Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Do we have evidence that fare evasion is getting significantly worse? This is one thing that I could find to point to it having gotten worse in the past two years:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/fare-dodging-elizabeth-line-tube-london-underground-tfl-b1238000.html
[...]

Also do we know that people actually think of fare evasion in the same way as those other examples you've given that do have a direct negative impact on others in a neighborhood?

I saw this from yougov last year where you can see the older one gets the more annoyed one is about this issue but only the oldest TfL travellers want people punished even if it isn't make TfL back money.

https://yougov.co.uk/travel/articles/51101-half-of-london-tube-and-train-travellers-say-theyve-seen-tfl-staff-fail-to-challenge-fare-dodgers

I don't know but I'm not sure that's necessarily an issue in terms of whether it's got worse - I think it might have got more visible more broadly because more and more stations are having gates installed across the country.

But my own purely anecdotal experience is that it has increased in the last few years. I don't see it much now (because basically every day there are now a team of ticket inspectors at the station I use) but I would say I probably saw it happen once or twice a month. I don't know if I'd never noticed but I don't remember previously seeing people jump over barriers in the past. And a couple of months I saw a couple in their fifties just shove through the disabled/pram gate.

The TSSA report an increase in incidents against their workers as well.

FWIW I slightly wonder if there's a covid angle. I feel like there is a chunk of people who just unlearned how to behave in a social manner during covid and haven't looked back. I'm not sure if maybe it was the people who didn't care about covid rules etc and now just think all informal/social pressure/compliance by consent behaviour is bullshit?

As a total aside and it's not related to fare dodging or any of this and I'm not sure if it's just that cohort but all of the teacher I know say that behaviour of kids in school has got seriously work since covid - I know a few who want to leave now who have always loved it and apparently it is a big topic of conversation among teachers. I think part of it is that for that cohort wherever they were in the education system they kind of had a year of being "desocialised" - and I think it had an effect on some adults too.

The teens I saw on the DLR who just claimed they had forgot their youth oysters (maybe would have been convincing if 2nd one hadn't stumbled to copy what the first one said) or the woman who just stayed on her phone and refused to engage with the ticket agent were fare dodgers but they weren't violent. It think it is a mistake to conflate the two as while it may be staff abuse is often result of fare dodging, most fare dodging does not entail staff abuse.

I don't know that I agree - I do to a point. But from what the TSSA say that is the number one trigger for physical and verbal abuse - so if there are more people doing it, or people doing it more routinely then there is going to be more physical ad verbal abuse. I'm not sure our current solution of fewer staff, more tech and a lot of posters saying "don't abuse our staff" is good enough to protect those workers.

And it's not like transport workers are all looking to come down like a tonne of bricks on people. I don't think I've actually ever seen anyone get fined - except on the trains (although I don't hang around tube stations/stations so I've not seen the people at the gates scanning cards). I've seen people say they forgot, or convince the bus driver that they should be allowed to get on for free.

But FWIW I think the thing that thing people dislike is not so much about those networks as it is people jumping or pushing their way through gates (possibly just because there's a degree of physicality/force with it). In the same way as if shoplifting was someone putting a chocolate bar in their pocket, I don't think that's what people care about - it's the shopworker being shoved out the way and the barrier being slammed so someone can sweep several bottles from the spirits counter behind the till. As with the shoplifting and the vandalism, fly-tipping etc I think it's the visible stuff that pisses people off.

[Sheilbh]

Separately I mentioned before that Keir Starmer was apparently regretting his choice to appoint a career civil servant to radically "rewire the British state". Apparently the man who is so profoundly establishment that as a senior civil servant in the Department of Health he had to recuse himself from a public inquiry into the tainted blood scandal in the 1980s, because his father was a senior civil servant in the Department of Health at the time.

Apparently - to widespread shock - Sir Chris Wormlad has not been the energetic agent of change that could have been expected from his utterly conventional civil service career Still we have to give him a year because that's the way things work:

No 10 'has lost faith in Britain's most senior civil servant'
Keir Starmer's top team are said to be concerned about Chris Wormald's performance as cabinet secretary and Downing Street 'intends to replace him imminently'

Patrick Maguire, Chief Political Commentator | Gabriel Pogrund, Whitehall Editor
Tuesday October 21 2025, 7.45pm, The Times

Sir Keir Starmer appointed Sir Chris Wormald ten months ago

Britain's most senior civil servant is expected to be ousted within months after losing the confidence of senior figures in Downing Street.

No 10 and Whitehall sources have told The Times that Sir Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, is unlikely to survive beyond January as concerns about his performance increase.

