Shabana Mahmood admits Home Office not yet up to dealing with all the challenges it is facing – UK politics live

Home secretary says her department is still not functioning properlyGood morning. The Home Office is under fire from government critics almost constantly at the moment, but this morning it is publicising what, by the department’s standards, counts as rare good news; it says arrests for illegal working have reached their highest level since records began.Here is the PA Media write-up.Immigration enforcement visits have reached their highest level since comparable data began in 2011, data shows.Some 21,858 visits were recorded in the 12 months to September this year, according to Home Office figures.I’ve already said the Home Office is not yet fit for purpose …The most recent report [written by Tory MP Nick Timothy] was very familiar to me in the sense of what I’ve seen just in the few weeks I’ve been in this job. It’s obviously a department that has a range of problems, whether that’s procuring contracts, whether that is holding on to senior staff, it obviously deals with emergency and crises issues on a regular basis, and I think over a long period of time has been found not to be able to rise to the scale of the challenge of those crises. Continue reading...