MANCHESTER — A senior Conservative has called for U.S.-style political appointees to shake up the Home Office and push through the opposition party’s sweeping deportation plans.

Speaking at the POLITICO Pub at Conservative Party conference in Manchester on Monday, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said that “a few dozen” politically-minded staff, who aren’t bound by U.K. civil service impartiality strictures, could make a “big difference to ministers’ abilities to get things done.”

The former immigration minister lamented that the Home Office — in charge of immigration and policing — has only around ten politically-appointed ministers or special advisors running a department of some 50,000 career officials. And some civil servants come into the job, he said, “ from a perspective of wanting to give asylum to people. “So it did, at times, feel like a bit of a struggle,” he said.

Philp stressed that many civil servants work diligently and other parts of the Home Office were more helpful. But he added: “I think more political appointees, particularly at the top, actually would help and people being appointed from outside the public sector who can bring a bit of dynamism to bear.”

Pressed on how many might be needed to push through ministers’ plans, Philp said: “In America, it’s thousands, isn’t it? When the American administration changes over, there are I think 5,000 or 10,000 people in the federal government who switch over. I wouldn’t suggest anything on that scale.

“But in a department like the Home Office … I could imagine a few dozen people coming into a big department would make quite a big difference to ministers’ ability to get things done.”

On Sunday, the Conservatives unveiled a new borders plan which included a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement-style deportations force to remove 750,000 migrants. It comes after Nigel Farage’s Reform UK — currently hammering the Tories in the polls — proposed scrapping civil service neutrality in order to have a department of immigration staffed only by people who agree with the party’s policies.