Agencies at heart of Windrush fiasco
LONDON: The government immigration agencies at the centre of the Windrush scandal are “rife” with discrimination and harassment, a survey of their own employees reveals.
Oficial documents show staff at Border Force reporting high levels of discrimination, with almost one in four (23 per cent) saying they had experienced it.
The rate is almost double the civil service average and the second highest of more than 100 government departments and agencies.
Other Home Ofice agencies fared similarly badly. One in ive Immigration Enforcement personnel said they had experienced discrimination, as did 15 per cent of employees at UK Visas and Immigration, which handles claims for residency and asylum.
The Home Ofice group of agencies was found to be worse than any other government department for reports of discrimination and harassment. The responses do not specify what kind of discrimination or harassment was encountered.
The indings are revealed by The Independent’s analysis of the Civil Service People Survey, which asks government staff about their experiences at work. MPS called the revelation “deeply alarming” and demanded an urgent review of the UK’S immigration system.
The indings come as the Home Ofice is embroiled in an ongoing controversy over the Windrush generation, which has led to calls for a urgent review of the UK’S immigration system and criticism of the government’s attempts to create a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants.
As well as discrimination, harassment was also a common complaint within Home Ofice agencies, with one in ive Border Force staff, one in six Immigration Enforcement workers and one in eight UK Visas and Immigration employees saying they had been the victim of it at work - in all three cases higher than the civil service average.
Labour MP Clive Lewis, who helped uncover the igures, said: “It is deeply alarming that more than one in ive immigration staff have personally experienced discriminatory behaviour at work in the last year. That these organisations, which are Britain’s face to so many of our guests, workers and new citizens, are the worst workplaces in Whitehall for the very last kinds of behaviour that we would want to display, tells us something is seriously wrong with the system.”