Home Office not answering questions over the issue unless you use the right words – which it is refusing to share
The Government has asked for a definition of ‘illegal immigrants’ in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request at the start of the year asking for the number of people in the UK currently without any legal right to be in the country. Staff at the Home Office insisted the term is no longer used under Labour, but are refusing to share what they should now be called.
Several requests to the Home Office have resulted in the department asking what ‘illegal immigrant’ means, while trying to tie the issue to asylum seekers, who have entered into a legal process of refugee status because they claim they cannot return to their home country due to fear of persecution.
The definition of illegal immigration – and the fact they are not asylum seekers – was sent to the Home Office before the department again sought an explanation of the term three weeks later. In one of their FOI answers, the Home Office then also sought clarification of the term ‘resources’. This was in response to a request for information inquiring about the resources allocated to finding illegal immigrants still in the country. Specifically, the number of teams and personnel by region currently responsible for locating them.
After being contacted by The Mirror, a spokesman from the Home Office confirmed the terms ‘illegal migrants’ and ‘illegal immigrants’ were no longer used or recognised by the department. They said the term change was implemented shortly after Labour came to power in the last election. The new government received criticism in July last year when the Home Office called the issue ‘irregular migration’ on X – formerly known as Twitter.
The Home Office spokesman refused to clarify what the accepted term was so a new FOI request could be submitted – saying it was journalists’ responsibility to find out for themselves. When questioned, they denied this was an attempt to obstruct the FOI process.
This has delayed the process of finding out the information sought by the FOIs – after the first one was sent on January 1. A spokesman from the Information Commissioner’s Office said: “People have the legal right to promptly receive information they’re entitled to and we take action when they don’t. We’ve been clear that public sector leaders should take transparency seriously and see the benefits it brings, including scrutiny of processes and approaches that can then benefit from improvement.”
A statement released last month on the Government’s own website used the term illegal migrants in its title – leading to further confusion as it is still being officially used. A response later issued by the Home Office’s FOI team referred to the people on which the information was being asked in the request as ‘irregular migrants’. This was despite the term not being used in the request or clarification of definitions.