IPS temporarily Rapsonless

The Identity & Passport Service (IPS) doesn't exist any more, of course, it's now HM Passport Office (HMPO) and the Home Office is IPSless.

The executive director of IPS between about June 2010 and March 2013 was Sarah Rapson. Her predecessor, James Hall, presided over the British public being over-charged for passports by about £300 million a year. He also presided over the disaster of Whitehall's attempted introduction of state-produced ID cards.

Ms Rapson has delivered a £5 reduction in the cost of a 10-year adult passport since then, from £77.50 to £72.50. Otherwise her tenure seems to have been without incident.

She is perhaps lucky that IPS/HMPO were banned from having anything to do with Whitehall's latest attempt to re-enact the ID cards massacre – that honour goes to the Cabinet Office (individual electoral registration and the Identity Assurance Programme) and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (midata). If you hold futures in either organisation, sell, sell, sell.

Now her luck has broken.

Home Office press release, 16 April 2013:

New interim Directors General appointed Two interim Directors General have been appointed to lead the new immigration commands in the Home Office that were announced by the Home Secretary on 26 March. Sarah Rapson will lead UK Visas and Immigration, bringing her experience of managing a successful customer-focused organisation as Chief Executive of the Identity and Passport Service. David Wood will lead Immigration Enforcement, drawing on his background with the Metropolitan Police and as Director of Operations for UKBA ...

The history of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) is spectacular and its demise under Rob Whiteman even more so. The Home Office is now UKBAless. It's shattered into three pieces – the UK Border Force, Immigration Enforcement (ambiguous name) and the piece Ms Rapson has picked up, UK Visas and Immigration (UKV&I).

Interim Director General Sarah Rapson gave evidence in front of the Home Affairs Committee on 11 June 2013:



Next day, the Times newspaper reported the session and found themselves with an over-abundance or superfluity or excess or nimiety of scoops. Too many to handle. They settled for Visa system might never be up to job, admits chief.

A month later, the Home Affairs Committee published their report, and they went with Backlogs hit half a million at immigration service. This followed Ms Rapson's revelation that there are 190,000 unresolved immigration cases that her predecessors unfortunately forgot to tell the Committee about.

The Times and the Committee and the BBC could equally well have led with Ms Rapson's management approach – she wants her staff to discover for themselves how to do the job, she doesn't intend to issue "decrees" (16:34:40 to 16:35:44), instead, she's holding "workshops". She has 7,400 staff in 150 countries and an annual budget of £450 million. There's something missing from the concept of leadership there or "command" as Ms Rapson keeps calling it.

Or they could have led with Ms Rapson's repeated claim to have only just started in the job – e.g. "I'm 54 days in" (16:59:43). According to the DMossEsq slide rule, that's nearly eight weeks. Eight weeks in, and she still doesn't know how many categories there are for the cases UKV&I deal with and didn't realise that the category with 190,000 cases in it was new to the Committee. Clearly it takes some time for a new boss to get their feet under the table, but surely eight weeks is long enough to get to grips with some of the basic metrics of the business. If eight weeks isn't long enough, is it ever going to happen?

IPS temporarily Rapsonless

The Identity & Passport Service (IPS) doesn't exist any more, of course, it's now HM Passport Office (HMPO) and the Home Office is IPSless.

The executive director of IPS between about June 2010 and March 2013 was Sarah Rapson. Her predecessor, James Hall, presided over the British public being over-charged for passports by about £300 million a year. He also presided over the disaster of Whitehall's attempted introduction of state-produced ID cards.

Ms Rapson has delivered a £5 reduction in the cost of a 10-year adult passport since then, from £77.50 to £72.50. Otherwise her tenure seems to have been without incident.

She is perhaps lucky that IPS/HMPO were banned from having anything to do with Whitehall's latest attempt to re-enact the ID cards massacre – that honour goes to the Cabinet Office (individual electoral registration and the Identity Assurance Programme) and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (midata). If you hold futures in either organisation, sell, sell, sell.

Now her luck has broken.

UKBA soon to be Whitemanless

Home Office press release, 27 June 2013:

Rob Whiteman leaves Home Office for new Chief Executive role Rob Whiteman, Director General of Operational Systems Transformation, is leaving the Home Office to become Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Rob Whiteman, Director General of Operational Systems Transformation, is to leave his role at the Home Office to join the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) as its new Chief Executive.

When he joined in July 2011, Mr Whiteman was chief executive of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Eight months later in March 2012 he lost the UK Border Force, which was but is no longer part of UKBA. And a year after that in March 2013, the remainder of UKBA was split in two. Leaving Mr Whiteman with nothing to be chief executive of, any more, at least at the Home Office.

Good luck CIPFA.

How many pieces will CIPFA be broken into by March 2015?

As Theresa May, the Home Secretary, says archly in the press release:

He leaves with my very best wishes for the future and I am sure he will be a great success in his important new role at CIPFA.

And what does Mark Sedwill, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, have to say about the trail of destruction which is Mr Whiteman's career at UKBA? He speaks in Mandarin, of course, but you can probably manage your own translation:

Rob has made a remarkable contribution to the Home Office over the past 18 months and, on behalf of the department, I would like to thank him for his dedication and leadership.

