Immigration - the truth is out
Discussion
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/art...
From The Sunday Times
November 8, 2009
Home Office covered up immigration risk
Labour's “open door” immigration policy knowingly risked allowing dangerous people to settle in Britain unchecked, according to documents seen by The Sunday Times.
The Whitehall correspondence, which was illegally withheld by the Home Office for four years, shows how ministers were told by the country’s most senior immigration official that his staff were to be “encouraged to take risks” when granting visas, work permits and extended residency to hundreds of thousands of new migrants.
The cover-up of this policy of risk-taking was so concerted that Richard Thomas, the then information commissioner, sent a team of investigators into the Home Office to trawl all the relevant papers. Earlier this year he rebuked the department for breaking the law and ordered it to release the material under the freedom of information (FoI) law.
The documents help to explain the huge rise in the flow of migrants into Britain as the Home Office rushed to clear a backlog of 45,000 cases.
Officials agreed to fast-track 337,000 applications with minimal checks. This led to a rapid rise in immigration. In 1999, 170,000 visas were granted; by 2002, this had risen to 300,000.
As officials were being ordered to take risks, several potentially dangerous people entered the UK. In late 2001, more than 20 Taliban, who had fled from Afghanistan after their defeat by American and British forces, were allowed to stay in the UK.
The documents cast new light on the row over past immigration policy, highlighted by the recent rise of the British National party.
Last week Alan Johnson became the first Labour home secretary to admit the government had made mistakes in its handling of immigration. He said ministers had ignored problems about failed asylum seekers and foreign national prisoners. They had also failed to grasp public unease about the growing pressure on jobs and public services.
Johnson’s remarks signalled the government’s belated recognition that its immigration policy has alienated its white working-class vote, tempting a significant minority to back the BNP. The documents indicate that, far from being a mistake, there was a deliberate policy — apparently endorsed at the highest level in the Home Office — to promote concerted risk-taking by immigration staff whose job was to decide whether non-European Union migrants applying to work, study or marry in Britain were genuine.
A key figure in the scandal was Sir Bill Jeffrey, who was the director-general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, Britain’s most senior immigration official. He is now at the centre of controversy as the senior civil servant in charge of the Ministry of Defence.
The other key figure was Beverley Hughes, then minister of state for citizenship and immigration. She was later forced to resign after it emerged she had misled MPs about whether she had been warned that Romanian and Bulgarian crime gangs might want to exploit the UK’s decision to open its borders to those seeking work from eastern Europe.
In March 2003, shortly after the 2001 entry permits to the Taliban had come to light — to an outcry in the press — Jeffrey spelled out the policy in a note to Hughes.
“We are still in a situation where some risks have to be taken, and staff should feel that if they are encouraged to take risks they will be supported when something does go wrong,” he wrote.
The minister’s office replied by e-mail three days later:
“Beverley Hughes has seen and noted your submission of 7 March . . . Beverley feels the basic point is that while staff have to take some risks, this was a decision that flew in the face of common sense.”
The e-mail was copied to David Blunkett, then home secretary, and Sir John Gieve, his most senior mandarin. The words “to be withheld” were later scribbled across the top, an apparent instruction not to comply with an FoI request for its release.
The same words appear on a note, prepared by Jeffrey, sent to Hughes a few days later. In it, in response to Hughes’s insistent complaints about the need to clear the 45,000 backlog, he outlined the new “risk-taking” policy. This involved fast-tracking all 337,000 applications, with little or no regard as to whether they were merited.
The policy, codenamed Brace, meant that officials had to make quick decisions based on the paperwork in an applicant’s file, regardless of whether it was complete. No further follow-up checks were to be made.
Jeffrey said staff were given guidance that “Brace is about pragmatic (ie not pursing every angle that could conceivably justify refusal) grants rather than pragmatic refusals”.
In other words, the official policy was in principle to grant applications rather than to refuse them.
This telling exchange — and equally significant evidence of a concerted cover-up — is buried deep in a batch of documents that ministers tried desperately to prevent being made public.
Their illegal activity followed an application by a Whitehall whistleblower, Steve Moxon, to force them to release the material under the Freedom of Information Act.
An immigration case worker whose ultimate bosses had been Jeffrey and Hughes, Moxon was sacked after telling The Sunday Times about the fast-tracking process in 2004. He has spent five years trying to obtain the truth about the policy, which Hughes always claimed publicly was implemented by junior officials without her knowledge.
Not only do the papers expose her claim as untrue; they go further in showing that Hughes and Jeffrey were happy to encourage the culture of deliberate risk-taking.
When an FoI application was made to see their exchanges, ministers argued that the material was exempt from disclosure because policy advice given by officials to their political masters should remain confidential.
