In 24 hours, the home secretary went from having no idea about the targets to scrapping them

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” said Amber Rudd, the home secretary, as she was questioned about the existence of targets for removing migrants from the UK.

Yvette Cooper, the chair of the Commons home affairs select committee, could barely contain her incredulity on Wednesday. Moments earlier, the head of the union for immigration workers had confirmed there were net targets for removing people who were in the country illegally.



So did the home secretary mislead the committee? Or is she oblivious to her department’s workings?

Rudd urged to resign as she admits Home Office has used internal deportation targets - Politics live Read more

Come Thursday morning, it appeared to be the latter. “The immigration arm of the Home Office has been using local targets for internal performance management,” she revealed in a staggering admission to the House of Commons in response to an urgent question.

At the committee hearing, there was a suggestion Rudd had no grasp of the inner workings of her department.

In reference to the existence of targets, she said: “I didn’t hear that testimony, I’m not sure what shape that might be in.”

Here is the shape. There are three layers of state-enforced or enforceable departures: deportations, administrative removals and voluntary departures.

Deportation is a specific term that applies to people and their children whose removal from the country is deemed “conducive to the public good” by the home secretary. It can also be recommended by a court.



Administrative removals, or removals, refer to a larger set of cases involving the enforced removal of non-citizens who have either entered the country illegally, outstayed a visa, or otherwise violated the conditions of their leave to remain in the UK.

Finally, there are the voluntary departures. Crucially, these individuals are still people against whom enforced removal has been initiated. The term “voluntary” simply describes how they leave. Within this category, are three sub-layers: those who depart by assisted voluntary return (AVR) schemes, those who make their own travel arrangements and tell the authorities, and those who leave without notifying the government.

It did not take long for evidence of departure targets to emerge. In 2015, David Bolt, an inspector whose job it is to scrutinise the work of the immigration and borders system governed by the Home Office, published a report on enforced removals. Within the publicly available report are a number of references to targets. The key paragraph, 4.16, states:

“For 2014-15, the Home Office set a target of 7,200 voluntary departures, an average of 120 per week, with the weekly target rising to 160 by the end of March 2015. For 2015-16, the annual target was raised to 12,000. These targets were split between the 19 ICE teams across the UK.”

While technically not a reference to administrative removals, the paragraph is a clear reference to a departure target nonetheless.

Crucially, Lucy Moreton, the head of the Union for Borders, Immigration and Customs, said the target culture in immigration operations had trickled down from the headline “net migration target” that Theresa May, the prime minister, has so doggedly kept in place.

The target was launched in 2010 by the then prime minister, David Cameron, amid growing fears over the rise of Ukip and against a backdrop of anti-immigration rhetoric. The government has faced repeated calls to ditch the target.

It is important to note that the target to reduce net migration – the difference between those leaving and arriving – to less than 100,000 (the most recent estimate puts the figure at 244,000) does not relate entirely to illegal migration. But observers have cited it as the source from which May’s “hostile environment” policies flowed.

And that links back to the Windrush scandal. May’s policies have been heavily blamed for the desperate circumstances in which some Commonwealth migrants have found themselves.



Later on Thursday, Rudd said that, now she was aware of them, she would scrap Home Office targets for removing people from Britain. It seems likely the government will also face calls, yet again, to scrap its headline net migration target.