The Home Affairs Committee routinely accuse UKBA and the Home Office of withholding information and going back on their word. It's not just the lack of accountability the Committee doesn't like. In one excruciating evidence session (15 May 2012), they also unmasked Mr Whiteman as the victim of producer capture, a common Whitehall affliction:

Q151 Chair: ... over the issue of your computer system that crashed at Lunar house. Hundreds of people were turned away, and we hear that some were in tears at the fact that the system did not work. What went wrong? Have we got compensation from the IT company? Will it happen again, and have we rearranged all the appointments? Rob Whiteman: We contacted people over the bank holiday weekend and rearranged appointments. Around 500 appointments that were cancelled were rearranged. The issues around IT are incredibly frustrating for my staff, as well as for our customers. When I meet staff, it is a constant frustration that systems do not work all the time and that some of the resilience issues do not conform to common standards. In terms of morale and other issues, it is absolutely vital that we get to the heart of these IT problems. They are complex, yes, but- Q152 Chair: Yes, but we do not want to go into that now. Do we know why it broke down? Rob Whiteman: We do know why it broke down. It was an error on the network that affected the way appointments were queued from the system, and therefore they could not travel properly around the network. It was an IT failure, but, to answer your question, I have discussed this several times with the Chief Executive of the IT company that is the primary IT provider. Q153 Chair: What is the company? Rob Whiteman: I would rather not say. Q154 Chair: I am sorry, Mr Whiteman; this is a Select Committee of the House- Rob Whiteman: It is Atos. Q155 Chair: There is no need to be secret with us; we will find out. It is public money. It is not coming out of your pocket. The taxpayer is paying. What is the name of the company? Rob Whiteman: Atos. Q156 Chair: And what was his explanation as to why it broke down? Rob Whiteman: The reason I was reluctant, Chairman, is that we have a contract with Atos. It is trying its best to resolve the issues, but obviously we are being a demanding client and saying that performance is not good enough. Q157 Chair: As you should be. Rob Whiteman: I would not want to cast aspersions on the effort that it is making. It has put an additional team in to try to analyse the problem, and I receive daily and weekly reports from them. The point I would make is that in terms of UKBA improving over the next couple of years ...

Being chief executive of UKBA as was, was probably an impossible job, beyond any human being, and Mr Whiteman is just a human being.

That conclusion is a bit mundane for some. They like something more dramatic in the Guardian. Here's an extract from an open letter they published, from David Walker to Mr Whiteman:

Congratulations on finding a safe passage out of the Whitehall jungle. Senior people at the Home Office, especially those anywhere near the borders, have proved pretty expendable of late, and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa) job came at the right time. Some say those who live by the sword die by the sword. You shafted the UK Border Force's Brodie Clark on behalf of Theresa May and you, in turn, have been shafted by the new permanent secretary, Mark Sedwill, on behalf of Theresa May. She sails on, the Tory leadership in her sights, while all around good people fall to their deaths.

"All around good people fall to their deaths"? That hasn't been reported in the Guardian. Or anywhere else.

Anyway, take your pick, mundane or murderous.

UKBA soon to be Whitemanless

Home Office press release, 27 June 2013:

Rob Whiteman leaves Home Office for new Chief Executive role Rob Whiteman, Director General of Operational Systems Transformation, is leaving the Home Office to become Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Rob Whiteman, Director General of Operational Systems Transformation, is to leave his role at the Home Office to join the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) as its new Chief Executive.

When he joined in July 2011, Mr Whiteman was chief executive of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Eight months later in March 2012 he lost the UK Border Force, which was but is no longer part of UKBA. And a year after that in March 2013, the remainder of UKBA was split in two. Leaving Mr Whiteman with nothing to be chief executive of, any more, at least at the Home Office.

Good luck CIPFA.

How many pieces will CIPFA be broken into by March 2015?

Chaos at Heathrow, border security in doubt, safety of the Olympics threatened – and the unions call a strike?

Later this week, the UK Border Agency are due to go on strike.

If they do, the strike won't improve the ghastly economic situation the UK finds itself in and it won't improve UKBA's reputation with the public. All the strike will achieve is to provide opportunities for hollow laughter at jokes along the lines of how can you tell that UKBA are on strike, what difference does it make if they're working ...

At some point, hours or days after the strike has started, it will stop. And the public impression will be that there is an industrial relations problem at UKBA.

Which there may well be.

But there is also a more fundamental problem at UKBA, a problem that won't be solved by arbitration and which will persist even when the strike is over – the senior Whitehall management of UKBA appears to be irremediably incompetent.

A strike would be welcomed by Theresa May, Damian Green, Helen Ghosh and Rob Whiteman. The greatest present the unions could give them, an unexpected relief, they would think that Christmas had come early.

By focusing the public's attention on pay and pensions, the strike will divert attention from the impression that the management is hopelessly out of its depth and it will thereby to some extent let them off the hook. The unions are making a mistake. The strike, if it happens, will delay the solution to the problem of management failure at UKBA and make that solution harder to achieve.

The political leadership (Theresa May and Damian Green)
Incompetent? Out of their depth? Failure?

Yes. Just cast your mind back 10 days or so.

Heathrow at 'breaking' point as Border Force struggles to cope, leaked memos warn, said the Telegraph on Sunday 29 April 2012. Cue pictures of the huddled masses trying to get through passport control. "We are in control at Heathrow", said Damian Green the Immigration Minister, only to be corrected by Willie Walsh: ‘Minister lying over Heathrow queues,’ says BA chief. It's a mess.

A predictable mess. The Times had already told us on 23 April 2012 that:

"Theresa May will have to abandon full passport checks at Britain’s airports, the former head of the UK Border Force warns today. Brodie Clark says that the Home Secretary’s policy is causing lengthy delays for passengers at Heathrow and Gatwick and undermining security"

No longer in the job,  Brodie Clark still seems to be better informed than his successor, Brian Moore. According to a 5 April 2012 article in Public Service magazine:

The UK Border Force head Brian Moore said he was surprised by talk of chaos, saying that there is – as every year – a "very solid plan" in place and disruption will be kept to a minimum. Also, there would be extra staff brought in over Easter and for the Olympics. "We will not compromise border security," the UK Border Force said.

