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Responding to the Home Affairs Select Committee's report on immigration control by the UK Border Agency PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said successive governments have failed staff and the public by not adequately investing in services and proposing large-scale cuts.

During the last financial year UKBA has suffered the culling of 1,700 jobs, as part of the government’s unnecessary cuts programme.

The 2010 comprehensive spending review announced that a further 6,500 jobs will be cut from the Home Office and its agencies, again chiefly in UKBA, where a further 5,200 jobs will be cut between 2011 and 2014.

Mark Serwotka said: “Our members do a tough job remarkably well in increasingly trying circumstances, carrying out enforcement work, preventing people-trafficking and achieving major successes in stopping illegal drugs entering the country. They have faced years of under-investment, dwindling numbers and morale is low.

“Rather than continuing with its wholesale attacks on public services this government should take this report and others like it, as a wake-up call to invest in jobs to grow the economy and give our members adequate resources.

“Fewer border force staff will inevitably mean that borders will be less secure, with increased risk of people-trafficking and smuggling. Attempts to automate major elements of the work have proved both costly and ineffective. The backlogs generated during the 1990s, when there was a lengthy recruitment freeze, have taken years to reduce to manageable levels.

“There has been no major reduction in the department’s overall workload. In his February 2010 report, the independent chief inspector of the UKBA stated that in the asylum casework area, the department needs to employ more staff, not fewer. Yet the cuts currently planned will amount to an average 25-30% of administrative staffing; and some infrastructure areas may be cut by up to half.”

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