Chapter 11: Immigration and Citizenship services

Measurement of Public Order and Safety (POS) services, as described in Chapter 12, has always been made more complex as the Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG) category (3) combines a range of very different services. Including Immigration & Citizenship services alongside criminal justice systems in the same group as police services makes this category hard to interpret. In the absence of a better method, given this constraint, Atkinson and subsequent work adopted the ‘inputs = outputs’ approach.

In 2017 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) introduced a new model for the criminal justice system component of the POS COFOG category, separately presenting it in the statistics. Nevertheless, the residual POS services – essentially policing and immigration – continued to be volatile and hard to interpret. The Review has identified that splitting Immigration services from Policing is necessary to provide data which would have policy relevance. The ONS has already recommended that the COFOG review recently commissioned by the United Nations should consider implementing such changes to improve data internationally.

COFOG 3.1 ‘Police Services’ is described in Figure 6. The Review considers the activities highlighted in green to be those of Immigration & Citizenship services.

Figure 6: Classifications of Functions of Government definition for police services

Source: Manual on sources and methods for the compilation of COFOG statistics (PDF), Eurostat

The Review made preliminary investigations into the data that could be used, as well as the methodology involved in creating estimates for this service. Examining the historical time series for Immigration & Citizenship inputs, the Review concluded that future separation of Policing from Immigration & Citizenship services will be more viable from 2004. The earlier data face two challenges: the level of spending on labour and intermediate consumption in Immigration & Citizenship services has materially increased since 1997, partly due to a broad increase in spending, but also because of spending having previously been allocated to other areas of Police services, which makes it difficult to disentangle.

11.1 Core methodological and data challenges identified

Being a new service, the Review had to consider questions of definition, data and methods from scratch, applying the Atkinson Principles alongside ensuring methods improved the ability to interpret both Policing and Immigration & Citizenship services. This development work is described in the next section and whilst these methods need further refinement to include into the statistics, the Review considers implementation to be highly feasible in the short-medium term.

11.2 Inputs development

Immigration inputs are calculated by deflating expenditure. The Review explored existing expenditure data to determine whether these permit development of indirect labour, intermediate consumption and capital expenditure input data for Immigration & Citizenship services separately. The deflators used will need to be reviewed alongside reviewing the expenditure data.

At present, Immigration & Citizenship is included in the Police and Immigration service, and inputs are measured using existing expenditure data and deflated using the implied Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and central government pay deflators. These data are available for five areas of Home Office: Asylum & Protection; Border Force; Immigration Enforcement; Passport Office; and Visas & Immigration.

In 2022, Asylum & Protection had the largest expenditure on intermediate consumption, followed by Visas & Immigration. These data have sub-divisions for categories of spend. The Review examined the spending of each of the five areas on IT, travel, etc. This informed the development of improved deflators for Policing and Immigration, which will be implemented in the upcoming ONS annual release in Spring 2025.

An example of the improved deflators is that the Review identified the amount typically spent on posting passports, and using price indices for postal services, the deflator is able to reflect price changes more accurately on spending in this area, as opposed to using the implied GDP deflator, or another less relevant price index. The Review used these data to compile a ‘proof of concept’ inputs index solely for Immigration & Citizenship. This used deflated data on aggregated final consumption expenditure but did not include capital expenditure data. The Review has identified a suitable approach for apportioning expenditure on capital consumption within the COFOG category, alongside methods to split consumption and labour expenditure, although the implementation of this separation requires more time and resource and is held as a future objective.

This inputs index demonstrates clear increases in 2004, then again in 2012 and 2013. The Review has inferred this is due to reorganisation of bodies including Border Force, and the increasing political salience of immigration. The size of the increase in this index in 2004 is sufficiently large and without further research into the reason behind this, the Review does not think it is appropriate to split the Police and Immigration & Citizenship prior to this point. The Review does recommend that Police and Immigration & Citizenship should be split from 2004 as these are two significant policy-areas and distinct enough to each merit their own focus.

Associated deflators required

The Review recommends reviewing spending patterns that would inform Immigration & Citizenship deflators annually. Categories in the historical time series change frequently over time, which means that the improved deflators to be implemented in the next ONS annual release (Spring 2025) may become less accurate.

Asylum & Protection, as a broad area of Home Office, only appears in the Online System for Central Accounting and Reporting (OSCAR) data for the first time in 2022, with the activities in this area previously forming part of Visas & Immigration. Examining the broad areas in previous years, these change frequently.

