‘I’ve been sacked for doing my job. I think I’ve been sacked for doing what the law asks of me and I’ve breached, I’ve fallen down over a clause in my employment contract, which I think is a crying shame.’
That was just one of the bombs that former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration David Neal dropped at his select committee hearing this afternoon. It was never going to be a comfortable hearing, given he was sacked for being awkward to ministers in the reports he was writing on the state of border security (although they would say he was sacked for being awkward by leaking the contents of those reports).
Neal’s argument was that he needed to be awkward to do his job. He said:
Surely it’s part of the job, for me to be effective, for me to make an assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of what’s going on within the Home Office. To a certain degree you’re going to have to make a nuisance of yourself because, and, the tragedy is that, officials, you know professionals, don’t mind criticism. They can actually improve the way that they do business and there’s a number of senior officials in the department welcome reports, even though they can be quite, you know, challenging.
He also told MPs on the Home Affairs Committee that he had been sacked via Teams but added:
Worse than that, for my high-performing team of 30 civil servants, the notification that I was sacked was in the media before my team or I had had the chance to speak to them, which is just shocking. Shocking leadership.’ Neal hadn’t been reappointed to the role, but was sacked before the end of his tenure, and he said he had bound out that the Home Office had supported his reappointment, but that it had been ‘turned down by Number 10.
The government didn’t need an independent inspector to tell it that things weren’t optimum in terms of border control
The particular case that led to his sacking was the revelation in the Daily Mail that he had seen data showing the UK Border Force had failed to check people arriving on private jets at London City Airport. When Neal was asked for more details on this, he replied: ‘I’ve been spoke to, by the Cabinet Office, and received a letter from the Cabinet Office effectively restricting what I can say about ongoing inspection reports. So I will be careful. And if I can, the report will be published, I’m sure.’ He added that it ‘would be putting me in jeopardy to go further’. But he also rejected the suggestion from ministers that he was putting factually incorrect information, saying he wouldn’t be putting his reputation on the line for information that was wrong.
There are 15 reports, including his annual report, that haven’t been published yet. Neal said the ones he was particularly worried about included children in hotels, asylum casework, social care visas. ‘Quite a few of them are inspections into the Border Force as well, which taken together can produce a pattern of performance.’ That ‘pattern’ wasn’t a good one, he clarified. ‘In my best judgement, I would suggest there is some way to go for the workings of Border Force, because that’s one of the areas we inspect – to work to its optimum level.’ The government didn’t need an independent inspector to tell it that things weren’t optimum in terms of border control. But the manner of his sacking means Neal’s criticisms are even more amplified than if they’d just got on with publishing the reports in the first place.
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