Steve Moxon blog

This is the complaint I have sent to the Metropolitan Police (to boomerang the whole leak/immigration debacle back on to the Home Office so as at last to bring the department to book for systematic failure to administer UK immigration law) .....

Mr Steven Paul Moxon [Former employee of the Managed Migration sub-division of the Immigration & Nationality Directorate (now named the Borders & Immigration Agency) within the Home Office; author of The Great Immigration Scandal, and the 'whistle-blower' in 2004 re immigration under the terms of the Public Interest Disclosure Act]

December 1, 2008

FORMAL COMPLAINT: CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MISCONDUCT IN PUBLIC OFFICE BY THE HOME OFFICE PERMANENT SECRETARY, SIR DAVID NORMINGTON (AND HIS PREDECESSORS); THE HOME SECRETARY, JACQUI SMITH (AND HER PREDECESSORS); THE DIRECTOR OF THE BORDERS AND IMMIGRATION AGENCY, LIN HOMER (AND HER PREDECESSORS AT THE THEN NAMED IMMIGRATION & NATIONALITY DIRECTORATE); HOME OFFICE TOP MANAGEMENT, AND I.N.D./B.I.A. MANAGEMENT AT VARIOUS LEVELS.

Dear Sirs/Madams

Noting the Metropolitan Police's recourse to the common law provision re 'conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office' with respect to leaks from the office of the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, in response to a complaint from Sir David Normington, the permanent secretary of the Home Office; I am hereby making a complaint to request the Metropolitan Police similarly to take action utilising the very same law against the Home Office itself for the aforementioned criminal offence of 'conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office'. This is in respect of current and long-established systematic, wholesale and deliberate failure to apply the law on immigration as required by Act(s) of Parliament to the processing of applications from individuals to enter the United Kingdom as legal migrants according to the various categories administered by the Managed Migration subdivision of the Borders and Immigration Agency (formerly the Immigration & Nationality Directorate).

The prima facie evidence for this was revealed in 2004 when I myself was working as a Managed Migration caseworker within the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office, and I came forward under the terms of the Public Interest Disclosure Act. With no announcements subsequently at any time from the Home Office or any part of it that has addressed the four categories of illegality I identified (see 1-4 below), and through subsequent contact with (ex-)colleagues and others – including liaison with an (ex-)colleague who was planning to bring an Employment Tribunal case in part over these issues -- it is clear that there has been no substantive change between 2004 and the present. I revealed the profound failure to apply immigration law in four respects:

1. The long-established restriction placed by IND/BIA management on all Managed Migration caseworkers of a very low percentage (less than 10%) of applications that they may refuse. If this ceiling is exceeded, an individual caseworker is then subject to negative appraisal by line management, and in turn disciplinary action if the deemed 'problem' persisted, and ultimately dismissal from employment. This necessarily produces a very large mass of granted applications that would never be granted on their individual merits according to the immigration law.

2. The long-established practice of management-enforced severe restriction on assessing the evidence required by the immigration law in respect of the various categories of immigration application. This is the failure in consistent practice to require many of the types of evidence supposedly essential to establish the authenticity and eligibility of an applicant to be approved for migration to the United Kingdom, and/or to require such inadequate evidence as to amount effectively to no evidence, especially in the light of known levels and methods of committing fraud, which are obvious to caseworkers and management [Full details of this -- and re all of points 1-4 here – are presented in the book, The Great Immigration Scandal, published by Imprint Academic in 2004, 2006.]

3. The use of blanket clearance exercises (code-named BRACE – 'Backlog Reduction Accelerated Clearance Exercise'), that achieve greatly increased speed of process of immigration applications through systematic and wholesale only partial checking – the non-appraisal of types of evidence required by law to be considered in assessing applications – re all or some workstreams (types of immigration application).

4. The use of blanket clearance exercises (code-named BRACE – 'Backlog Reduction Accelerated Clearance Exercise') whereby no checks of any kind are carried out on any and every application for immigration to the United Kingdom in one, several or all workstreams for a period of time.

The evidence is in the form of an affidavit to the Sunday Times newspaper, which was then placed in the public domain; in submissions to Home Office investigations; in copies of documents that I took away from the Home Office, as lodged with the Sunday Times; and, as just mentioned, in my referenced book, The Great Immigration Scandal (2004, 2006, Imprint Academic). There is no rebuttal of the substance of this material from the Home Office. To repeat: the absence of any announcement from the Home Office or from any part of it to address my revelations, together with indication from (ex-) colleagues, indicates that – with the possible exception of any recurrence of (4) – nothing substantive has changed in the time intervening since 2004. Given that supporting evidence is mostly already fully in the public domain (and can be supplied upon request), and that there is firm support for my claims from many major public figures, from whom statements of support can be easily obtained; then a prima facie case is clearly established.

It should be noted that although the law allows 'Secretary of State's discretion' in how an individual caseworker handles an individual application, so that if in a particular case all the required evidence is not quite met that an exception may be made in that case if there are compassionate or some other grounds; this expressly does not apply to consideration of whole caseloads, so it cannot be used to justify any of the four breaches of the law I outline above – not that such major deviation from procedure by a caseworker even for any individual application would be allowable under the law in any case.

In particular, it should be noted that I lodged a Freedom of Information request with the Home Office in January 2005 (under the Freedom of Information Act that had become law that very month), in respect of my points 3 and 4 above; and regarding this I have liaised closely with the Office of the Information Commissioner. But despite several 'non-compliance' orders placed on the Home Office by the OIC – which does not accept that the Home Office has good reason under the law to refuse disclosure – the Home Office has persisted (and still persists) in refusing to disclose. To refuse disclosure pertaining to systematic illegality, self-evidently is itself illegality by the Home Office, and is clear indication that there is serious failure to abide by the law that the Home Office sees no alternative but to keep secret because of what would be the consequences for the careers or the continued employment of some of its senior officials.

This is a formal complaint, upon which I request prompt action and indication of timescale and procedure that the Metropolitan Police would propose.

I reserve the right to amend the wording in the light of any subsequent advice I receive from expert parties.

Yours sincerely

Steven Paul Moxon