NEVER mind trying to find illegal immigrants or foreign criminals, the Home Office’s immigration department is struggling to find itself.

The Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) is so lost about its role that it hired management consultants at a cost of £21m last year to work out what it is supposed to be doing. The result? A lot of cartoons, some graffiti and various squiggles in what may be one of the most bizarre reports ever seen in Whitehall.

Among the images produced are the doodlings of Dave Roberts, the IND’s director of enforcement and removals, who last week astonished MPs by admitting he “hasn’t the faintest idea” how many failed asylum seekers are still in the country.

Roberts also confided to the bemused members of the Commons home affairs committee that the IND is not trying to remove failed asylum seekers “on the basis of tracing individuals”.

The IND’s mission to find itself began last year when Lin Homer, the former chief executive of Birmingham city council, became its director-general. Homer and her top executives decided to stage a think-in under the guidance of RSM Robson Rhodes, a firm of accountants and consultants, to map out plans for the next 5-10 years.

The executives were invited to scribble their thoughts on a “graffiti wall” and were divided into five teams that “moved between themed rooms”. One centred on “managed migration”, another on “Home Office values” and a third on “methods of communication”.

The executives had to imagine time-travelling to 2010 — when the IND would, apparently, be a roaring success — and visualise how they had got there. Then they had to use “images, words and models” to illustrate their brainwaves.

The resulting report begins with a cartoon of a man holding a telescope to his eye. It continues through drawings of a man lost in a maze (Roberts?); a heart with cogwheels inside it (no explanation given); some trapeze artists (meaning trust in each other) and a key sporting a mouth (illustrating the importance of communication).

Among Roberts’s insights is the need for “staff at all levels [to be] proud to say what they do, even in the pub”. Next to a series of large arrows, his vision seems to suggest the IND’s problems include “over complication, lip-service to values and unco-ordinated government policies”.

Also at the brainstorming was Brodie Clark, the senior director for operations and projects at the IND. His team illustrated the current state of the organisation by drawing unconnected circles; its insight for 2010 was a group of interlocking circles.

Clark also had a “Roberts moment” when he appeared before MPs last year. Asked if he knew where foreign criminals who ought to have been considered for deportation were, he said: “I am not sure what the answer would be.”

Chris Hudson, the IND operations director, another attendee at the brainstorming, did little better when he appeared before MPs in March. Asked whether the number of illegal immigrants was going up or down, he said: “I couldn’t venture a view.”

Hudson’s brainstorming team illustrated the IND as a stick man lifting weights. Christina Parry, another senior manager, was part of a team that drew cartoons showing a blindfolded man trying to walk upstairs and a worm driving a lorry.

Parry was one of the executives who, on the authority of a Home Office minister, allowed thousands of migrants into Britain without proper checks in 2003 so that a backlog of applications could be cleared.

Steve Moxon, a former IND caseworker who exposed its shortcomings, said yesterday: “Senior management had no clue what was going on below. But to have a brainstorming session, to find out what their mission is, is mad. Shouldn’t it be blindingly obvious?” The Home Office said it could not detail how much the seminar had cost but said the IND had spent £21m on “consultancy support” in 2005-06.

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