We read more and more about crass deportations of people by the government, people who are perfectly entitled to stay and live in the UK.

My guess is that some policy wonk in the Home Office commissioned an algorithm from an IT supplier, kept secret under a false cover of claiming national security, which here really means their own job security.

So, first make a database by taking the National Insurance database from DWP. Get HMRC to obligingly add current addresses to these names. Then access the Home Office database of UK full passport holders and protect from deportation anyone with a full current passport. Now cross the road to the General Records Office and also protect from deportation anyone with a UK birth certificate.

What’s left? Well, according to this warped thinking, many thousands of illegal immigrants. So they send them a scary letter, followed by a visit from the contractors with handcuffs.

This dirty process ignores annoying legal nuances such as evidence, made easier because people cannot get Legal Aid. Anyway, down that rabbit hole that is current Home Office logic, if they are not illegal they should fill in an 80-page form and pay the government hundreds of pounds to allow them to continue living here for a while longer, even though they already have this legal right.

Finally, if parliament was doing its job better, this sort of oppressive bureaucracy would be stopped in its tracks.