8 Intelligence
Key figures
- 25,600 allegations about possible illegal immigrants or other immigration violations were received from the public between 9 December - 29 March
- 98% of these were assessed within 48 hours
- 16,000 allegations—more than 60%—contained sufficient information to justify further investigation
- 900 allegations—4% of the total—resulted in an enforcement visit
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Progress on the National Allegations Database
84. The Prime Minister called on the public to report suspected
illegal immigrants to the Border Agency in a speech last October.[56]
But, as our report on the Work of the UK Border Agency April-July
2011 highlights, the Agency has historically had an inconsistent
approach to recording and following up on intelligence leads.[57]
85. The Border Agency is in the process of setting
up a National Allegations Database to improve its performance
in following up intelligence leads from the public. We welcome
this development and will be monitoring the Agency's progress
as this database becomes operational.
86. The Agency tells us that, as of the end of March,
the design of the database has been agreed, funding secured and
an assessment has been made of staffing and operational requirements
needed. The Database is scheduled to be fully operational from
July.[58] We are pleased
to hear that the database will very soon be live. We note the
fact that the Agency is having discussions over how feedback can
be provided to those who report allegations when requested and
appropriate, this will help to give the public confidence that
genuine concerns are being investigated. We repeat our previous
recommendation which is that people who make genuine complaints
need to be told about the outcome.
87. The Agency gave us the following update of its
enforcement activity throughout the period 9 December to 29 March:
- 25,600 allegations were received
from the public.
- Approximately 98% of these received an initial
assessment within 48 hours.
- 16,000 allegations were judged to contain sufficient
and genuine information to merit further investigation.
- Only 900 of these were judged to contain sufficient
information to justify an enforcement visit.[59]
88. Overall, only 4% of the intelligence reports
received from the public resulted in an enforcement visit taking
place. The Agency is performing well in assessing tip-offs from
the public quickly but we are interested however in the low yield
of actionable intelligence that results from these tip-offs. We
will be asking the Agency to identify the main reasons for this.
We understand it may be the result of the quality of the information
reported to the Agency and we expect to hear from the Agency what
its plan is to improve the quality of the information it receives
when the database goes live.
- It is important for the public to know how
many of the Agency's enforcement visits result in arrest and removal.
We expect the Agency to provide a full breakdown of the outcomes
of its enforcement visits over the period 1December 2011 to 31
March 2012 in its response to this report.
56 Prime Minister's Speech on Immigration to the Institute
for Government, 10 October 2011, www.number10.gov.uk Back
57
Home Affairs Committee, Fifteenth Report of Session 2010-12, The
Work of the UK Border Agency, April-July 2011, HC 1497, para
34-35 Back
58
Ev 53 Back
59
Ev 53. Note: 700 of these enforcement visits exposed 'illegal
operations' and approximately 700 individuals were arrested. Back
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