› › Hc 584 Reforming The Uk Border And Immigration System

HC 584 - Reforming the UK Border and Immigration System

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 20 pages

File Size : 38,45 MB

Release : 2014

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0215078470

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Book Description

The Home Office acquired direct responsibility for the significant problems faced by the UK Border Agency when it was abolished in March 2013 and its functions were transferred to the Department. While performance in most of the areas transferred has held steady, the Department has failed to deal with long standing backlogs of asylum claims. Many older asylum claims - some over seven years old - remain undecided, while a new backlog of cases awaiting an initial decision is forming. This is partly as a result of a botched attempt by the Agency to downgrade staff that resulted in 120 experienced caseworkers leaving. The Department lacks the data it needs to manage its backlogs and the overall workload effectively. The failure of a number of IT projects has also compromised the Department's ability to track people through the immigration system and ensure that those with no right to remain are removed from the UK.



Administrative Law in Action

Author : Robert Thomas

Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing

Page : 384 pages

File Size : 37,7 MB

Release : 2022-02-10

Category : Law

ISBN : 1509953132

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Book Description

This book investigates and analyses how administrative law works in practice through a detailed case-study and evaluation of one of the UK's largest and most important administrative agencies, the immigration department. In doing so, the book broadens the conversation of administrative law beyond the courts to include how administrative agencies themselves make, apply, and enforce the law. Blending theoretical and empirical administrative-legal analysis, the book demonstrates why we need to pay closer attention to what government agencies actually do, how they do it, how they are organised, and held to account. Taking a contextual approach, the book provides a detailed analysis of how the immigration department performs its core functions of making policy and law, taking mass casework decisions, and enforcing immigration law. The book considers major recent episodes of immigration administration including the development of the hostile environment policy and the treatment of the Windrush generation. By examining a diverse range of material, the book presents a model of administrative law based upon the organisational competence and capacity of administration and its institutional design. Alongside diagnosing the immigration department's failings, the book advances positive proposals for its reform.



HC 808 - Implementing Reforms to Civil Legal Aid

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 28 pages

File Size : 41,98 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Law

ISBN : 0215081234

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Book Description

The Ministry of Justice is on track to make a significant and rapid reduction to the amount that it spends on civil legal aid. However, it introduced major changes on the basis of no evidence in many areas, and without making good use of the evidence that it did have in other areas. It has been slow to fill the considerable gaps in its understanding, and has not properly assessed the full impact of the reforms. Almost two years after the reforms, the Ministry is still playing catch up: it does not know if those still eligible are able to access legal aid; and it does not understand the link between the price it pays for legal aid and the quality of advice being given. Moreover, the Ministry's approach to implementing the reforms has inhibited access to mediation for family law cases which can be a cost-effective alternative to court for resolving disputes. Amazingly, it failed to foresee that removing legal aid funding for solicitors would reduce the number of referrals to family mediation. Perhaps most worryingly of all, it does not understand, and has shown little interest in, the knock-on costs of its reforms across the public sector. It therefore does not know whether the projected £300 million spending reduction in its own budget is outweighed by additional costs elsewhere. The Department therefore does not know whether the savings in the civil legal aid budget represent value for money



HC 458 - HMRC's Progress in Improving Tax Compliance and Preventing Tax Avoidance

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 24 pages

File Size : 28,39 MB

Release : 2014

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0215078764

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Book Description

HMRC's action against tax avoiders continues to be unacceptably slow. The Liberty scheme, for example, began in 2005 and was closed down in 2009, but it has taken until 2014 to take this case to a tax tribunal. Up to £10 million of the total £400 million tax at stake may not be recoverable because in 30 cases HMRC failed to start inquiries into personal tax returns within the 12 month statutory deadline. HMRC should report on the progress it has achieved by using new powers granted by Parliament and show that it is using its existing powers with sufficient urgency. Recent changes to the UK tax regime have been challenged by international bodies like the OECD and European Commission as constituting 'harmful tax practices'. These changes make it easier for global companies to avoid paying tax in the jurisdictions where they make a profit. HM Treasury and HMRC should provide details of progress in identifying and addressing the ways that international tax structures are exploited, and set out the actual costs and benefits of recent changes to the UK's tax regime. It is amazing that HMRC made a £1.9 billion error when it established its baseline and set targets for its compliance work. This means HMRC has been overstating the extent to which its performance on compliance yield has improved and it inadvertently presented misleading information to Parliament. Astonishingly, this significant error in a key performance measure went undetected by HMRC's own system of governance and internal audit for three years



HC 893 - Public Health England's Grant to Local Authorities

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 21 pages

File Size : 38,27 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Medical

ISBN : 0215083814

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Book Description

Since it was created in 2013, Public Health England (PHE) has made a good start in its efforts to protect and improve public health. Good public health is vital to tackling health inequalities and reducing burdens on the NHS. The Committee were impressed by the passion shown by PHE's Chief Executive, and his determination to challenge Government to consider public health in wider policymaking. However, we are concerned that the Department of Health is not getting local authorities to their target funding allocations for public health quickly enough, with nearly one third of 152 local authorities currently receiving funding that is more than 20% above or below what would be their fair share. The Agency decided not to change the grant distribution for 2015/16. Local authorities are also presently constrained by being tied into contracts to which the Department had previously committed, such as for sexual health interventions. It is not clear whether the public health grant to local authorities will remain ring-fenced, and they need more certainty to better plan their public health programmes. If the ring-fence is removed, there is a risk that spending on public health will decline as councils come under increasing financial pressures. There are still unacceptable health inequalities across the country, for example healthy life expectancy for men ranges from 52.5 years to 70 years depending on where they live. These inequalities make PHE's support at a local level particularly important but the Committee are concerned that PHE does not have strong enough ways of influencing local authorities to ensure progress against all of its top public health priorities. Finally, given how important it is to tackle the many wider causes of poor public health, PHE needs to influence departments more effectively and translate its own passion into action across Whitehall.