Mr Moore got Mr Clark's job because Mr Clark allegedly over-stepped the mark while undertaking a trial of "risk-based" or "intelligence-led" border policing. Before his suspension on 2 November 2011, the trial had been declared a success. When Mr Clark was suspended, so was the trial. Why? If it was successful, why not pursue it?

When the Home Affairs Committee reported on the Brodie Clark affair, they said that they hadn't been given enough information by UKBA to assess the trial. When John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector of UKBA, reported on the same matter, he suggested that the trial had not been undertaken professionally, and that the successes claimed for it could not obviously be attributed to risk-based border control.

Now that the public have a good reason to doubt the success of the trial we read that the Home Secretary may re-introduce risk-based policing of the border after all, Theresa May to ease airport passport controls.

What was Brodie Clark suspended for? Relaxing passport checks and relaxing fingerprint checks on visa nationals.

What did Damian Green do in Calais in January? He relaxed fingerprint checks on visa nationals:

Damian Green, the immigration minister, has defended the abandonment of the “lengthy” process of taking fingerprints, saying UKBA staff were better served searching vehicles instead ...

What's Theresa May going to do? Relax passport checks:

Mrs May said she was ready to consider introducing “risk-based” controls as part of a long-term solution to delays at airports, despite having forced Brodie Clark, the former head of the UK Border Force, out of his job in November after she claimed he had relaxed immigration checks without her authorisation.

How long before she tries to re-appoint Brodie Clark?

Go on strike, and the unions will help to hide this worryingly erratic behaviour of UKBA's senior political leadership.

In reality, the public doesn't genuinely expect ministers like Theresa May and Damian Green to know what's going on. That's up to officials. Whitehall is expected to be a Rolls-Royce civil service. In the event, the public is going to be seriously disappointed if they ever listen to the Home Affairs Committee and find out the truth.

The Whitehall leadership (Helen Ghosh, Rob Whiteman and the Board of UKBA)
UK Border Agency News, the "bi-monthly update for partners" – what we used to call the "staff magazine" – is published by Rob Whiteman, the man who replaced Lin Homer as Chief Executive of UKBA. Page 7 of the March 2012 issue is all about IABS, the new Immigration and Asylum Biometric System, and tells us that:

Since go-live [of IABS] feedback has been very positive; the transition has been seen as ‘seamless’ and the IABS was described as ‘a significant improvement’. Users of handheld mobile biometric checking equipment are also reporting improved network reception and speedier results. At the end of March, the IABS will deliver a mobile version of this solution for the capture of biometrics of Games Family Members at the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012.

We're all safe, then. Add biometrics and the recipe for salvation is complete.

Safe, that is, apart from the "technology glitches" that the Telegraph will keep carping about, just because Heathrow is "at breaking point":

The difficulties were exacerbated by a series of technology glitches including the failure of a finger print machine, used to check passengers who require a visa to enter Britain. On other occasions both the Iris recognition and new automatic passport scanning gates failed, adding to the frustration of new arrivals. "I am unsure but I do not believe our staff are trained to use these machines," one manager said. "If they were I could have deployed the kit much faster."

Not that the expensive technology failure of IABS is what makes Rob Whiteman unpopular with the Home Affairs Committee. They haven't even looked at the reliability of mass consumer biometrics yet – Jackie Keane's day will come. And Alex Lahood's. And Marek Rejman-Greene's.

Ms Keane is the senior civil servant in charge of IABS. She promised in the March 2011 issue of the staff magazine (p.5) to install it by December 2011. The date slipped by a couple of months. Which must be why the Telegraph's informant isn't sure whether UK Border Force staff know how to use the system yet.

No, what the Committee don't like is that Mr Whiteman promised to co-operate with them when he was first appointed and now he's being obstructive:

It is therefore deeply disappointing that on two occasions since our last report, the Committee has been denied access to information. The "Agency" refused to provide us with the outcome of cases of people who arrived at St Pancras via the 'Lille loophole'. The "Agency" also refused to provide us with data regarding inspections of Tier 4 sponsors on the basis that it was 'not fit for wider dissemination'.

That's what the Committee say in their 21st report of this Parliament (para.79).

It's not just his stonewalling that antagonises them.

There's also UKBA's use of a peculiar version of English which impedes communication with them and which may account for their inability to prepare consistent statistics. What's more, the Agency seems to be incapable of understanding natural English. Everyone else knows what "bogus college" means but the Agency claims not to recognise the term.

Then there's UKBA's failure to consider consistently whether foreign national prisoners should be deported, their failure to deport these people even if the Agency has whimsically decided to try, their  failure to win more than two-thirds of their appeals against asylum and their failure to win much more than half of their immigration appeals, a record not improved by the Agency's failure to attend nearly 20% of these appeals.

UKBA's Glasgow office only manages to attend 45% of its immigration appeals. How come, the Committee would like to know, following the discovery by John Vine, that figure was recorded at Head Office as 95%?

What can possibly explain the Agency's lack of the gumption to get on and solve problems like the "Lille loophole" until someone embarrasses them into action?

There is a slim possibility that eBorders might cover 100% of travellers coming into the country by air but no possibility whatever of it covering people arriving by boat or train. If eBorders doesn't have 100% coverage it can't work, it can't do its job of securing the border, the Committee say, so what's the point of it?

What's the point of all these eGates at UK airports? (Electronic gates, sometimes known as "smart gates".) Do they work or don't they? No-one knows (para.61):

The “Agency” needs to provide convincing evidence, for its own staff as well as the general public, that the e-Gates system is no less reliable than passport checks carried out by a person.

The Home Office under Sir David Normington, Dame Helen's predecessor, repeatedly claimed that eGates are being deployed at UK airports because the trials at Manchester Airport proved so successful. John Vine begs to differ in his report on the inspection of Manchester. He could find no evidence whatever of the Home Office trying to assess the trial.