Sir Keir Starmer's inner circle are concerned that the centre of government remains underpowered despite last month's reorganisation of the prime minister's Downing Street team.

Starmer's ally, Baroness Casey of Blackstock, the civil service troubleshooter, is taking an increasingly prominent role and is tipped to replace Wormald.

The cabinet secretary has been criticised privately by ministers for a lack of dynamism and excess of caution. One senior Labour source said he had proved to be "the embodiment of Whitehall groupthink" during his ten months in the post.

The Cabinet Office said Wormald continued to have Starmer's support.

The plot to remove him was first reported by the The State of It, the new political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times.

Some in government hope new evidence from the continuing public inquiry into the Covid pandemic will provide a pretext to force his replacement. During hearings last year, it was suggested he had advocated mass exposure to the virus akin to "chicken-pox parties".

Wormald, who was unexpectedly made cabinet secretary by Starmer last December, was permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care during the pandemic.

He has already been criticised by one of the inquiry's reports, which found there had been a "lack of adequate leadership" in preparations for Covid and said the civil service and governments "failed their citizens", at the time of his appointment.

Reports over the summer suggested that No 10 was experiencing "buyer's remorse" over Starmer's choice of cabinet secretary.

His decision to appoint a career civil servant dogged by controversy to "rewire the state" left many in government mystified. Wormald's father and grandfather both served in senior roles on Whitehall.

Dominic Cummings, the former adviser to Boris Johnson who worked alongside Wormald during the pandemic and at the Department for Education, told The Times last Saturday that the cabinet secretary was "part of the old broken system".

He said: "The old system has shot themselves in both feet, they've blown both feet off with Starmer and Wormald, because they've made it conventional wisdom now that the old system is broken and has to be succeeded by something much more radical."

Senior advisers in Downing Street are sympathetic to that critique, but have found their room for manoeuvre constrained by an "unwritten rule", which dictates that cabinet secretaries cannot be dismissed until they have spent a year in the post.

A No 10 insider said: "Chris is a parody of every civil service stereotype. He is given clear instructions on an issue and says we will be able to deliver it only after we've commissioned a wide-reaching review that reports sometime in the mid-2080s."

The unease over Wormald's effectiveness reflects longstanding concerns about Downing Street's lack of grip on the machinery of government.

Over the summer, there were plans to circumvent him by appointing Casey, presently a non-executive director of the Cabinet Office, as permanent secretary of No 10, but the new role did not feature in Starmer's shake-up of his inner team.

Whitehall sources added that there was a "widespread assumption" that Starmer would "fire Chris Wormald" and replace him with Casey.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "The cabinet secretary continues to have the support of the prime minister and they are working closely together to deliver on the priorities of the British public."

A few things. It wasn't "suggested" that he was advocating mass exposure to covid via "chicken pox parties" to minister, that was the evidence from his WhatsApp messages to the Cabinet Secretary who agreed - both of them moaning that the politicians just didn't get it.

Another is that, as mentioned in that article, there's been another round of people leaving Downing Street and moving roles and I think we're now on the fourth and fifth "reorganisation" of Starmer's Downing Street operation. Before he appoints her Cabinet Secretary he should perhaps commission Baroness Casey to do an inquiry into how and why the wron people keep being put into the wrong jobs in Number 10.

And on that - I think Baroness Casey has been impressive in some roles - but I do slightly query if Starmer's strategy of "just one more career civil servant to radically change the civil service" will work

Totally separately but for the Senedd elections now have a poll with Reform in first place with 30%, Labour and Plaid both down to 23% (Tories and Greens either side of 10% and Lib Dems just below 5%). There's 96 seats in the Senedd so that would be about 35 seats for Reform, 25 or so each for 7 Tories and 3 Greens. And Labour might lose all their constituency seats so be purely from the PR list votes.

Also totally separately but saw Theo Bertram (former Spad) point out that 6 out of 10 young people think that democracy either "ignores" them or is "completely broken" and that 7 out of 10 get news from TikTok. So I hadn't realised but slightly mad that government just ignores it. "This is the official No10 TikTok account. Boris Johnson is still PM & the last video is Larry the cat predicting an England win in the 2021 Euros."

[Tamas]

Ok that IS pretty stupid wtf

[Richard Hakluyt]

I had the misfortune to work in the civil service for a few years and was not impressed. It is a major centre of group think, partially understandable given its role, but not a place to look for innovative changemakers.

[Josquius]

I had the misfortune to work in the civil service for a few years and was not impressed. It is a major centre of group think, partially understandable given its role, but not a place to look for innovative changemakers.

