Home Office ‘tries to censor report on its migration failures’
THE Home Office has been accused of trying to censor a report into the Government’s failure to manage the impact of mass immigration.
The year-long study by the Government’s integration tsar Dame Louise Casey is said to criticise ministers for failing to tackle extremism and the integration of minorities.
Dame Louise was appointed by David Cameron in 2015 to review ‘social integration’, ‘segregation’, and ‘how we can prevent extremism and hate’.
Her report is understood to be highly critical of the Government’s failure to deal with the consequences of rapid immigration and the swift change in the make-up of many communities.
The report has been ready for months but its publication was delayed after Home Office officials expressed ‘unhappiness’ about its content, The Sunday Times reported.
Charlie Edwards, an adviser to Home Secretary Amber Rudd, has told a number of anti-extremism professionals in recent weeks that Dame Louise’s report will be dramatically rewritten and launched in a much lower-key way than had been planned, the paper said.
One source, however, said that Mr Edwards wanted the report ‘ gutted’ while another said: ‘He told us the Home Office didn’t like it and was trying to find a way to water it down.’
The study reportedly cites the lack of a strategy to integrate communities, with some areas becoming Muslim-only zones, and the failure to promote and defend the counter-radicalism programme Prevent.
It is understood that the report also warns that ‘liberal tolerance’ has gone too far. Earlier this year, Dame Louise said it was ‘not racist to say that the pace and rate of immigration has created a lot of change in Britain, and for some people that feels too much’. She added: ‘Not talking about this and the issues that arise from it only creates more tensions, rather than resolving them.’
It has previously been suggested the report could warn that political correctness from council chiefs poses a threat to British laws, culture and traditions.
The integration expert has said that the Government needed to be ‘much bolder in not just celebrating our history, heritage and culture, but standing up for our democratically decided-upon laws of the land, and standing up to those that undermine them’.
Several of Dame Louise’s criti- cisms concern the performance of the Home Office under Theresa May, who was home secretary for six years before becoming PM.
The review was jointly commissioned by former prime minister David Cameron and Mrs May, who last year also launched her own anti-extremism strategy, including investigations into sharia law and the possible infiltration of public institutions by Islamists. Sources said senior Downing Street officials were supportive of Dame Louise’s work.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Louise Casey was commissioned in 2015 to review what more we can do to create more cohesive communities in England. The report will be published in due course.’
Dame Louise was unavailable for comment last night.