And why is the system to identify air travellers by their irises being terminated? It cost millions. Was all that money wasted?

And what's happening with the visa application system? It's not working and the Committee considers it imperative to go back to "face to face interviews with entry clearance officers" (para.71-2). Now. Right now.

Apart from the other matter – financial mismanagement (para.74) – that's all the Committee have to say about UKBA. For the moment.

The problems go all the way to the top. The word "agency" appears in inverted commas throughout the Committee's report. Because UKBA isn't really an agency. It's just another bit of the Home Office. Mr Whiteman's failures, and those of his predecessors, are Dame Helen Ghosh's failures, and those of her predecessors.

Dame Helen is the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. When she gave evidence to the Committee she said:

... there are plans, over the SR10 period [2010-15], to reduce the staff of the Border Force by around 900 people, from almost 8,000 people at the start of the period. But that is driven as much by technological introductions like e-gates, as well as a risk-based approach. Border Force will be getting smaller ...

Simon Hoggart in the Guardian had fun writing about Dame Helen's appearance in front of the Home Affairs Committee on 22 November 2011. It was a great fun duel, he suggested, marvellous television, a heavyweight bout between Keith Vaz the Committee chairman and Dame Helen.

Piffle.

As the Committee make clear in their report, this is a Constitutional matter. Parliament is meant to be supreme. Not the Executive. And Parliament is being flouted by the Home Office's refusal to disclose information to the Committee (p.32):

The Committee takes our scrutiny of the UK Border “Agency” very seriously and will not be deterred by the “Agency’s” attempt to circumvent our requests for information. It is in the public interest that this “Agency”, charged with implementing the Government’s immigration policy, is held to account by Parliament. When Mr Whiteman first appeared before us, he pledged to be to be transparent and work with us on the basis of trust. We welcome those pledges and look forward to them being fulfilled.

The unions
There must be about a dozen serious problems there, identified by the Home Affairs Committee and by John Vine. Problems which affect border security and the safety of the Olympics. Political problems. Public administration problems. Constitutional problems. Technology problems.

And the unions choose this moment to call a hopeless strike and thereby divert attention from them all?

There's still time to call it off. Call it off and engage public sympathy.

Call it off and demand in the public interest that Whitehall get a grip. Demand that Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the home civil service, sort out the mess left behind by Sir Gus now Lord O'Donnell and Sir David Normington.

Demand that the Home Office stop wasting hundreds of millions of pounds of public money on technology that doesn't work and concentrate instead on border security and the safety of the Olympics. Which means adequate staffing and rational procedures. Make John Vine's job easier, not harder.

Work with the Home Affairs Committee, don't hinder them. Demand that the Home Office recognise that they operate in a democracy where they owe their duty to Parliament.

---

Cribsheet – money:
According to the March 2012 issue of the staff magazine, the contractors involved with IABS are IBM, Morpho, Fujitsu, Atos Origin and Software AG.

Overseas visa application checks – the work the Home Affairs Committee think should be done by UKBA "entry clearance officers" face to face – are carried out by VF Worldwide and CSC. What we are paying VF Worldwide and CSC for is to all intents and purposes stamp-collecting.

CSC also have a contract with the Identity & Passport Service, another "agency" of the Home Office, to produce ePassports, a product on which passport-holders are over-charged to the tune of about £300 million p.a.

Source: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/financial-transactions-data-ho:

Amount paid by the Home Office to contractors in respect of the given contracts between 10 May 2010 and 29 February 2012
Contract: IABS
IBM	186,080,338.56
Morpho	965,497.45
Fujitsu	16,370,966.15
Atos Origin	44,184,946.31
Software AG	170,126.02
Contract: eBorders
VF Worldwide	78,303,369.55
CSC	45,753,757.18
Contract: ePassports
CSC	112,273,070.86
Total:	£484,102,072.08

Heathrow to raise landing fees to pay for more border staff, we read in the Guardian. A brilliant idea.

That way the Whitehall officials can carry on working on useless biometrics projects, we can carry on paying the contractors to provide useless biometrics products, Dame Helen can carry on laying off Border Force staff and replacing them with useless technology, and everyone's happy – with the possible exception of the fare-paying public, onto whom the additional landing fees will be passed in the form of increased ticket prices. But who cares about them?

Alternatively, we could just cancel the useless biometrics bits of IABS, eBorders and ePassports, use the money saved to pay for the additional Border Force staff needed, if any, and let the public keep the balance, on the principle that we know how we want to spend our money better than Whitehall.

Chaos at Heathrow, border security in doubt, safety of the Olympics threatened – and the unions call a strike?

Later this week, the UK Border Agency are due to go on strike.

If they do, the strike won't improve the ghastly economic situation the UK finds itself in and it won't improve UKBA's reputation with the public. All the strike will achieve is to provide opportunities for hollow laughter at jokes along the lines of how can you tell that UKBA are on strike, what difference does it make if they're working ...

At some point, hours or days after the strike has started, it will stop. And the public impression will be that there is an industrial relations problem at UKBA.

Which there may well be.

But there is also a more fundamental problem at UKBA, a problem that won't be solved by arbitration and which will persist even when the strike is over – the senior Whitehall management of UKBA appears to be irremediably incompetent.

A strike would be welcomed by Theresa May, Damian Green, Helen Ghosh and Rob Whiteman. The greatest present the unions could give them, an unexpected relief, they would think that Christmas had come early.

By focusing the public's attention on pay and pensions, the strike will divert attention from the impression that the management is hopelessly out of its depth and it will thereby to some extent let them off the hook. The unions are making a mistake. The strike, if it happens, will delay the solution to the problem of management failure at UKBA and make that solution harder to achieve.

