May faces fresh questions over Windrush
Kerslake says it is ‘completely ridiculous to try to blame civil service for the situation and you cannot create a climate and then not expect it to have consequences’
Theresa May is facing fresh questions over the destruction of thousands of landing cards amid an escalating row over the treatment of the Windrush generation.
Documents recording the arrival of children of Caribbean migrants were destroyed by the Home Ofice in 2010 - when May was home secretary - but she tried to blame the previous Labour administration by saying the decision was taken in 2009.
Downing Street later said it was an “operational” decision taken by oficials rather than ministers, but Lord Kerslake, a former head of the civil service, said it was “pretty unlikely” that the Home Ofice would destroy records.
The row began when it emerged many of the Windrush generation had been denied medical care, lost their jobs or threatened with deportation to Caribbean countries they left as children.
A former top oficial has severely criticised British Prime Minister Theresa May’s immigration policies when she was interior minister after the threatened deportations of Caribbean immigrants caused a political furore this week.
Kerslake, a former head of the civil service and a member of the House of Lords, told BBC Newsnight that May’s aim to create a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants were seen by other ministers as “almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany.”
The policy has come under the spotlight amid an outcry this week that people invited to move to Britain from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s − the so-called Windrush generation − have been threatened with deportations.
“This was a very contested piece of legislation across government departments,” said Kerslake, who was in charge of the civil service between 2012 and 2014.
“There were some who saw it... as almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the way it’s working,” said Kerslake, who now advises opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
May’s Environment Secretary Michael Gove told BBC radio he had “never heard anyone make that comparison.”
Former prime minister David Cameron’s centre-right Conservative government vowed to create a “hostile environment” for people not authorised to be in Britain after it took ofice in 2010.
But it has now emerged that the strategy, which gave landlords and employers powers to target illegal immigrants or face penalties, led to the targeting of legal immigrants lacking paperwork.
Campaigners for families caught up in the controversy have called for a review of the highly contentious initiative.
The government has admitted the policy wrongly impacted the “Windrush” generation, and has set up a task force to examine their cases.
But it has noted that some decisions, such as destroying the landing cards of some affected, were taken by civil servants.
Kerslake said it was “completely ridiculous” to try to blame the civil service for the situation.
“You cannot create a climate and then not expect it to have consequences,” he added.
Meanwhile, Sadiq Khan has said that the Windrush scandal must act as a “wake up call” over what he argues is the increasingly hostile way that the UK government has been treating immigrants.
Writing exclusively for The Independent, the Mayor of London accused May’s administration of trying to frame the iasco as a one off, when he claims it is a result of a deliberate push to treat all immigrants with suspicion.
Khan spoke out after the Windrush scandal, which has seen UK citizens targeted for deportation and refused medical treatment, escalated as a mother blamed her son’s death on his struggle to convince the authorities he is British.