Home Office boss paid over £455,000 despite record boat migrants

Times

4 days ago

The top official in the Home Office was given a total pay packet of nearly half a million pounds including a tax-free 'golden goodbye' of £30,000 when he left the department in March.
Overall, senior civil servants in the department received bonuses totalling between £80,000 and £120,000 in the last financial year, a period in which a record number of migrants arrived in small boats.
They included Martin Hewitt, border security commander, appointed by Sir Keir Starmer to head his new unit in charge of the government's efforts to tackle the Channel migrant crisis, who was paid a salary of between £200,000 and £205,000.
Joanna Rowland, who oversees the accommodation of asylum seekers, was paid a bonus of between £15,000 and £20,000, in addition to a salary of up to £170,000.
Details of the pay packets of senior Home Office mandarins were disclosed in the department's annual report, published on Thursday, which set out the remuneration of senior officials in £5,000 brackets for the 2024/25 financial year.
In the same period a total of 38,177 migrants crossed the Channel, according to Home Office figures, a 24 per cent rise on the 30,878 who arrived the year before.
• On the trail of gangsters who get rich smuggling migrants to Britain
On Thursday there were chaotic scenes on French beaches as dozens of migrants were seen sprinting into the water to scramble onto dinghies off Gravelines beach.
No police were seen on the beach but a French rescue boat was observed passing life jackets to migrants on board one dinghy at sea. They were later seen retrieving the life jackets moments before a Border Force vessel picked up the migrants once it had passed into UK waters.
As of March 31, there were 32,345 asylum seekers in hotels, up from 29,585 in June last year, and an additional 71,339 in other taxpayer-funded accommodation such as bedsits and multiple-residence properties.
Sir Matthew Rycroft, who left his role as Home Office permanent secretary on March 28, received an overall remuneration package of between £455,000 and £460,000. This included his £200,000 annual salary after a 24 per cent pay rise on the previous year.
He was given a £50,000 'exit payment,' of which £30,000 was tax-free. This was on top of a performance-related bonus of between £20,000 and £25,000, more than double the bonus he received the previous year.
Rycroft, who served as the top mandarin at the Home Office for five years following stints at the Department for International Development and as Britain's representative at the United Nations and ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, also received £179,000 in pension benefits over the 2024/25 financial year.
Other officials to be given large performance-related bonuses included Chloe Squires, director-general of homeland security, who was awarded £15,000-£20,000; Rebecca Ellis, the strategy director of the Home Office, and Robert Hall, the director of communications, who received £10,000-£15,000.
Philip Douglas, the head of Border Force, was the only senior official to see a reduction in his performance-related bonus, which fell from £15,000-£20,000 in 2023/24 to £10,000-£15,000 in 2024/25.
The Home Office annual report said that bonuses were paid on 'performance levels attained' and were made as part of the appraisal process.
The Home Office did not respond for a request for comment. Rycroft has been approached for comment.