UKBA – what do the Board do for £1 million p.a.?

They're a busy lot on the Home Affairs Committee. On 11 April 2012, they published their 21st report since September 2010, Work of the UK Border Agency (August - December 2011).

No advance on their 17th report back in January, Inquiry into the provision of UK Border Controls, the Committee draw attention to the UK Border Agency's contemptuous lack of co-operation with parliament (para.79-81). Parliament is meant to be supreme. The Executive, in the form of UKBA, continues to behave as though it is supreme.

As with the 17th report, the Committee make the obvious point that the UK Border Agency is not an agency of the Home office at all, it is an integral part of the Home Office. The word "Agency" appears accordingly in inverted commas throughout the report.

The failings of UKBA do not stop at the Board of UKBA, they go to the top of the Home Office, to Dame Helen Ghosh, the permanent secretary. And they did not start with her, they go back to the incumbency of her predecessor, Sir David Normington.

The Committee expect not only the chief executive of UKBA to co-operate with them but also the permanent secretary (para.12, 37, 73). UKBA's failings are her failings as much as Rob Whiteman's.

And what are those failings?

The Committee list them under 23 headings in this report.

They start by listing the salaries of eight executive members of the UKBA Board, roughly £1 million per annum. £1 million should buy any organisation a lot of management and direction. Especially when, as in this case, it doesn't stop there, there is further input from the top levels of the Home Office.

In the event, with failings in 23 areas reported here, and more being signalled for upcoming Committee enquiries, the expected management and direction are not being delivered.

John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector of UKBA, made the point in his report on the Brodie Clark affair that (p.6):

There is nothing I have discovered which could not have been identified and addressed by senior managers exercising proper oversight.

The question arises, if they're not exercising proper oversight, what are Dame Helen and Rob Whiteman and the other senior civil servants doing?

UKBA – what do the Board do for £1 million p.a.?

They're a busy lot on the Home Affairs Committee. On 11 April 2012, they published their 21st report since September 2010, Work of the UK Border Agency (August - December 2011).

No advance on their 17th report back in January, Inquiry into the provision of UK Border Controls, the Committee draw attention to the UK Border Agency's contemptuous lack of co-operation with parliament (para.79-81). Parliament is meant to be supreme. The Executive, in the form of UKBA, continues to behave as though it is supreme.

What's the matter with our leaders, that they can imagine we welcome mass surveillance? A blogger suggests the answer

To the Cabinet Office, it is quite unremarkable to suggest that we should all apply to private sector companies for an electronic ID so that we can transact with the government, see for example this post by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken – Establishing trust in digital services. Given that there are 60 million of us here in the UK, those private sector companies would have to be pretty big to manage the volumes. As big as Facebook, for example, who already have 30 million active users in the UK. Or Google, the company that "walked Francis Maude through the identity ecosystem". At least that's what ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken says in Thoughts on my recent trip to the West Coast with Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office.

To ordinary human beings, the idea is utterly inept.

To the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, it is quite unremarkable to suggest that we should all collect together our personal data in a file and give it to suppliers so that they know what we want to buy from them, please see for example Ed Davey, problem-solver – midata. Only a mooncalf could possibly agree (The case for midata – the answer is a mooncalf).

To ordinary human beings, the idea is utterly inept.

To the civil service all across Whitehall, it is quite unremarkable to suggest that all the personal data about us held by the government should be stored on computers operated by the likes of Google and Amazon. Whereas the suggestion is of course actually bonkers – Cloud computing is bonkers or, as HMG put it, a "no-brainer".

To ordinary human beings, the idea is utterly inept.

To the Home Office, it is quite unremarkable to suggest that all our phone calls, emails, web browsing etc ... should be monitored by GCHQ.

To ordinary human beings, the idea is utterly inept.

Whitehall and the senior politicians put in to bat for Whitehall clearly have a very odd idea of human nature. It's worth trying to work out what's odd about it. It doesn't help simply to keep saying that it's odd. We need to make a bit of progress. And in that endeavour the blogger Scott Grønmark has taken the first important step.

Mr Grønmark says that in 2005 it occurred to him that the government has many of the symptoms of autism – Talk to the hand! - why all organisations turn autistic – and that he is thinking of writing a book about it. He has returned to the subject about 10 times over the years (according to Google). Let's hope that he does finally write that book.

What's the matter with our leaders, that they can imagine we welcome mass surveillance? A blogger suggests the answer

To the Cabinet Office, it is quite unremarkable to suggest that we should all apply to private sector companies for an electronic ID so that we can transact with the government, see for example this post by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken – Establishing trust in digital services. Given that there are 60 million of us here in the UK, those private sector companies would have to be pretty big to manage the volumes. As big as Facebook, for example, who already have 30 million active users in the UK. Or Google, the company that "walked Francis Maude through the identity ecosystem". At least that's what ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken says in Thoughts on my recent trip to the West Coast with Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office.

To ordinary human beings, the idea is utterly inept.

Brodie Clark has been silenced, several months too late for the Home Office

The Brodie Clark affair is closed. Normal service is resumed, it's as though it never happened, there's nothing to see here, folks, move along please:

Brodie Clark receives £100,000 over Border Agency row - but no one is to blame The senior civil servant at the centre of the passport checks fiasco has received more than £100,000 after settling his damages claim against the Home Office, with neither side admitting fault. Brodie Clark stood down last year as head of the UK Border Force after being publicly blamed by Theresa May for relaxing entry checks at airports in order to reduce queues. He denied he was a “rogue officer”, claimed the Home Secretary had made his position untenable for “political convenience” and began a claim for constructive unfair dismissal. But on Friday it was announced that the parties had settled before the case reached an employment tribunal. The amount of public money paid to Mr Clark to settle the case was not disclosed, but it is thought to be more than £100,000. Neither side admitted fault and while the settlement may save time and legal costs for the Government, it also means the full account of what happened – which let to the UK Border Agency being split in two – may never be disclosed.