[Josquius]

No access to the original Private Eye piece sadly but glad to see the obvious stench of Tees Port really getting attention. Middlesbrough's MP wrote this:

Private Eye's comprehensively detailed and fully evidenced exposé last week of the Teesworks saga ["Stripped Tees" in No 1660], makes for shocking reading. The story it tells reads like the screenplay for a dark political drama, one in which public money and public assets have been shockingly exploited and public trust has been completely eroded. The scale and gravity of what has been exposed demands a full and independent investigation.

The investigative journalist Richard Brooks of Private Eye is to be congratulated for his public service in his determined unearthing of evidence, despite the best efforts of some to frustrate him in his quest for the facts. His findings reveal a disturbing pattern: flawed and determined decision-making, channelling vast sums of public money in particular directions, resulting in colossal financial benefit for the private developer partners, whilst leaving taxpayers carrying the risk.

Across Teesside and beyond, wholly justified concerns have been expressed for many years. The previous Conservative government was wholly supportive and content for huge amounts of public funding to be spent to assemble, decontaminate and remediate vast tracts of industrial land at the taxpayer's expense. Yet outrageously, that land has subsequently been transferred to a small group of businessmen for nominal sums and for them to then enjoy eye watering profits through further transactions. Through a web of contracts and corporate structures, they were able to profit handsomely while local communities have seen little return.

Instead of using these precious monies for an industrial renaissance and the creation of a wealth fund for the Tees Valley, as originally envisaged by the original members of the South Tees Development Board, the Conservative Mayor and his friends established structures that meant the wealth generated flowed and continued to flow, into the private partners' coffers.

Investigation is needed
What is now needed is a formal authoritative inquiry and investigation.

The Tees Valley Review, commissioned by then Minister Michael Gove, as a result of my parliamentary intervention on the matter, provided an important but limited account of the governance and decision making. Its findings were nevertheless damning, and it made an unprecedented 28 highly significant, far reaching and significant recommendations. But it had no power to compel evidence, to demand all the documents held beyond the public authorities, or to fully test the veracity of key decisions. It was a review and not an investigation – which, whilst damning, did not fully get to the bottom of the key issues.

The government's Best Value process, to which the Tees Valley Combines Authority is now subject, and which monitors whether local authorities deliver value for money, is valid and useful. But it is not – and was never meant to be – the kind of forensic inquiry that is truly needed. Only a full investigation can get to the bottom of how public resources were handled and fully answer the questions as to whether those responsible acted properly.

There has been much talk of a National Audit Office inquiry and clearly that hasn't happened, but I am today calling for the need for an inquiry to be revisited.

There needs to be a formal, independent inquiry with the ability to compel disclosure, to take evidence under oath and follow the money wherever it leads.

If that means inquiring into individuals and private sector entities, then any such inquiry will have to have that power.

The Labour Party previously committed to seeking a National Audit Office investigation but whilst a NAO inquiry would be a positive step, consideration will have to be given as to whether the NAO has the reach to  fully investigate into all the dark recesses of the various corporate entities or whether a full statutory judge-led public inquiry would be the right vehicle to properly investigate all these matters.

The problems run deeper than Teesworks alone. Accountability, scrutiny and transparency around devolution funding are far too weak, particularly for Combined Authority Mayors. Once monies are devolved, the systems of scrutiny are simply insufficient, inadequate and not fit for purpose. There has to be something deeply flawed if the government does not have the means to enforce accountability when such massive funds are devolved. This debacle risks undermining the government's entire devolution agenda if these issues are not confronted.

The fact that the Tees Valley Combined Authority's accounts have been "disclaimed" without proper audit for two years in a row, should alarm anyone who believes in good governance. And given that the South Tees Development Corporation is now struggling to pay back the debts it has racked up, and is looking to the TVCA for payment holidays, it has to set alarm bells ringing in Whitehall. As Richard Brooks point out in his lengthy article, "There would have been no such trouble if STDC hadn't handed over the income from its land ( and much else) to Messrs Corney and Musgrave".

This lack of accountability leaves our region at a disadvantage when seeking further funding and undermines public confidence in devolution itself.

The Mayor of Tees Valley was previously welcoming of an independent inquiry by the National Audit Office. Whether by way of the NOA or a Judge, only a truly independent and uninhibited public inquiry will restore trust, improve financial management and rebuild confidence in the region's leadership.

If the government concludes that the NAO is the appropriate body for such an investigation, then three parties must play their part. The Government must propose and support it. The Mayor of Tees Valley must consent and the National Audit Office must agree there is a case to proceed and agree to investigate. Whatever the route to a fully independent inquiry, the time for doing so is way overdue.

