The department broke equality laws and is banishing 50 people to Jamaica next week. These flights must be stopped
Take a moment to think of the Home Office. It’s a troubled place. The home secretary, Priti Patel, has been labelled a bully – and the evidence suggests breached the ministerial code, according to the man who investigated her. The department itself has been found to have violated equalities laws by disregarding the warnings about the impact of its hostile environment policy on black people. And the most senior black Home Office employee on the compensation scheme for the resulting Windrush scandal has resigned amid complaints of discrimination, it emerged last week.
“It’s not just racism,” said Alexandra Ankrah, a former barrister who worked as head of policy on the scheme. Although that strikes me as a fairly fatal error all on its own, for a programme specifically designed to compensate victims of racism. The scheme was so lacking in compassion for victims, Ankrah said, that those relying on it, many of them sick and elderly, were being “retraumatised” by it.