It sounds as though Brodie Clark has received substantially the same offer made to him and accepted by him in early November 2011. The offer was quickly withdrawn and as a result the public was treated to a series of media and Westminster battles, three Home Office internal enquiries and a Home Affairs Committee enquiry.

The powers that be must regret withdrawing that November offer because in the interim we have learnt that:

• For several years successive home secretaries in successive governments have not, in their own estimation, exercised proper control over the UK Border Force and neither have their understrapper immigration ministers.
• The officials are no better than the politicians. Successive permanent secretaries at the Home Office – and the cabinet secretary himself – might as well not have turned up to the office for all the good their presence did. Again, that is in their own estimation.
• Ditto successive chief executives of the UK Border Agency and the rest of the Board of UKBA, executive Directors and non-executive Directors alike, their presence on the payroll seems to have added no value. Either that, or Brodie Clark wasn't doing anything wrong.
• The Home Office is happy to thumb its nose at Parliament's efforts to discover the truth, in this case first promising and then refusing to disclose documents to the Home Affairs Committee.
• The Home Office don't know how to conduct a trial properly, whether that is a trial of new intelligence-led/risk-based procedures or a technology trial. If pharmaceutical trials were conducted to the same standards, we'd all be dead. Ditto airworthiness trials for new airplanes.
• The face recognition technology deployed at the border makes no contribution to security whatever and ditto the flat print fingerprint technology.
• The "technology" that does work – human beings – is being decommissioned. Fast. Hundreds of members of the UK Border Force have already been laid off and hundreds more are still to go, all to be replaced by technology that doesn't work.
• Their lay-offs are not to save money. The government deems it preferable to spend ten times as much on contractors – a motley band of astrologers and stamp-collectors.

And what have the government learnt? Judging by Damian Green's speech to RUSI the other day, nothing. Everything carries on as before. The border remains secure. It remains the case that the 2012 Olympics will be safe.

Brodie Clark has been silenced, several months too late for the Home Office

The Brodie Clark affair is closed. Normal service is resumed, it's as though it never happened, there's nothing to see here, folks, move along please:

John Vine report published

John Vine CBE QPM is the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). His report on the Brodie Clark affair was published on Monday 20 February 2012. Like the Home Affairs Committee report Inquiry into the provision of UK Border Controls published a month earlier on Thursday 19 January 2012, it is a historic document. It criticises the Executive and yet, there it is, in a brave move of the Home Secretary's, it’s been published by the Executive.

If you went to bed on 20 February 2012 having learnt about Mr Vine’s report only from reading the Guardian live blog (starting at 4:12 p.m.) and from hearing Yvette Cooper talking about it on the radio, then you probably slept badly with thoughts of something sacred (England) having been defiled (by the invention of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) disturbing your sleep and perhaps remembering that Hopkins poem, “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,/More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring ...”.

Your mood will not have been improved in the morning by the woodentop predictability of the Daily Mail, with their Britain's 'Mickey Mouse' border controls let 500,000 into the country without any checks for FIVE YEARS headline and so you will have sat down to write your blog, entered the bilious title which wrote itself – John Vine signs death certificate – Home Office RIP – and then ... and then thought perhaps it might be a good idea to read the report first.

It's long. There's a lot in it. There's a lot to think about.

First things first, Mr Vine's report describes an exemplary piece of detective work. He has abided by his terms of reference, the work was done quickly and apparently thoroughly and he writes clearly. He hasn't been cross-examined in an open court of law, of course, but prima facie some of his findings look pretty damning.

Writing about the "intelligence-led" trial in Chapter 4 of his report, he successfully debunks UKBA, who obviously haven't got a clue how to run a trial. At para.4.103 he fingers UKBA for claiming that the trial had been a success on the basis of certain drug seizures they made, without being able to prove that they made the drug seizures because of the trial. If drugs companies conducted trials in the same way, we'd all be dead.

No-one knows what "intelligence-led" means, least of all the poor old Home Secretary – regular readers will remember this interchange when she gave evidence in front of the Home Affairs Committee:

Q33 Michael Ellis: ... can you elaborate on what is meant by intelligence-led security measures? ... Theresa May: Indeed. The basis on which the pilot was to operate was that it was to enable a greater focus on those who were at higher risk. Intelligence-led, led also at the discretion of the officers at the border so that they would be assessing within the two categories of EEA nationals and the biometric chips, and EEA national children ...

Mr Vine's dissection of the Secure ID business in Chapter 3 of his report is minute. "Secure ID" is a misnomer and denotes checking travellers' fingerprints.

Mr Vine is at some pains to show how the failure of immigration officers to do their Secure ID checks can be explained by their inadvertently confusing "Level 2" and "Scenario 2" (para.4.39) or by their failure to understand that Damian Green MP's approval for the suspension of Secure ID checks was a "provisional" approval (para.3.67).

But in the end he has to give up and decide that the immigration officers at Heathrow, in particular, jolly well knew they were flouting ministerial instructions when they suspended Secure ID.

Why would they do that? Are they all rogues?

Maybe not. Maybe they suspended Secure ID because they knew it was a waste of time that they didn't have to waste.

Brodie Clark said when he gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee that fingerprint checks are the least reliable security/identity checks available and that they are the ninth and bottom priority. Mr Vine doesn't disagree. Indeed he quotes Brodie Clark in this connection saying that there have only been seven "hits" from Secure ID (3.13) since it was introduced in 2009-10.

