Shabana Mahmood must make the Home Office “fit for purpose”

Once again, the Home Office has been declared “not fit for purpose.” Shabana Mahmood’s damning assessment, ⁷ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyl20gw4y2o  which followed the Times’ release ⁸ https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/home-office-shabana-mahmood-secret-report-x8qwlw262  of an internal review carried out by Conservative MP and former Home Office special adviser Nick Timothy in 2023, echoes the language attributed to former home secretary John Reid in 2006. The description has haunted the department ever since. 

Timothy was part of a Home Office team, during Theresa May’s time as home secretary, which was not known for its openness or collegiality, and his review took place under the Sunak Conservative government. However, he highlights some important and longstanding failings in the department – and Shabana Mahmood is right to take the critique seriously. 

The department’s disconnect with operational realities, and its tendency to “do things to”, rather than work with, other departments, are especially concerning. The home secretary needs to urgently grip these longstanding issues to deliver her policy agenda.

Operational insights need to be built into the policy making process

The Home Office is one of the five biggest departments in government, with over 50,000 civil servants – including 74% in operational roles. The Timothy review points out that the Home Office is not good enough at linking up policy and operations, and the lack of operational insights leads to less effective decision making. Policy teams are physically separate from operation teams. Previous Institute research into designing asylum policy and post-Brexit migration arrangements have also pointed out the damaging consequences of not including operational insights. 

The Home Office should consider reversing a change made by Theresa May to separate policy teams which worked within operational ones. Multidisciplinary teams, where policy officials are exposed to the operational consequences of policy decisions, would create better feedback loops within the department. The integration of teams would also enable policies to be tested before they are made public, to understand how they would work in practice.

The Home Office needs to improve how it works with other departments

Cross-cutting policy areas like immigration also require effective communication and trust between departments. The fact that departments like DHSC and DWP distrust and are “uncooperative” with the Home Office, when asylum policy has a big impact on their policy areas, needs to change. 

This requires the Home Office to move away from its cycle of rapid policy making in asylum and immigration and make long-term plans on which it can cooperate with other departments. Long-term, and transparent, policy planning would also provide incentives to create structures between departments through which they can come to a collective agreement about policies which affect them.

Ministers should welcome a confident civil service that gives the best possible advice

While the full text of the Timothy review has not been released, the Times report shows that he has adopted a characteristically pugnacious approach. Frustration with the Home Office is understandable, but to really change the department will require a cultural shift to a higher trust, less aggressive environment. Working in a complex and high-profile policy area such as immigration requires a deep level of trust and understanding between ministers and officials need to feel confident enough to speak “difficult truths”.

Ministers need to be clear about the style and content of briefings and advice that they prefer to receive, and the depth at which they engage with the material. And officials should be expected to understand what is happening on the ground so that they can give their best advice. Timothy is right that civil servants should never be in a position where they give “falsely reassuring” impressions or last minute briefings to ministers.

The issues raised in this review are not new. The Home Office has faltered in its implementation of the 2018 Windrush lessons learned review – and the current political pressures it faces make it harder to step back and fix some of these problems. It is a good sign that the home secretary has signalled that she and her permanent secretary are committed to changing the department. Doing nothing, or continuing to struggle reactively and chaotically with the Home Office’s challenging brief, should not be an option.