After the 2015 closure of Teesside's proud steelmaking industry, we had a once-in-a-generation chance to transform our Tees Valley economy. The vision was for a new hub and cluster of net-zero industries, creating thousands of skilled jobs and in doing so establishing a community wealth fund that would deliver lasting social good. Instead, opaque governance and highly questionable decisions have squandered that opportunity and eroded public trust.

This entire saga has a smell hanging over it. The people of Teesside, Hartlepool and Darlington are no fools. That smell will not go away until there is a full, transparent and independent inquiry. Only by confronting what went on can we begin to restore integrity, accountability and hope for the better future our region deserves.

https://northeastbylines.co.uk/region/teesside/teesworks-scandal-a-dark-tale-of-public-wealth-lost-and-private-gain/


Ironically its exactly this kind of proto-Reform shit happening which has really led to the decline in trust and rise of Reform.
For a good decade or two local social media groups have been full of angry shouting about brown envelopes. Mostly exaggerated and mis-aimed. The British hard right operate on the same principles of  "if you want to know what Russia is doing see what Russia is accusing others of"

[Richard Hakluyt]

It has been a regular feature in the magazine. I have not yet read the full expose which runs to several thousand words.

They should make a TV series about it. Then people could say "why did nobody say anything about it?" when Private Eye has been going on about it at length for many years 

[Sheilbh]

I had the misfortune to work in the civil service for a few years and was not impressed. It is a major centre of group think, partially understandable given its role, but not a place to look for innovative changemakers.

I posted it at the time he was appointed but John Crace's sketch of Wormald at the Covid Inquiry was pretty withering. I think it was also so bad that people thought he'd lost his chance to become Cabinet Secretary - clearly Keir Starmer was watching and recognised exactly the drive and spirit of change he needed

It turned out that Stevens was just the warmup act. The hors d'oeuvre. The real masterclass in time-wasting came from Christopher Wormald. The permanent secretary of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). The king of the time wasters. Pen pusher extraordinaire. The man who had never come across a form that he didn't want to fill out in triplicate. The Sir Humphrey for whom silence was the Pavlovian response to any question. Quickly followed by a stream of unconsciousness. Time and again, the lead counsel Hugo Keith KC had to beg him to listen to what he was saying.

We started with Door Matt. Cummings and MacNamara had referred to him as a pathological liar. What did he think? Definitely not. In every invention there had been a kernel of truth. Something to believe in if you were extremely gullible. Or stupid. And he was both. If Matty was guilty of anything it was that he was sometimes over-optimistic. Mmm. Like imagining he wouldn't get caught bullshitting and breaking the rules.

Moving on. The former cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill had suggested the health department had not been prepared for the pandemic. Wormald spluttered. Incredulous. Indeed it was. He had ordered in extra boxes of paperclips to keep the additional briefing papers together. He had also made sure the toner had been replaced in the photocopier. So yes, it might have seemed that the DHSC had been preparing for a flu pandemic while the rest of the world was preparing for a coronavirus pandemic. And it might have looked like the department had shrugged its shoulders and was ready to let more than a million die before considering preventive test-and-trace measures.

But appearances could be deceptive. He – the Great Chris, the Comptroller of Office Supplies – had made sure every document had been printed with the correct font. Comic relief. Even if all the briefing papers were out of date by the time they were published. Especially if the briefing papers were out of date by the time they were published. It was in the finest civil service traditions not to issue any document that could be construed as helpful. The sole purpose of the civil service was the perpetuation of the civil service.

On and on this went, until Keith eventually gave up in despair. It was 50-50 whether he'd end up killing himself or Wormald. Imagine what it would be like working with Chris. A lifetime in the hell of a bureaucratic cul-de-sac. Where process trumps outcome every time. But he will get his reward. People pay good money for that kind of futility. Which is why he's tipped to be the next cabinet secretary when Simon Case steps down. Make that Lord Wormald.

FWIW I think this is also part of your view on Starmer. Tom McTague in the last year or two has done two huge profiles of Starmer and Burnham (which hurt Burnham's leadership chance - although I think that might just be the party conference cycle). I think there is a fundamental difference in their analysis. I think Starmer's is wrong but helps explain why he goes for someone like Wormald. In that I think Starmer doesn't think Britain needs fundamental change, it just needs more competence. While I think Burnham and some other critics thinks there are fundamental problems that basically need a new political economy. I think that analysis is key in explaining the why and how of Starmer - I think in a way it is also reflected in how you view "populism" whether it is the problem because it causes or chaos, or whether it is a symptom.

So Starmer who briefly had "the stability is the change" as a (meaningless) slogan:

Once again, the answers Starmer turns to are, in effect, apolitical. Investors tell him "we need to see a more stable environment", he explains. "Which is why we're so focused on stability, fiscal rules and making sure that even if they're difficult decisions, that is the foundational stone of what we're doing." Stability, not change: the core of the Starmer government.

