, again defended the principle of mobile vans urging illegal immigrants to leave the country.

Earlier this week, the home secretary, Theresa May, appeared unenthusiastic about the project, stressing to the home affairs select committee that it had not been her idea.

The former Liberal Democrat minister Jeremy Browne, who was sacked by Nick Clegg in the ministerial reshuffle, revealed he had not been told about the van pilot in any ministerial correspondence, although a special adviser was informed about an enforcement campaign in general but not the wording or detailed plan. Browne concluded that his failure to alert the deputy prime minister to the plan contributed to his dismissal.

During July, the vans were driven around the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, Barnet, Brent, Ealing and Hounslow for a week.

Harper said on BBC Question Time on Thursday that the van pilot was being evaluated: "I don't see any problem with saying to people who have no right to be in the United Kingdom they can't be here any more. If it's successful, we'll look at rolling it out, if it's not successful, we won't."

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