HC 708 - Managing and Removing Foreign National Offenders

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 24 pages

File Size : 27,24 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Computers

ISBN : 021508103X

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Book Description

It is eight years since the Committee last looked at this issue and they are dismayed to find so little progress has been made in removing foreign national offenders from the UK. This is despite firm commitments to improve and a ten-fold increase in resources devoted to this work. The public bodies involved are missing too many opportunities to remove foreign national offenders early and are wasting resources, through a combination of a lack of focus on early action at the border and police stations, poor joint working in prisons, and inefficient caseworking in the Home Office. This, combined with very poor management information and non-existent cost data, results in a system that appears to be dysfunctional. Our concerns about the system were not allayed by the evidence we received. The Home Office will need to act with urgency on the recommendations we make in this report if it is to secure public confidence in its ability to tackle effectively these and the wider immigration system issues on which the Committee has previously reported.



HC 457 - The Work Programme

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 20 pages

File Size : 21,46 MB

Release : 2014

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0215078632

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Book Description

The Department for Work and Pensions is responsible for the Work Programme, which aims to help people who have been out of work for long periods to find and keep jobs. Specifically the Work Programme aims to increase employment, reduce the time that people spend on benefit, and to improve support for the hardest-to-help - those participants whose barriers to employment are, relatively, greater than others on the programme. The Department assigns people to one of nine payment groups depending on characteristics such as age and the benefit each person is claiming. The Department pays prime contractors to provide support to people to get them into long-term employment using a payment-by-results approach. The amount the Department pays a prime contractor depends on its success in getting people into sustained work and the payment group of the individual. The Department has 40 contracts with 18 prime contractors. Either two or three prime contractors operate in 18 different geographic areas across England, Scotland, and Wales. Prime contractors may subcontract some or all of the support they provide. The Department will stop referring people to the Work Programme in March 2016, although payments to prime contractors will continue until March 2020. Between June 2011 and March 2016, the Department expects to refer 2.1 million people to the Work Programme and forecasts total payments to prime contractors of £2.8 billion.



HC 736 - Financial Sustainability Of NHS Bodies

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 23 pages

File Size : 22,42 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0215081250

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Book Description

The financial health of NHS bodies has worsened in the last two financial years. The overall net surplus achieved by NHS bodies in 2012-13 of £2.1 billion fell to £722 million in 2013-14. The percentage of NHS trusts and foundation trusts in deficit increased from 10% in 2012-13 to 26% in 2013-14. Monitor found that 80% of foundation trusts that provide acute hospital services were reporting a deficit by the second quarter of 2014-15. NHS England, Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority recognise that radical change is needed to the way services are provided and that extra resources are required if the NHS is to become financially sustainable. The necessary changes will require further upfront investment. Present incentives to reduce A&E attendance and increase community based care services have not had the impact expected. New incentives and strong relationships are needed to promote the more effective collaboration necessary for delivering new models of care.



HC 583 - Out-of-Hours GP Services in England

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 24 pages

File Size : 13,69 MB

Release : 2014

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0215078691

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Book Description

People turn to out-of-hours GP services when they are worried about their own health or that of family or friends, and want urgent advice or treatment. However, the urgent and emergency care system is complex and people struggle to know which is the right service to use. Patients' experience of and satisfaction with the out-of-hours services varies significantly and unacceptably across the country, as does the cost. NHS England has not provided effective oversight of whether the services are providing value for money. It lacks the basic information needed to understand what lies behind the variations and identify where it should intervene. It has not dealt adequately with conflicts of interest which inevitably occur when many commissioners are also providers. NHS England also needs to address the perverse financial incentives which get in the way of different urgent care services working effectively together. It needs to examine whether the out-of-hours services are working properly with other services and whether the system encourages duplication when resources are so constrained. At the most basic level, the Department of Health and NHS England must develop information to be able to know whether there will be enough GPs to cope with the growing workload.



HC 705 - Managing and Replacing the Aspire Project

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 24 pages

File Size : 32,38 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0215081137

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Book Description

Most of HM Revenue and Customs' (HMRC's) major tax collection systems are provided under one contract, the Aspire contract. While this has provided stability over the last ten years HMRC has not managed the costs of the contract well. It has cost some £7.9 billion over this period and generated profits for the suppliers of some £1.2 billion. When the current contract ends in 2017 HMRC intends, in accordance with government IT procurement policy, to move from the current single contract to a new model with many short-duration contracts with multiple suppliers. However, HMRC has made little progress in defining its needs and has still not presented a business case to government. Once funding is agreed, it will have only two years to recruit the skills and procure the services it will need. Moreover, HMRC's record in managing the Aspire contract and other IT contractors gives the Committee little confidence that HMRC can successfully achieve this transition or that it can manage the proposed model effectively to maximise value for money. HMRC also demonstrates little appreciation of the scale of the challenge it faces or the substantial risks to tax collection if the transition fails. Failure to collect taxes efficiently would create havoc with the public finances.