National Asylum Support Service (Hansard, 16 July 2003)

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal)

We are pleased to inform the House that we have today published the key findings from the report of the independent review of the operation of the National Asylum Support Service (NASS). The review was established in March this year to consider the ways in which NASS operates and provide me with recommendations to improve its performance. We are grateful to the review team for the work they have undertaken.

The review team found that NASS was established to undertake a much simpler role than the complex one which they now perform. That role is made even more complicated by being a very visible part of the asylum system. Despite that, the review team found that NASS was showing signs of improvement in its operational performance, strategic planning and relationships with partner organisations.

However, they also found that some key issues still need to be addressed. They found that NASS had faced real difficulties in getting on top of its job. External pressures such as Sangatte, an upsurge in asylum applications in 2001 and significant ongoing recruitment and training gaps contributed significantly to NASS's current problems and it had failed to establish a clear strategy to provide purpose, direction and governance of its activities. It had been established as a distinct part of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, (IND) something which had contributed to a lack of proper integration with other parts of the asylum process and unrealistic expectations surrounding issues such as social integration.

The review team found that there were still considerable gaps in NASS's ability to deal effectively with its external partners such as local authorities or the voluntary sector. Partly, this was a lack of understanding of the roles of these other organisations, but also a simple lack of effective and agreed processes to ensure that issues ran smoothly. The review team also found weaknesses within some of NASS's core operations. IT was critical to the business but was neither fully exploited, nor properly integrated 124WA with the IT used elsewhere in IND. The review team said that specific improvements to processes or resolution of long-standing policy impasses were possible which would provide much-needed service improvements. The basic customer service provided to NASS's wide range of stakeholders needed to improve. Within this were concerns such as the difficulties with telephone contact with NASS. The review team supported NASS's regionalisation project and pointed to a need for many more aspects of NASS's business to be handled at a local level.

Looking across the range of issues covered, the review team said that for NASS to perform at its best it needs to:

be clear what is expected of it and how its success will be judged;

have the financial and managerial resources to do the job;

have a thorough understanding of its own strengths and weaknesses;

have a clear view of what it needs to do to improve its performance;

understand its impact on the whole end-to-end asylum process;

sort out some of its key business processes and procedures; and

get better at working with the rest of IND in a fully joined-up operation.

Since completion of the review, NASS's senior management team has been strengthened, as has the Immigration and Nationality Directorate's ability to deal more effectively with social integration issues. More widely, NASS and other IND staff are currently analysing the proposals contained in the report and will submit an action plan to us shortly. This action plan will form the basis of a major programme of work designed to improve NASS's performance. We shall make a further statement about the action taken in the light of the review in due course.