Amber Rudd letter to PM reveals 'ambitious but deliverable' removals target

Exclusive: denials she was aware of deportation targets at odds with January 2017 letter now published in full

Amber Rudd has claimed she did not set, see or approve any targets for removals. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Nick Hopkins-Sun 29 Apr 2018

The private letter from Amber Rudd to Downing Street in which she sets an “ambitious but deliverable” target for an increase in the enforced deportation of immigrants has been published by the Guardian in full for the first time.

The letter, signed by the home secretary in January last year, states that she is refocusing work within her department to achieve the “aim of increasing the number of enforced removals by more than 10% over the next few years”.

Rudd has claimed she did not set, see or approve any targets for removals. The former immigration minister Brandon Lewis suggested on Sunday this proposed increase was an ambition rather than a target.

But Home Office sources have told the Guardian that it is “shame-faced nonsense” to claim the department had not been set specific targets in this area, or that these have not been regularly discussed at the highest levels.

The latest furore was sparked on Friday when the Guardian published details from a separate confidential memo that was sent to Rudd in June last year.

Prepared by Hugh Ind, the director general of Immigration Enforcement in the Home Office, it picked up on the new policy outlined by Rudd in her letter to Theresa May.

The document stated that his agency had “set a target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017/18 … this will move us along the path towards the 10% increased performance on enforced returns which we promised the Home Secretary earlier this year”.

While Rudd has denied seeing the six-page briefing note, the Guardian can now reveal that it was also sent to at least eight of the Home Office’s most senior officials, including:

• Marc Owen, senior director of national and international operations in Immigration Enforcement.
• Mark Thomson, the director general of the Passport Office.

• Tony Eastaugh, UK director of operations at Immigration Enforcement.

• Gareth Hills, director of performance and risk at the Home Office.

• Stephen Kershaw, a senior director in Immigration Enforcement.

• Andrew Wren, director of performance, assurance and governance at the Home Office.
The disclosure will heap further pressure on Rudd, who has said she will address MPs on Monday to answer the “legitimate questions” that have been raised over the past week.

On Friday night, nine hours after the Guardian first told the Home Office about the leaked memo, Rudd tweeted: “I wasn’t aware of removal targets. I accept I should have been and I am sorry that I wasn’t.”

The response appears at odds with the letter she sent to the prime minister in January last year.
But it also suggests that none of the other senior officials and special advisers copied into the subsequent briefing note ever discussed with her the targets which the Immigration Enforcement agency was attempting to reach on her instruction.

Home Office sources have told the Guardian that Immigration Enforcement has been working all year to reach the target of 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18.

They have been bracing themselves to acknowledge to ministers that the agency has failed to do so. To meet the goal, it needed to deport 250 people a week, but it has only been able to remove about 225 a week.

“At the Home Office we work in a target culture,” said a source. “The civil service is completely target based. That’s all we do. It is shame-faced nonsense for Amber Rudd to say otherwise.”