Monday, July 25, 2011

Unfit for purpose

I guess in the days before flight or even mass travel it was fairly easy for Her/His Majesties Customs and Excise to keep an eye on who (and what) was coming in, though judging by some of the novels of past times I've been reading, smuggling has always been a bit of a problem if only because the idiot politicians always set the bar too high where it came to duties on various imports. Eventually though we joined the EEC and the various powers that be conspired behind all our backs and without asking us turned the EEC into the EU and made our borders quite porous to anyone with an EU passport. The UK Border Agency was also formed in this time to keep a track of asylum seekers and other undesirables such as multi-national criminals and illegal immigrants. It rapidly became obvious that it was unfit for purpose.
Express.

THE UK Border Agency ran up record losses of nearly £300million last year, including £1.8million racked up by a convicted conman.
It also paid £2.2million in error to failed asylum seekers who were no longer entitled to benefits, costing £15million in all since 2008, the agency’s annual report reveals.
Staff also received £1.9million in overpayments and £14.2million was doled out to refugees wrongly detained by immigration officials.
Two private finance deals also had to be renegotiated after chiefs admitted “significant duplication” in IT projects awarded to Fujitsu and Atos Origin worth £430million.
The agency’s accounts were described as a “comedy of errors” yesterday and yet more proof that it is “not fit for purpose”, as Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said last year.
Despite the failings, 11 directors received £1.2million in pay and £90,000 in bonuses. UKBA wrote off £297million in bad debts and losses last year, including £207million lost on its e-Borders project, which collects travellers’ details before they arrive in Britain.
On top of this the government has also admitted that it has "lost" 180,000 illegals  since December 2008 and that's only the ones officially here who went missing, it does not include the ones smuggled in on lorries.
Now, I don't like government interference in my life and I especially hate it when the government and its agents are wasting my money. But I do think that it's the job of a minimal government to protect our borders, defend the country and enforce the few laws that we have. As it is we have big state and big spending and an uncanny inability to do anything right due mostly to over regulation and the idiocy of the Human Rights Act.
If we had a simplified system that checked people in and out and quickly removed those who remain illegally I'd be ok with my money being spent on it providing I thought it was giving value for money. This Agency would only allow one appeal by asylum seekers and no appeals at all for other illegals. That would also mean the return of any granted asylum who committed a crime, no ifs or buts.
We need control of our borders, the government has given them away and saddled us with a white elephant supposedly to guard them. We need out of the EU, we need the abolishment of the HRA and we need to enact laws that suit us, not the EU.
Otherwise things will only get worse.

1 annotations:

wayne said...

I can't think of any government departments that are fit for purpose to be honest........