MICK HUME: Do civil servants suppose folks smugglers work part-time?

Stop the Boats and secure our borders? It might be a start if Home Office civil servants could stop swanning about at home and go to work in the office more than one day a week.

Summer is the busiest time for those who work at the British seaside. 

And that includes the ruthless people-smuggling gangs working flat-out in the Channel, who will try to take advantage of the better weather to ship thousands more illegal immigrants on to our southern shores.

So, how is the Immigration Enforcement unit – the team of civil servants tasked with tackling illegal immigration – responding to this summer emergency? 

By staying at home in the sunshine, we now know, and refusing to go to work in their Whitehall office even for two days a week.

Stop the Boats and secure our borders? It might be a start if Home Office civil servants could stop swanning about at home and go to work in the office more than one day a week. Pictured:  Migrants board a smuggler’s boat in an attempt to cross the English Channel in April

In an email leaked to the Mail on Sunday, a senior official has told the Immigration Enforcement unit that, three long years after the last Covid lockdown restrictions were lifted, too many of them are still failing to comply with the ‘minimum’ 40 per cent attendance requirement.

Do these civil servants imagine that the people smugglers will also take every Monday and Friday off? 

Or that desperate migrants might insist that they will only land on an English beach between Tuesday and Thursday each week?

As a former Home Office source said, ‘If they can’t get their staff to turn up for work, then they don’t have a hope in hell of securing our borders and keeping the public safe. It is a farce.’

A far from funny Whitehall farce is set to continue.

That leaked email warns that, from this month, civil servants in the immigration team who continue to ignore the rules and refuse to work a minimum of two days a week in the office will be punished.

But what chance do officials have of enforcing the rules, when senior Labour ministers are giving the opposite message and encouraging even more Working From Home in the public sector?

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Transport Secretary Louise Haigh have assured staff that they strongly support ‘flexible working’.

This has reportedly been interpreted by civil servants as a welcome ‘relaxation’ of the previous Conservative government’s drive to get them back into the empty offices.

The WFH culture has had a terrible impact on productivity across the Civil Service.

Do these civil servants imagine that the people smugglers will also take every Monday and Friday off? Or that desperate migrants might insist that they will only land on an English beach between Tuesday and Thursday each week?

Many British citizens trying to get a new passport or driving licence – or worse, attempting to sort out their tax problems in the black hole that is HMRC – can tell horror stories about endless waits and unanswered calls. 

Of course everybody likes a bit of flexible working between the office and home these days.

But the strong suspicion remains that, in large parts of the Civil Service, the WFH culture means many are quite ‘flexible’ about whether they bother working much at all.

Employees in the private sector hearing tales of pampered ‘public servants’ employed full-time from home or even from the beach might reasonably ask why on earth it is allowed.

When civil servants are working, it should surely be clear that a team hard at it together in the office will get more done than a collection of individuals tucked away in their spare bedrooms and kitchens, occasionally remotely connected.

Don’t take my word for that. Before the July general election, no less a Labour figure than Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves was very clear she wanted to see ‘more people in the office, more of the time’. 

She said: ‘It’s good for productivity and morale.’

Now that Chancellor Reeves and Prime Minister Starmer are ensconced in their Downing Street offices, however, Labour seems to have changed its tune. 

The new Government is rewarding civil servants with above-inflation pay rises for boycotting the office. 

The WFH culture has had a terrible impact on productivity across the Civil Service 

That can only be as bad for productivity as it is for workplace morale.

If Britain is to get back the will to work, wouldn’t it be good if those running the country set an example from the top down, by telling their civil servants to return to the office? 

Would it be too much to ask that they start by instructing the Immigration Enforcement unit to actually enforce Britain’s immigration laws from the office more than two days a week?

Mick Hume is the author of Trigger Warning: Is The Fear Of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?