3rd Special Report - The work of the Immigration Directorates (Q4 2015): Government Response to the Committee's Second Report of Session 2016–17

This is the government's response, published 16 September 2016.

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The Home Office responds to the Committee's conclusions mainly by explaining its approach and citing performance data, disagreeing with the Committee's characterisation of its handling of English language testing fraud and of the immigration backlog.

• On service standards, it says in-country standards "have not changed since their implementation" and that, "Should UKVI change these standards it will notify the committee as it did in 2014."
• On English language testing, it disagrees with parts of the Upper Tribunal ruling, says it was "very pleased to have been granted permission to appeal" to the Court of Appeal, and states it is "simply not correct" that it took ETS claims of fraud at face value.
• On asylum data, it says it will include figures on the s.67 scheme, the Vulnerable Children's Resettlement Scheme and "take-charge" requests in the quarterly Immigration Statistics, the next release being 25 August 2016.
• On the backlog, it says case numbers "will be significant, but this does not necessarily constitute a backlog", and that UKVI "does not have backlogs" in principal application types.

Read the government's response ↗ Report an error