"You don't think that the country is fundamentally broken," I put it to him, stating his position. "[You think] it can be fixed... with intelligent and stable leadership... [that] it doesn't need to fundamentally change in a kind of Thatcherite way."

"No," Starmer replies.

Burnham:

To his critics, Burnham's real agenda is less ideological than political, focused on his own advancement. Burnham rejects this characterisation and explains his leftist turn as one forged through experience, particularly his decision to bring Manchester's bus network under public control. Suddenly, fares could be cut, costs controlled, routes expanded. "Public control is everything," he tells me. And now he wants more: control of housing, energy, water, rail - "the basics of life" as he calls them. "I've described what we've been doing here as rolling back the 1980s." This, then, is today's Andy Burnham, the anti-Thatcher - the north's revenge.

I'd add, incidentally, that on that stability point - I think even on that Starmer's failed as it seems to me like everyone's happy we've moved on from Tory psychodrama. But we seem to be having a fair amount of Labour psychodrama - I was astonished how personal the attacks on Burnham were as well as some of the stuff around who is in and out the cabinet etc.

It has been a regular feature in the magazine. I have not yet read the full expose which runs to several thousand words.

They should make a TV series about it. Then people could say "why did nobody say anything about it?" when Private Eye has been going on about it at length for many years 

So I've said before but I'm convinced the most corrupt layer of government in Britain is local government - mainly because the local press has died. So there's no-one covering this unless you can get it picked up by a national or Private Eye. But also it's generally local government that makes most planning decisions. You have revolving doors of councillors to developers or contractors, family members etc.

Whether it's this or the Liverpool New Chinatown Project (which literally sounds like the name you'd invent for a corrupt property scheme in a TV series ) which had the Mayor's son running a health and safety in construction company that was appointed by literally all the contractors working on the project, and had a director who was very closely linked to local organised crime (been inside for coke dealing and GBH from a gangland fight). I think the lack of local press and resource in it to do investigations is a really big problem.

It's something I'm always a bit torn on. I think devolution is my "one cool trick" to fix everything in Britain - but I also think the quality of local government isn't great and I do think there's a lot of unexamined corruption and issues there. Similarly even with this I kind of get the point of NAO or inquiries - but the outcome would be more focus on "Value for money" which I think is often a Treasury trap to destroy basically any capital expenditure scheme (because there will be waste) and probably end up recommending twenty more stakeholder consultations and veto powers that make it more difficult to do anything.

[Josquius]

It's something I'm always a bit torn on. I think devolution is my "one cool trick" to fix everything in Britain - but I also think the quality of local government isn't great and I do think there's a lot of unexamined corruption and issues there. Similarly even with this I kind of get the point of NAO or inquiries - but the outcome would be more focus on "Value for money" which I think is often a Treasury trap to destroy basically any capital expenditure scheme (because there will be waste) and probably end up recommending twenty more stakeholder consultations and veto powers that make it more difficult to do anything.

I think thats where local government reform needs doing properly. Then it would work.

Devolve it down to individual city level then yeah, there's too many in the country to possibly keep track of everything going on, so little care of whats going on syphoning off a few million income town you have vague name recognition of halfway across the country.
And if you're a serious politician then you just won't have so much interest in being a step above a town councillor.

Do it on a more substantial regional level though then you should have few enough and on high enough a level that people can keep track of everything going on and some Andy Burnham level talent can get their teeth in.

Also this regional thinking will stop NIMBYs just dominating as they do in current city-level local government.
The trouble is of course getting public buy in, the old chants of we've just replaced London syphoning everything off for Newcastle/Edinburgh/wherever.

On capital expenditure and waste...Montreal recently managed to get a new train line built for 10% of what such things normally cost. Sounds like some innovative techniques were used there. One I recall hearing about was not stressing so much about cost overruns, as ironically worrying about keeping to a certain price in sub-parts can often lead to the whole thing becoming more expensive.

[Tamas]

Lol the one guy they have deported to France using the great "one out one in" system with France (an approach sure to win the heart of both racists and people who just want fewer migrants) has already returned on a small boat

[Josquius]

It's weird stuff. Raises a lot of questions.

How is he affording this?
Don't France have a system in place to handle these people other than just releasing them on the streets of calais?
What decision went into who got removed under the agreement if this guy had such threats in France?

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. He says he was unsafe in France. He said he didn't leave the asylum accommodation in Paris because he was afraid for his life from the smugglers. So he then fled from the asylum centre to return to the French coast (and, presumably, smugglers) to cross again.

