Home Secretary Theresa May has said that the Home Office's controversial "go home or face arrest" vans are to be scrapped as they did not prove effective, the Guardian and Daily Mail reported today.
The widely publicised campaign saw two Home Office vans prominently displaying the "go home" message driven around six London boroughs: Barking, Barnet, Brent, Dagenham, Ealing, Hounslow, and Redbridge.
According to the Independent, Immigration Minister Mark Harper last week backed the campaign, telling BBC Question Time: "I don't see any problem with saying to people who have no right to be in the United Kingdom they can't be here anymore. If it's successful we'll look at rolling it out, if it's not successful, we won't."
The Daily Mail reports today that following an internal Home Office report on the campaign, May is said to be determined that it will not be extended.
Sources told the Daily Mail that the campaign resulted in the voluntary repatriation of just one person.
"She doesn't think there was anything wrong with the principle of the scheme but it is clear it has not been effective," one source was quoted as saying.
The source added that the Home Office would, however, press on with a separate campaign of sending warning text messages to immigrants suspected of being in the UK illegally.
According to BBC News, some 58,800 people have been contacted in the text message campaign.
While the Home Office acknowledges that 14 of those people were contacted mistakenly, campaigners say the true number of people wrongly contacted is far higher.
BBC News reported on October 18th that the message being sent out reads: "Our records show you may not have leave to remain in the UK. Please contact us to discuss your case."
The phrase "You are required to leave the UK as you no longer have the right to remain" was included when the text message campaign started but has since been dropped.