Thousands of Immigration Documents Lost by UK Home Office: Report

The UK Home Office has lost important personal papers, which could help in proving the right of immigrants to stay in the United Kingdom, the Guardian reported.

The issue has led to calls for the Home Office to be overhauled completely for the way it handles these documents, the report added, citing a senior official as saying that the problem was so serious at its height that the department misplaced thousands of files routinely.

“This is a question of basic competence. Too often we have heard about lost documents and simple errors by the Home Office that can have deeply damaging consequences for people’s lives,” Yvette Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, was quoted as saying by the publication.

Cooper added that the UK Home Affairs committee and the independent inspectorate have constantly cautioned the Home Office to improve the accuracy and competency of the immigration system.

“But ultimately this is linked to weaknesses in the Home Office casework system that urgently need to be sorted out. The immigration system is far too important a public service for these kinds of mistakes to be acceptable, or for repeated warnings from the inspectorate and the select committee to be ignored,” Cooper added.

Following the report by Guardian, the Home Office is being questioned by the Information Commissioner’s Office —United Kingdom’s data watchdog.

Campaigners and charities also claim that they are handling hundreds of cases where original documents like birth certificates, payslips and marriage certificates have vanished.

“We would have had hundreds of these cases. That’s just us. We’re one of the larger organizations, but we’re still small compared to the vast ocean of people who require assistance,” Satbir Singh, the chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) charity, was quoted as saying in the report. Singh added that he is among the many who have experienced lost documents, and saw it first-hand while applying for a spouse visa for his wife.

When Singh contacted the Home Office after submitting the application, he was informed that the application was lost. A week later Singh and his wife were told that the visa application was rejected as some documents had not been submitted, the report added.

“The Home Office has a shocking history of losing documents from passports to identity papers which I flagged up as early as 2013,” Stephen Doughty, a member of parliament and a member of the home affairs select committee, was quoted as saying in the report.

Former borders and immigration inspector John Vine had earlier told the MPs that the issue of lost documents comes up in every inspection, the publication added. Vine had said that in one of the inspections, as many as 150 boxes of post, that included correspondence from applicants, MPs as well as their legal representatives, were found in the immigration office room in Liverpool.