OFFICIALS from the Immigration Service who questioned the Government’s target for removing failed asylum-seekers were branded “not one of us” and troublemakers, a senior civil servant has admitted.

The director in charge of detention at the Immigration Service said that he considered the Government’s target to remove 30,000 asylum-seekers as “fantasy”. But he added that reasoned debate within the Immigration and Nationality Directorate was “forbidden”.

Kevan Brewer told an inquiry into a fire at an immigration removal centre that he considered that a Government target to remove 30,000 failed asylum-seekers was “laughable” and “plucked out of the air”.

Another report, which has been obtained by The Times under Freedom of Information legislation, criticises the Government for setting up an organisation to disperse asylum- seekers around the country on a “simplistic view of the scale and nature of the job”. It also suggests a lack of open discussion between ministers and officials over immigration and asylum policy.

The inquiry into the fire at Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre in Bedfordshire describes a culture in which No 10 was constantly on the back of Home Office ministers and after the last general election kept asking whether the removal policy was radical enough. The 2001 target to remove 30,000 failed asylum-seekers had to be abandoned because it was hopelessly optimistic.

Stephen Shaw, the Prisons Ombudsman who carried out the inquiry into the fire, reports that ministers were involved in day-to-work, particularly in asylum cases that involved sensitive issues. Angela Eagle, the minister, said that there was a lot of pressure but “ministers were not getting hysterical about it”.

The report on the National Asylum Support Service, released to The Times, criticises the way in which ministers developed asylum policies.

The service was set up by Jack Straw but the report found staff confused about policy after a series of initiatives by David Blunkett when the latter was Home Secretary.

The full 2003 report was not released on the ground that it was “advice to ministers”. It said that the £1.1 billion Home Office organisation was not resourced adequately.

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