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The government has been slammed for filling a top post at the National Asylum Support Service (Nass) with a member of an independent team that was still reviewing the body.

Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesperson, said Digby Griffith's appointment as Nass head of accommodation before the report was complete was "a breathtaking indictment of the way the government does business".

In a written parliamentary answer last week, immigration minister Beverley Hughes revealed that Griffith had been offered the post in April, a month before the report was submitted.


Oaten said: "It is clearly not possible for an investigator to remain strictly independent once he or she has been offered a job in the very organisation they are supposed to be investigating."

A spokesperson for the Home Office said the independent review had been completed by the time Griffith took up his new role.