Regardless of Patel’s own culpability, a common criticism of the “unwieldy” Home Office is that it has grown too large to be effective.
“It’s a massive department,” the source added. “Consider the spectrum of what it covers: immigration, counter terrorism, drug and alcohol strategy, child sexual abuse… It’s impossible to be laser-like or to plan effectively ahead.
“The scale of the operation also results in a lack of empathy. If you’re part of a department that doesn’t have a lot of face time with ministers then you start operating in a vacuum and are resistant to change.”
Suggesting that immigration merited its own department, the insider added: “If you haven’t properly prepared for it, you’re not going to be able to get 300 people overnight to work on Ukrainian visas, especially if they are already working on refugees from Afghanistan, some of whom are still in hotels, and people returning from Hong Kong.
“I remember when we had people working on Syrian refugees suddenly having to switch all their attention to Calais even though the Syrians were in more need of help – there’s a bandwidth issue.”
Another former Home Office insider was more scathing. “The whole place has been a s***show for decades. It’s the most dysfunctional department in government. They’ve got it into their heads that their primary job is to stop people entering the country and to kick out as many people as they can. They are completely overzealous in the enforcement of the rules and bogged down by bureaucracy which means nothing ever gets done with any urgency.”
Noting that the ‘local sponsorship scheme’ was the responsibility of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and the Communities (DLUHC), not the Home Office, the source added: “DLUHC is meant to be administering it but they haven’t done anything. The whole thing is a mess.”