Let's take a bit of time out here for some numbers. In the first 18 months of the coalition government, the period ending 31 October 2011, two days before Brodie Clark was suspended, the following payments were made by UKBA to contractors involved with computerised border security systems including fingerprint-checking:

Atos ............................... 67,461,976
CapGemini .............................. 90,000
CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation) 140,023,212
Detica ................................ 821,034
Fujitsu ........................... 175,743,106
IBM ............................... 155,438,327
Morpho .............................. 1,227,389
PA Consulting ....................... 3,428,522
QinetiQ ............................... 582,868
Serco ............................. 103,590,132
Steria ............................. 19,084,494
VF Worldwide ....................... 67,416,851

Total ............................ £734,907,911


Source: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/financial-transactions-data-ho

Did those seven hits Brodie Clark talks of cost £105,000,000 each? A cheap mind might say so. Money is the only currency some people can deal in.

But Mr Vine offers us something subtler and more human. He contrasts the pestilentially inflexible computer system which made it hard for immigration officers to collate the statistics of their drugs seizures (4.98) with the benefit of human beings with the gift of judgement, specifically an immigration officer faced with a traveller with impeccable credentials who turned out to have 93 packets of cocaine inside him (Figure 12, p.66).

The computer wouldn't have discovered that cocaine. The traveller's papers were in order. The immigration officer did. He disobeyed instructions and questioned the traveller. He had a hunch. He had a certain amount of autonomy and discretion. And presumably a sound understanding of his duty and an admirable commitment. Which one does the Daily Mail want? Which one do you want?

If you are persuaded that border security depends on people and not on senseless automata then, the more you read John Vine's report, the more you understand what that belief means. It means that forms won't always be filled in correctly. It means that the people at head office will add up the figures and get a different total. It means that one man's "provisional" is another man's "unqualified". No computer would confuse "Level 2" with "Scenario 2", but then no computer will find those 93 packets of cocaine.

Chapter 2 of Mr Vine's report is devoted to the Warnings Index (WI). The WI checks have had to be suspended too often, usually for good reasons (2.21) ...

For example, on 15 July 2011, 100% checks were suspended for one hour and 20 minutes and the reason for this was recorded as “Coaches blocking roundabout”, whilst on 16 July 2011, the reason recorded was “Coaches tailed back to motorway”.

 ... but not always for good reasons. Figure 6 on p.23 of Mr Vine's report lists suspensions of WI checks by port, ending with 106 suspensions at "Other ports combined". Mr Vine attaches a footnote, footnote no.13, one for the history books, explaining that these other combined ports include three holiday destinations. One of them is Disneyland Paris, side-splittingly referred to in the Daily Mail headline above. The three holiday destinations reported just one suspension each, which sounds statistically insignificant. It's just that the suspension went on in each case for four years, Yvette Cooper please note.

It's not good. In fact, it's bad. But look why it's bad. It's profiling.

Some clot decided that no-one coming home from Disneyland Paris was likely to be a security threat and stuck to it for four years. If you believe in the efficacy of targeting, though, this is the kind of result you must expect. This, and the rogue "Operation Savant" uncovered by Mr Vine and dealt with in Chapter 5 of his report.

It does have funny consequences. Also in Chapter 5, Mr Vine records the procedure at Portsmouth, where immigration officers didn't bother to "open the chip" in ePassports, except to annoy French travellers.

But in general, think twice before agreeing that profiling is a good idea.

It sounds targeted or intelligence-led or risk-based, it sounds advanced and scientific. The suggestion is of a crack team of 26 PhDs in the UKBA command and control bunker using advanced pattern-recognition to detect, hidden away in a mineful of data, the geometry of an organised crime or a planned act of terrorism. But as no-one knows the shape of organised crime or terrorism it's baloney.

Mr Vine says in his introduction that "there is nothing I have discovered which could not have been identified and addressed by senior managers exercising proper oversight" (p.6). Which senior managers does he mean?

Go back to the Home Affairs Committee report. The Committee say:

14. ... The UK Border Agency is described as "an executive agency of the Home Office" but it is in fact an integral part of the Department. While it has its own management and budgetary structure, the UK Border Agency is still under the aegis of the Home Office and it no longer formulates its own policy—that is the responsibility of Home Office Ministers, on the advice of Home Office and UK Border Agency officials. 22. ... If we are to accept the version of events as recounted by Ministers and senior Home Office staff then it creates the impression that Mr Clark was running the UK Border Force without effective checks or balances from either his superiors or immediate colleagues despite the fact that the Border Force is not a separate organisation, nor even part of an independent agency, but is part of the mainstream responsibility of the Home Office and comes directly under the responsibility of the Permanent Secretary and the Board of the Department.

So that's who Mr Vine thinks should have exercised proper oversight. The problems aren't all the responsibility of Brodie Clark and a few senior UKBA staff at Heathrow. Responsibility is shared right up into the heart of the Home Office, right up to Dame Helen Ghosh, the Permanent Secretary. And the problems didn't start last year when she started. Dame Helen inherited a lot of the mess from Sir David Normington, her predecessor as Permanent Secretary, who remains as silent about her travails as his ex-boss, Sir Gus, now Lord O'Donnell.

What's the solution? Split the Border Force from the rest of UKBA? That's obviously what Dame Helen and Theresa May have decided to do. A mistake. Especially if they accompany that move with a lot of opprobrium heaped undiscriminatingly on the heads of all their staff. There are success stories. Like the introduction of checks on lost and stolen passports. Success stories which it might be nice if Mr Vine had included in his report.

It could work, though, if UKBA stop wasting lorry-loads of public money on glitzy technology and plausible consultants and contractors and spend a bit instead on the human beings that border security really relies on.