Semi-relatedly - from one of Theresa May's aides and now a Tory MP so obviously with a pinch of salt. But I have seen people saying this rings true with the experience/views of lots of Labour ministers:

Home Office 'detached from reality on immigration', says report
A 'damning' internal review has exposed a culture of defeatism, poor management and operational failures as the home secretary promises an overhaul
George Greenwood, Investigations Reporter | Matt Dathan, Home Affairs Editor
Wednesday October 22 2025, 7.05pm, The Times

Shabana Mahmood has said the Home Office is "not yet fit for purpose" after a secret report found that it was dysfunctional, detached from reality and beset by a "culture of defeatism" on immigration.

The home secretary said the department had been "set up to fail" and that the findings of the report were all too familiar. She promised to radically overhaul its staff, structures and culture.

The department had attempted for more than two years to keep secret the highly critical report, written by the former Home Office special adviser Nick Timothy. It was released only after a legal challenge by The Times.

He identified a catalogue of failings across the department, which had exacerbated the small boats crisis and left ministers unable to implement their own policies. Immigration enforcement officers, responsible for deporting illegal migrants, viewed their high failure rates as "unavoidable in the system".

He found an overly "defensive approach" among the Home Office's lawyers, a reluctance by senior officials to tell "difficult truths" to ministers, an optimism bias that led to wildly inaccurate financial forecasting and a general distrust by other departments that was directly hampering operational issues such as deportations.

Timothy, a special adviser to Theresa May as home secretary and her chief of staff as prime minister until 2017, has been a Tory MP since the general election last year. He was given access to the department and officials during a two-month review of its effectiveness in 2023, and said "too much time is wasted" on identity politics and social issues. That included "listening circles" in working hours in which civil servants met to discuss their feelings about social and political issues, including policies they were responsible for implementing.

Mahmood said the findings exposed how the department had still not learnt the lessons of almost 20 years ago when her predecessor John Reid, now Lord Reid of Cardowan, branded the department "not fit for purpose" after a surge in immigration and a series of IT scandals.

She told The Times: "This report, written under the last government, is damning. To those who have encountered the Home Office in recent years, the revelations are all too familiar. The Home Office is not yet fit for purpose and has been set up for failure. As this report shows, the last Conservative government knew this but failed to do anything about it. Things are now changing. I will work with the new permanent secretary to transform the Home Office so that it delivers for this country."

Here are the key findings of the 26-page report.

'Confused system'

The report lays out in stark detail that the immigration system consisted of "several confused and conflicting systems working to contradictory ends" and that as a result "the enforcement of immigration laws is poor and has grown considerably worse in recent years."

It warned that the "hand-offs between immigration enforcement and other parts of the immigration system are poor, as are the hand-offs with the police and criminal justice system".

In a particularly striking finding, the report said: "There is a culture of defeatism among officers and a sense that high failure rates are an unavoidable fact of life in the system."

The Home Office's lawyers were criticised for taking an overly "defensive approach", with "assessments of likely legal challenge, and even the possibility of defeat" used "as a reason not to do something". Poor legal work was undermining cases, with immigration decisions being "quashed by the court on the grounds that they contained errors caused by poor processes and flawed reasoning".

Timothy said in the report: "Nobody knows who, overall, is responsible for the system." One official told him: "Ask what is going on and you get multiple different spreadsheets from multiple people." Another said: "It takes a team of people weeks to answer a straightforward question." The level of dysfunction in the department was highlighted, he said, by councils who reported "receiving calls from three different parts of the Home Office about the same issue." In other cases "Home Office officials have made bids for accommodation at the same sites as contractors operating on behalf of the department".

He found that "too little planning to prepare fully for the number of migrants arriving if the crossings continued" would probably result in accommodation shortages persisting.

Failure to properly brief ministers

The report detailed mutual distrust between the Home Office and other departments, which hampered its ability to enforce deportations. After the Windrush scandal the Department of Health and Department for Work and Pensions had been "particularly uncooperative", officials said.

Home Office officials, in turn, presented its proposals to other departments as a "fait accompli".

The report found that in key areas officials routinely briefed ministers at the last minute on matters that required immediate decisions, without all the needed content and context. This failure "prevents ministers from taking the time to consider alternative assessments or options" with civil servants rarely being disciplined for this.

Departmental record keeping was woefully inadequate, the report said. Officials were often forced to "rely on memory" to find key information. Some officials in the immigration system were reduced to tracking cases on Excel spreadsheets, before these were replaced by an even more difficult to use system.

'Bringing your whole self to work'

The report said "too much time is wasted" on identity politics and social issues, with staff spending work hours in "listening circles" to discuss their feelings about social and political issues.

