Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The UK Border Agency’s Bermuda Triangle

Bringing the UK Border Agency to heel has been one of the mammoth tasks facing ministers since the coalition formed. Ministers have recently been rather keen to suggest that backlogs in claims and migrants disappearing without a trace were coming under control – Immigration Minister Damian Green said at the start of this month that ‘we have gripped it and dealt with’ the problem of people overstaying their visa, for instance.

But lest senior staff at the UK Border Agency were starting to pat themselves on the back for a good job well done, the Home Affairs Select Committee has released a damning report this morning which says performance is still so poor that not only should they continue to forgo their bonuses, but that the Agency should also pay back any past bonuses paid contrary to previous recommendations from MPs.

The key figure behind this verdict is a 276,460-strong backlog of outstanding cases that the Committee discovered.

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