For example, a deflator developed in 2020 is unlikely to have been an accurate representation of spending in 2023, owing to sharp rises in Asylum & Protection spending in 2022 and 2023. Therefore, the broad areas of Home Office, and the categories of spend within, should be reviewed on an annual basis.

11.3 Developing measures of output for Immigration & Citizenship

Currently, the output of Immigration & Citizenship services is measured using the ‘inputs = outputs’ approach as part of the same service as policing. This means that output for Immigration & Citizenship services is not separately identified, and because its volume growth matches the inputs, this implies no productivity change. To measure change in the productivity of Immigration & Citizenship services, the ONS would require data on the number of activities carried out by type of activity and the expenditure on each activity type.

The Review considered identification and assessment of output measures which align with the five relevant services. An initial exercise identified a range of activity data and, in some cases, associated unit cost data, as well as potential quality adjustment metrics. The ONS continues to work with colleagues in the Home Office to identify the most suitable data.

As with other services the incorporation of preventative work is a methodological challenge (for example work to prevent illegal immigration). However, to make progress in this area, data on service costs alongside data on the causal relationship between the preventative service and the service avoided would be required.

Within each of the five services, the Review has evaluated the data available on the main service activities to assess their suitability in producing a volume output measure.

Asylum & protection

This considers requests for asylum and processes applications. The key services identified are the processing of asylum applications and asylum appeals, and the housing of asylum seekers. The Home Office publishes data on asylum applications and appeals in Immigration system statistics, and maintains internal datasets on the housing of asylum seekers.

In developing an output measure, a key conceptual question is whether asylum applications, appeals and accommodation should be considered separate aspects of valuable output or whether a single aspect of the service, for instance applications could be used to represent the growth of output for asylum and protection overall. Future discussions with Home Office and other experts would be required to determine the most appropriate activity measure and identify any further cost data required to utilise this in the output measure.

Border force

Border Force is responsible for carrying out immigration and customs control for people and goods entering the country. Data relevant to measuring the activities undertaken by the Border Force include the number of passengers processed at the border, tax revenue protected and seizures.

Activity data are published by the Home Office in the quarterly Border Force Transparency Data publication. These data include:

• Numbers of passengers processed.
• Tax revenue that is protected through detecting goods where excise duty has not been declared.
• Firearms, knives, and other offensive weapons seizures.
• Drug seizures.
• Convention of International Trade of Endangered Species seizures.

In common with other services, a significant challenge in measuring output is establishing suitable weights for combining different activity measures into a single output index. Where there are limited records on how much staff time and other resources are directed at different activities, it may not be possible to aggregate different activity measures into a single index. In such a case, the ONS would seek to determine if a single activity measure can provide an overarching view of output growth. In the case of the Border Force, it may be possible to use the total number of passengers processed as that activity measure.

Immigration enforcement

Immigration Enforcement is responsible for enforcing immigration law. Published Home Office data relevant to these activities are the number of immigrants returned from the UK and people in detention. The measurement of the output of immigration enforcement presents a conceptual question in terms of which activities are relevant to include in output.

For instance, the number of people in detention by the immigration authorities may not be considered an output, but an interim stage within the process of removing irregular migrants. However, as a costly government deliverable, it may be best compared to the prison population, which is treated as a standalone output despite often being part of the offender journey augmented by probation supervision. The prison population is measured as an output, and quality adjusted to reflect their impact on re-offending, for example. In that context, treating the share of those in detention who are removed may be considered a similar quality adjustment.

Passport office, and Visas & Immigration

The Passport Office processes applications for, and produces, passports. The key activity identified is the number of passport applications processed. Two Home Office published datasets: passport application intake volumes, and domestic and overseas applications for passports, could be utilised.

Visas & Immigration process applications to stay in the UK, both short and long term, and citizenship applications. The key services identified are visa processing, citizenship applications, and short and long-term extensions of stay within the UK, and the Home Office publish activity data on all these services.

A further consideration in the case of the Passport Office and Visas & Immigration is the fees recovered. Currently, within public service productivity statistics cost weights net of fees are used, with activity data adjusted accordingly. However, if the fees deliver full cost recovery of a service, this fee should be considered a ‘market equivalent price’, which suggests the ONS can use traditional national accounts methods to identify the value of this service within the output produced in this service.

As the fees charged for passport and visa & immigration services are highly significant relative to the cost of providing these services, the ONS would need to consider whether changes ought to be made to this approach.