Timothy was surprised at what one official called the fashion of "bringing your whole self to work". He warned that this culture was "counterproductive, contrary to the spirit of impartiality in the civil service and divisive for those officials who feel unable to challenge the opinions of more strident colleagues".

He warned of an unhealthy culture of junior members of staff dictating the actions of senior officials.

The culture of the Home Office officials working with other departments was also criticised. One official told Timothy: "Our habit is to seek to do things to others, rather than include them."

Mahmood's team said this finding was particularly alarming. A source close to the home secretary said: "When Shabana entered the Home Office, she told staff to bring their "A-game" to work, not their "whole selves". She will ensure this department is focused on delivering for the public. And she will give short shrift to any time and taxpayer money wasted on self-indulgent talking shops."

Detached from reality

The picture painted is one of a disjointed department with immigration officials "without sufficient appreciation of the operational reality" often "falsely reassuring" the prime minister and home secretary, "skewing" decision-making and leading to avoidable crises.

"Senior officials often know too little about the operational reality to adequately inform and advise ministers," the report said, and ministers were not given sufficient access to frontline staff who understand the operational reality. "In turn ministers find it difficult to trust the system to do the things it says it will. Officials then overcompensate by not wishing to tell difficult truths or by providing advice that is overly optimistic, compounding the problem with trust," it added. This "feedback loop" made success "far less likely", Timothy said.

The report highlighted the 2022 crisis at Manston detention camp which became dangerously overcrowded after Home Office errors as a case study of these failures at work. In that case "fatally overoptimistic" forecasts of how many migrants the camp could process led to a crisis that "blew up" because of a lack of onward accommodation.

Working from home during crisis

Timothy raised serious concerns about office attendance, highlighting that even during the "hottest of Home Office crises" key officials continued to work from home, causing frustration among ministers.

Officials refused to give him data on attendance rates and productivity trends.

Even where they did attend the office, senior officials spent much of their time in the Home Office headquarters in Whitehall "rather than among their teams in operational centres such as Croydon, Sheffield and Liverpool".

Operational staff were "undervalued and neglected," the report said. It found that while a "grade six official" at headquarters on a salary of about £70,000 "might lead a small team working on policy that is neither a ministerial priority nor subject to significant change", an equivalent Border Force official was "responsible for all passenger operations at Heathrow airport".

He described the department's policy that staff should attend the workplace at least 40 per cent of the time as "unambitious". It is understood that this has since improved but has not met the civil service target of 60 per cent.

'Dangerous place' where 'lots goes wrong'

Part of the issue with building an effective department had been the aversion of civil servants to join its ranks.

Certain parts of the Home Office, especially those working on immigration, were perceived to be a "risk" to their careers.

"They see the migration and borders group as a dangerous place in which to work with lots that goes wrong and plenty of scrutiny," the report said.

Others had a lack of interest in the roles for ethical reasons: "they disagree with either the principle of immigration control or the policies needed to achieve it".

The controversies the department has faced meant for staff working there, "morale is sometimes lower than it should be".

Two-year transparency battle

Even two and a half years after it was written, the structural issues the Timothy report identifies in the Home Office still ring true.

The Times exclusively obtained the document after a battle through the courts that has taken more than two years. The judgment revealed the secrecy in which the report was kept, raising concerns about how effectively the recommendations of the report were disseminated to senior leaders in the department.

"Tom Mottershead (former principal private secretary of the department) kept a hard copy of the report in a private locked cabinet," it read. "When a member of the executive committee required access to wording in the report itself, Tom Mottershead would personally show them the relevant section only."

The Home Office said 18 months after the request was submitted that it still "required further time to properly consider its contents and recommendations without external distraction" and the report should not be disclosed.

This view was not shared by the tribunal judge Sophie Buckley, who ruled in September that "the matters contained in the report would add significant value to informed public debate about how the Home Office is and should be functioning and how it could be improved."

Officials said the picture was improving. A senior Home Office source pointed to the role of Antonia Romeo, who took over as permanent secretary in April after a spell at the Ministry of Justice, as key to getting the department "match fit". "She formed a formidable partnership with ... Mahmood at the Ministry of Justice and will energise the Home Office to deliver for ministers and the country," the source said.

The Home Office said: "This report was conducted under a previous government." It added: "The home secretary and permanent secretary are making significant changes to the Home Office to deliver for the UK public to secure our borders, make our streets safer and protect our national security."

