Rory Stewart on his decade as an MP

Finally, at the beginning of 2019, it became clear that many of my colleagues were preparing to vote for Boris Johnson to be the next prime minister when Theresa May fell. This shocked me more profoundly than anything that preceded it. Nine years in politics had already been a dismal insight into the lack of seriousness in British politics. In 2015, the then environment secretary Liz Truss, for example, had asked me to produce a 10-point plan for the national parks within a week of my taking office, thus revealing that what pretended to be policy was simply a press release designed to give the illusion of dynamism. I had discovered how grotesquely unqualified so many of us, including myself, were for the offices we were given. (I held five different ministerial portfolios in just over three years... .)

It was a culture that prized campaigning over careful governing, opinion polls over detailed policy debates, announcements over implementation.

I felt we had collectively failed to respond adequately to every major challenge of the past 15 years.

... Dunt starts his lacerating analysis of Westminster with an extended case history. It concerns Chris Grayling at the time he became secretary of state for justice in 2012. Having inherited a probation service that was creaking at the seams, he decided to privatise the whole thing, turning over the delicate business of managing ex-offenders to a selection of security firms that had no experience of that kind of work...

... immigration system often mandates multiple applications on the route to settlement. One status holder may have different decisions recorded for them on different caseworking platforms as they switch, renew, or upgrade immigration status, or as they challenge incorrect decisions through reviews and appeals.

In principle, an automated system might be able to always make sense of all these records. In practice, it fails to consistently do so at present.

Digital status services have struggled with multiple records from the day they went live in July 2021. Those who applied to upgrade from the temporary pre-settled status to the permanent settled status could only view or evidence their pending application, rather than their lawful status. Following enquiries, the Home Office explained that the system’s algorithmic logic was at the time set to ‘overwrite old statuses with a new one’ as the department ‘believed this would be the most relevant one to display.’ The logic was only changed following ‘feedback’ from status holders who were not able to evidence their current rights.

Multiple glitches have been reported by status holders and legal representatives since the launch.

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