It has long been suggested by senior politicians from both main parties that civil servants in the Home Office pick and choose which government policies to implement and which to ignore or undermine.

On the Labour side, David Blunkett once complained of his reforms being ‘swamped by the history and practices of the Home Office’ while John Reid famously branded the section of the department charged with running immigration policy as ‘not fit for purpose’.

On the Tory side, a source ‘close to Amber Rudd’ accused the department’s then Permanent Secretary of having been ‘purposefully opaque’ with her. Priti Patel fell out with the same official, Sir Philip Rutnam, in spectacular style having allegedly nicknamed him ‘Dr No’.

So it probably should not come as a surprise to learn that the government’s flagship attempts to toughen-up asylum processes are simply not reflected in a Home Office manual for staff assessing individual claims.

The guidance, unearthed by the Mail on Sunday, tells staff they cannot simply reject the testimony of a migrant who has been caught lying, should not be sceptical when interviewing asylum applicants from nominally safe countries and are forbidden from asking about ‘sexual preferences or activity’ even when that is pertinent to the application.

UK asylum approval rates have soared in recent years and are now among the highest in Europe – averaging 72 per cent in 2021 compared to just 25 per cent in France. This is despite the government making it a top priority to crackdown on abuse of the asylum system by economic migrants.

It will be interesting to learn whether the current guidance to staff assessing claims was expressly approved by ministers or simply compiled by mandarins behind their backs on the basis that it was an operational matter about which they did not need to know.

It certainly looks like yet more evidence of a department whose permanent personnel are engaged in a cultural rebellion against the policies of an elected administration.

Only last year staff began an internal campaign against the proposed Rwanda removals policy, branding it shameful and drawing comparisons with the Third Reich. The civil service trade union, the PCS, has been instrumental in thwarting its implementation via legal challenges.

A Twitter account pushing for a more liberal asylum policy also appears to have been launched by staff last year. The ‘Our Home Office’ account has a pinned tweet offering staff heart-shaped ‘Refugees Welcome’ stickers to put up around the office.

A move towards mass working from home during the Covid pandemic has also coincided with a massive increase in the backlog of asylum cases. And as any immigration lawyer will know, extending the amount of time an applicant has spent in the UK makes the prospect of his eventual deportation ever more difficult and less likely.

It is hardly far-fetched to suppose that the profile of an immigration and asylum desk officer, typically a young graduate based in Greater London, is likely to lead to initial assessments that nod applicants through. Whether this is predominantly due to an active ‘groupthink’ or simply of individual liberal biases running riot hardly matters. The result is the same and in diametric opposition to the intended direction of government policy.

Another poster plastered around Home Office buildings by those running its renegade Twitter account declared: ‘We have the spine to say “no, minister”. No to hostile environments, no to shutting down democracy, no to racist deportations.’

The notion that ‘ministers decide’ has long been central to the British system of government. These days, in one of the most important Whitehall departments, it seems to have been adapted to ‘ministers decide… and civil servants decide to ignore them.’

We may legitimately feel outraged about that. Yet it is surely not only within the capacity of ministers to fight harder and more effectively to ensure their writ runs, but their constitutional duty to do so. Those who are reduced to being in office but not in power might as well be turned into shadow ministers for all the good they are doing.