Is there any hope of that happening? On past experience, no. But just maybe the Financial Times story about the deployment of smart gates at UK airports being delayed in advance of Mr Vine's report could herald a break with past experience – maybe UKBA will abort the deployment of smart gates and cut back on their staff cutbacks.

John Vine report published

John Vine CBE QPM is the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). His report on the Brodie Clark affair was published on Monday 20 February 2012. Like the Home Affairs Committee report Inquiry into the provision of UK Border Controls published a month earlier on Thursday 19 January 2012, it is a historic document. It criticises the Executive and yet, there it is, in a brave move of the Home Secretary's, it’s been published by the Executive.

John Vine report delayed

Hat tip: Anonymous

Home Office Publications:

Report by the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency - WMS This written ministerial stement (sic) was laid in the House of Commons on 31 January 2012 by Theresa May, and in the House of Lords by Lord Henley. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Theresa May): Following the resignation of Brodie Clark, a senior UK Border Agency official, last November, I asked John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, to carry out an independent investigation into border checks conducted by the UK Border Agency. Mr Vine has asked for more time to complete his investigation. Once I have received his final report I will update the House after constituency recess on both the findings of the report and on the action the government will take. Tuesday, 31 January 2012

John Vine report delayed

Hat tip: Anonymous

Home Office Publications:

Report by the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency - WMS This written ministerial stement (sic) was laid in the House of Commons on 31 January 2012 by Theresa May, and in the House of Lords by Lord Henley. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Theresa May): Following the resignation of Brodie Clark, a senior UK Border Agency official, last November, I asked John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, to carry out an independent investigation into border checks conducted by the UK Border Agency. Mr Vine has asked for more time to complete his investigation. Once I have received his final report I will update the House after constituency recess on both the findings of the report and on the action the government will take. Tuesday, 31 January 2012

John Vine, Brodie Clark, Keith Vaz, Theresa May, Damian Green and Helen Ghosh

Today's the day. The deadline for John Vine, Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, to submit his report on the Brodie Clark affair to the Home Office.

Will the public be allowed to see it? This matter concerns our border security and it concerns the safety of the 2012 Olympics. It's a matter of public interest.

But don't get your hopes up. Look what happened to the Home Affairs Committee.

Along with the three investigations into the Brodie Clark affair launched by the Home Office, the Home Affairs Committee looked into it and published their report a couple of weeks ago, Inquiry into the provision of UK Border Controls:

2. The precise facts of the case are disputed and the Home Office has denied us access to original documents that would have helped us to clarify the sequence of events ... 9. The Home Office has refused to provide us with a copy of the HOWI Guidance, a document we believe to be of importance as it has been discussed extensively in oral evidence to this Committee, as well as in the House itself ... 18. ... We have requested a copy of the slide presentation from the Home Office, which again has been refused. Without access to the slide, we are unable to comment on ... 27. Despite agreeing to make both the Home Office Warnings Index Guidelines and the periodic updates available to us when she came before us on 8 November, the Home Secretary has since refused to provide us with these documents ... notwithstanding any internal departmental investigations, these documents would have assisted our inquiry in confirming witness accounts and we would normally expect a Government of any party to acquiesce to such a request from a Select Committee. We recommend that the Home Secretary deposit copies of all the documents that have been made available to the three internal investigations in the Library of this House. This will allow this Committee to reach an informed conclusion of our own and would be consistent with the Government's commitment to transparency and accountability ...

The House of Commons, in the form of the Home Affairs Committee, can go hang. Parliament may call itself "supreme", but the Executive is unmoved. They will spend our money on useless technology – £491,304,533.51 and counting – and (constructively) dismiss anyone who dares to tell us that it is useless and there is nothing that Parliament can do about it.

John Vine, Brodie Clark, Keith Vaz, Theresa May, Damian Green and Helen Ghosh

Today's the day. The deadline for John Vine, Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, to submit his report on the Brodie Clark affair to the Home Office.

Will the public be allowed to see it? This matter concerns our border security and it concerns the safety of the 2012 Olympics. It's a matter of public interest.

But don't get your hopes up. Look what happened to the Home Affairs Committee.

GreenInk 4 published – Private Eye blinks, misses a scoop

Private Eye
13 January – 26 January 2012
Eye 1305
p.17

Prints fingered:

Sir While the Eye joins in with the establishment rubbishing of Brodie Clark ("Border line personality", In the Back, Eye 1302) – in your case by quoting the ineffably smug Michael Mansfield – you ignore the improvised explosive device Mr Clark detonated when he gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. The fingerprinting technology wished on UKBA is the least reliable identity/security check made at the border, Mr Clark said, it is the ninth and bottom priority and, if any check has to be suspended, it is "very sensible" to suspend the fingerprint check. It is presumably of no interest to you that the Home Office want to replace hundreds or even thousands of Border Force staff with a technology that might work in Hollywood films but certainly doesn't at Heathrow. Yours David Moss

GreenInk 4 published – Private Eye blinks, misses a scoop

Private Eye
13 January – 26 January 2012
Eye 1305
p.17

Prints fingered:

Sir While the Eye joins in with the establishment rubbishing of Brodie Clark ("Border line personality", In the Back, Eye 1302) – in your case by quoting the ineffably smug Michael Mansfield – you ignore the improvised explosive device Mr Clark detonated when he gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. The fingerprinting technology wished on UKBA is the least reliable identity/security check made at the border, Mr Clark said, it is the ninth and bottom priority and, if any check has to be suspended, it is "very sensible" to suspend the fingerprint check. It is presumably of no interest to you that the Home Office want to replace hundreds or even thousands of Border Force staff with a technology that might work in Hollywood films but certainly doesn't at Heathrow. Yours David Moss