Column: Government’s lack of control on borders is being laid bare

​This week he described the Home Office as “not fit for purpose” because this is what he discovered: his staff observed Border officials at Heathrow, Luton and Stansted airports distracted from core responsibilities and working three times the recommended hours; serious failures to examine the contents of “fast tracked parcels” that come through our borders and ports to halt gun smuggling and drug trafficking; Customs channels at East Midlands Airport left permanently unstaffed; between July 2021 and September 2023, 467 unaccompanied child refugees went missing. 147 of these have never been found.

Rishi Sunak’s pledge to clear the backlog of asylum seeker claims saw thousands of claims withdrawn by the Home Office without any knowledge of individual whereabouts.

In 2022, the Government said they would remove the small boat illegal migrants to a safe third country through which they have passed. As of October 2023, only two people had been removed.

46,000 people are currently in asylum hotels but Mr Neal’s report states: "There is no evidence of a Home Office strategy to end hotel use".

Anecdotal evidence from staff at Portsmouth’s international port found that an X-ray device to locate illegal immigrants on the back of lorries didn’t work and closer inspection found the equipment to be “poor” and lighting at nighttime was “terrible”, making it very difficult to do the checks.

When I drove trucks through the ports of Dover and Harwich, I saw at first hand the problems drivers were facing, and secure border control is the biggest deterrent to stop unwanted passengers from hitching a lift into the UK. Whilst the Government is claiming the numbers getting to the UK on the small boats is going down, the ports are being left wide open.

You can make your own mind up on whether the Government has lost control of our borders.

But these reports were dumped all at once after Mr Neal was sacked to avoid full scrutiny and the cold light of day. It is important that you know the facts.