On the point about officials presenting ministers with decisions at the last minute and giving no time for them to think, I was reminded of the story in David Laws' memoir. When he was a minister in the Department for Education he was accidentally copied in an email noting that his meeting had been cancelled "I fear that he intends to use the time to think about this for himself! Is there any way you would have something ready by 1 p.m. tomorrow?!" It's obviously a bit tongue in cheek and jokey - but also very Yes, Minister like avoiding waiting until the last minute to brief a minister so they go for your preferred option.

On the whole self stuff while it's not the criticism here, I've always been suspicious of that - I've just always thought that if employers want you to bring your "whole self" to work it's because they want to colonise/take over all of it I've always been of the view that it's actually good to keep barriers between the rest of my life and the few hours that my employer rents every day. I'm out at work and stuff like that, but I think it's important for me that there is another me that is not my employer's. I read that thing from Nick Clegg about his time at Facebook and have never found him so relatable (Again - my work-self is a performance, a role - I'll do it professionally but I'm not getting emotionally attached to my wage payer):

In one of the first meetings I held with one of the teams I had just taken charge of, a poster on the wall declared the ubiquitous Silicon Valley mantra: Bring Your Authentic Self to Work. To try to break the ice, I said, "Please don't bring your authentic self to work. You wouldn't like my authentic self if I brought it to work. So just bring your inauthentic self to work from nine to five and then you can go home and be yourself and we'll get on perfectly well." Stony silence. One of the team came up to me rather coyly afterwards to say that the message had been quite disconcerting for them. I knew then that I wasn't in Kansas any more.

[Tamas]

It's weird stuff. Raises a lot of questions.

How is he affording this?
Don't France have a system in place to handle these people other than just releasing them on the streets of calais?
What decision went into who got removed under the agreement if this guy had such threats in France?

I remember reading some claims that saying you are under threat of human trafficking is the latest in vogue thing by asylum seekers, although obviously that can be BS.

The guy sure sought refuge a long way from home though.

[Sheilbh]

On a similar topic, the right always go on about welfare scroungers, and yes they do cost taxpayers about £10 billion a year, but over £20 billion is not claimed each year, so there is effectifly a net saving for the Treasury of £10 billion. So lack of knowledge is actually a bigger issue than benefits fraud. But of course the MSM never highlights that.

Just on this because I think it might be relevant to the guy coming back from France.

The Economist had an interesting piece recently about the welfare system here. They basically said the British state secretly relies on people not knowing what they're entitled to because that keeps costs down while ministers can (honestly) say x, y or z funding exists. But while there are loads of scams about, apparently there's been a huge increase in people making those claims. The Economist piece basically said there are entire social media channels that actually explain which form you need to fill in and what the criteria are for different things. It's a little bit more of the Arab Spring hopeful side of the internet that it's allowing a democratisation of knowledge so people who are entitled to certain benefits are actually starting to claim them - but it is the DWP's worst nightmare.

I mention that because there are also apparently similar social media channels targeted at migrants explaining claims etc within the asylum system (there's also TikTok videos on routes through the Balkans etc). And what the guy who's just come back from France has said sounds almost exactly like the claim made by the asylum seeker who got his deportation to France blocked because it was not safe for him to be removed. So I can't help but wonder if that has been picked up and disseminated as a potentially effective argument for why you can't stay in France.

[Sheilbh]

The optics of this Aston Villa thing are terrible.https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/oct/19/aston-villa-jews-ed-miliband-maccabi-tel-aviv

Not only the police decided Jews are hated too much in the city for them to protect them during this event, but as it turns out even before that the football club decided that those stewards who find that their (or, I suspect, their family's and peers ) dislike of Jews in this climate is too much, they can stay home.

It is extremely easy for the far-right to paint a picture based on this, that Birmingham is too Muslim to control. And it is difficult to disagree with that assessment, when the local police and the football club appear in agreement with it.

I was going to post on Villa as I'm not fully sure where I come out - though the optics are dreadful.

But I just remembered your point here because the Met have banned a UKIP march in Tower Hamlets. UKIP have become an extreme right party (fewer than 5,000 members, Nazi salutes, very close to Turning Point UK etc - they're trying to become the political wing for Tommy Robinson) - so I understand why the Met have done that.

But it has caused a lot of anger in the Jewish community as specific synagogues and Jewish leaders had asked for protests to be banned in certain boroughs because those Gaza protests always went past the synagogues in the borough every Saturday in a way that was feeling intimidatory. Apparently they were told by the Met that it was not legally possible to have a borough-wide ban on demonstrations/protests though they would impose exclusion zones around the synagogues.

It just felt like another thing where while there may well be good reasons for it, the optics aren't great and it is difficult to say that a different standard was being applied to (legitimate) concerns in Tower Hamlets to (legitimate) concerns by Jewish groups.