UK border agency 'no grip' on people with expired visas

Report from MPs says agency has not done enough to ensure those with visas which expired in December 2008 have left

The UK Border Agency has come under fire from MPs over its 'lack of grip' on people overstaying their visas. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The UK Border Agency has not done enough to ensure that an estimated 181,000 migrant workers and students whose visas have expired since December 2008 have actually left the country, MPs say.

The report by the Commons public accounts committee says UKBA has so little grip on the problem that it cannot even verify the 181,000 estimate, and does not try to enforce the duty of employers to ensure that the people they recruit from abroad leave the country when their visa expires.

The criticism comes as the Home Office has "clarified" its policies of capping the number of skilled migrant workers and reforming student visas to reduce net migration "from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands".

The latest Home Office business plan now says that reducing net migration will be the "anticipated" result of introducing the migrant cap "and other policies", rather than its direct outcome.

As far as student visas reforms are concerned – which the home secretary, Theresa May, has predicted will reduce net migration by up to 80,000 – the reduction in numbers is now only regarded as a "likely consequence".

This softening of language appears to deliberately prepare the ground should the net migration target be missed by the time of the next general election.

Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, said the MPs were concerned about the lack of control over tens of thousands of workers who enter Britain each year through the intra-company transfer system, which allows multinational companies to transfer their staff to the UK and is not covered by the immigration cap.

Hodge said: "The UKBA has not got a grip on making sure that migrant workers whose visas have expired actually leave the UK. It estimates that 181,000 such workers are staying on without permission, but it can't even verify the figures, and does not try to enforce the employers' duty to ensure that people leave when they are required to do so."

She added that UKBA had not exercised proper checks on sponsoring employers and visited only one in five of those who applied for licences.

"The fundamental point is that the agency lacks the management information needed to manage migrant numbers and ensure that the rules are complied with," she said.

The immigration minister, Damian Green, said the report demonstrated why the system needed radical reform. "This government has already introduced an annual limit on economic migrants, including a significant tightening of the ICT rules, and sweeping changes to the student visa system. Later this year we will propose a shake-up of the family and settlement route," he said.

"I want enforcement and compliance to be the cornerstone of our immigration system and we are making it more difficult for people to live in the UK illegally by taking action against employers that flout our rules. Any employers found to be abusing our immigration system risk losing their licence to sponsor any migrant workers."