'It is broken!' Robert Jenrick's bid to 'abolish' the Home Office backed by lawyer: 'Needs significant change'

Reform UK MP Robert Jenrick previously claimed he would "abolish the Home Office" in its current form and establish a "borders department".

It comes as the former Conservative Immigration Minister claimed the Home Office is "unable to stop illegal migration".

Reacting to the remarks made by Mr Jenrick, Mr Haigh told GB News: "I think it's one of the things that probably most of the parties have consensus on, is the fact that the Home Office isn't fit for purpose.

"I think the question is, is breaking up into separate departments going to fix the problems in the Home Office, or is it going to cause more problems by having separate departments doing separate things?"

He explained: "In my experience, the best way to describe it would be what I would say was a bloated, apathetic, massive, disillusioned staff and incompetence with no leadership, and that's being polite.

"Yes, I think separating out immigration borders from the Home Office could be a good idea, but you want to make sure that you're not duplicating more and more administration roles, that you're actually getting something changed."

Calling for "better staff and better leadership" within the Home Office, Mr Haigh said: "And that would be my worry, that we separate out borders and immigration, and yet that causes more confusion and we still have the same problems.

"We need better staff, better leadership and investment - that's what's needed."

Offering his own solution to reforming the Home Office, GB News host Tom Harwood said: "I wonder if there are two different ways to approach this. Number one, you spin out the immigration stuff. It's the same people, it's the same offices within that department, but just operating under a new head, under a new cabinet minister.

"Or is there a smarter way to do this? A bit like the Vaccines task force set up something parallel to Government, appointed by bringing in people from industry operating almost entirely separately, where it can do its own thing?"

Mr Haigh welcomed the idea, telling GB News: "I think you've hit the nail on the head there, and that's what you don't want to happen, is them just to take the staff and move them next door and rebrand them. I'll give you an example, it was a couple of years ago, and I became aware of someone that was trying to get into the country that was very dangerous, could have caused serious harm, and I was trying to alert the authorities.

"And I went to just about every single possible department, no one would take responsibility, and that shocked me, because this was a person that was really dangerous if they got into the country."

He added: "We need people in charge of our borders that believe in protecting our borders and are capable of doing it. There's some good people in the Home office, but when I come across people in the Home Office, I'm not impressed with their brilliance, let's put it mildly. And I think that takes a lot of time to change.

"So I think your idea of something like that would be a much better option than just carving out the department, giving them a new head, a new title, new office and a new letterhead, that's not going to work. There needs to be significant change, but at least there is consensus amongst the political parties that the Home Office is broken and and it does need fixing."

As host Dawn Neesom highlighted that people have been declaring the Home Office "broken" for "over 20 years now", Mr Haigh agreed: "We still have exactly the same problems now as we had, like you said, 20 years ago.

"And I think it's a very difficult thing to grapple with because it is very big, but it shouldn't be impossible if you approach it differently."

He concluded: "And like I said, a lot of the problems that I see when I speak with people from the Home Office is the people that you're dealing with just don't care.

"And whether that's because they don't have the right training, they're the wrong person, they're the wrong department, there's just complete apathy and disillusionment and lack of leadership."