In official correspondence with the information commissioner, the Home Office said that “a Home Office minister” had ruled that the documents should not be released. But in March this year, Thomas ruled: “The public interest in favour of maintaining the exemption does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure.
“The commissioner requires the (Home Office) to disclose the information which has been withheld . . . In failing to release information, the commissioner finds that the (Home Office) breached sections 1 and 10 (of the Freedom of Information Act.”
The government reluctantly conceded, placing the documents on an obscure part of the department’s website, apparently in the hope that nobody would notice.
Yesterday, the Tories said they would be demanding an urgent explanation of the documents from the government.
Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said: “This is shaping up to become one of the major political scandals of recent times. Ministers quite clearly broke the law and deliberately misled the public to cover up a policy which most reasonable people would say was utterly irresponsible.”
Whiff of a smoking gun
Why did new Labour secretly open Britain’s borders, while pretending to control the numbers under its so-called “managed migration” policy?
Two weeks ago Andrew Neather, a former speechwriter for Tony Blair, wrote an article saying Labour had allowed immigration to rocket in order to turn Britain “truly multicultural” and “to rub the right’s noses in diversity”.
The heart of his claim was that uncontrolled mass immigration had been a deliberate, covert policy to change the country’s demographics.
But Labour’s core vote, the white working class, were drawn to the BNP at the resulting pressure on jobs, homes and schools.
Alan Johnson, the home secretary, has said Labour was “maladroit” on the issue: the immigration door was left wide open because of “cock-up” not a “conspiracy”. But Neather’s account may be only half the story.
Chris Mullin, a former minister, recalled in his memoirs that ministers had “barely touched the rackets that surrounded arranged marriages . . . terrified of the huge cry of ‘racism’ that would go up . . . There is the added difficulty that at least 20 Labour seats, including Jack (Straw’s), depend on Asian votes”.
With up to 80% of ethnic minorities voting Labour, it is obvious that the more immigrants who get the right to vote, the greater is Labour’s electoral share. Perhaps Mullin has stumbled on a smoking gun.
From The Sunday Times
November 8, 2009
Home Office covered up immigration risk
Labour's “open door” immigration policy knowingly risked allowing dangerous people to settle in Britain unchecked, according to documents seen by The Sunday Times.
The Whitehall correspondence, which was illegally withheld by the Home Office for four years, shows how ministers were told by the country’s most senior immigration official that his staff were to be “encouraged to take risks” when granting visas, work permits and extended residency to hundreds of thousands of new migrants.
The cover-up of this policy of risk-taking was so concerted that Richard Thomas, the then information commissioner, sent a team of investigators into the Home Office to trawl all the relevant papers. Earlier this year he rebuked the department for breaking the law and ordered it to release the material under the freedom of information (FoI) law.
The documents help to explain the huge rise in the flow of migrants into Britain as the Home Office rushed to clear a backlog of 45,000 cases.
Officials agreed to fast-track 337,000 applications with minimal checks. This led to a rapid rise in immigration. In 1999, 170,000 visas were granted; by 2002, this had risen to 300,000.
As officials were being ordered to take risks, several potentially dangerous people entered the UK. In late 2001, more than 20 Taliban, who had fled from Afghanistan after their defeat by American and British forces, were allowed to stay in the UK.
The documents cast new light on the row over past immigration policy, highlighted by the recent rise of the British National party.
Last week Alan Johnson became the first Labour home secretary to admit the government had made mistakes in its handling of immigration. He said ministers had ignored problems about failed asylum seekers and foreign national prisoners. They had also failed to grasp public unease about the growing pressure on jobs and public services.
Johnson’s remarks signalled the government’s belated recognition that its immigration policy has alienated its white working-class vote, tempting a significant minority to back the BNP. The documents indicate that, far from being a mistake, there was a deliberate policy — apparently endorsed at the highest level in the Home Office — to promote concerted risk-taking by immigration staff whose job was to decide whether non-European Union migrants applying to work, study or marry in Britain were genuine.
A key figure in the scandal was Sir Bill Jeffrey, who was the director-general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, Britain’s most senior immigration official. He is now at the centre of controversy as the senior civil servant in charge of the Ministry of Defence.
The other key figure was Beverley Hughes, then minister of state for citizenship and immigration. She was later forced to resign after it emerged she had misled MPs about whether she had been warned that Romanian and Bulgarian crime gangs might want to exploit the UK’s decision to open its borders to those seeking work from eastern Europe.
In March 2003, shortly after the 2001 entry permits to the Taliban had come to light — to an outcry in the press — Jeffrey spelled out the policy in a note to Hughes.
“We are still in a situation where some risks have to be taken, and staff should feel that if they are encouraged to take risks they will be supported when something does go wrong,” he wrote.
The minister’s office replied by e-mail three days later:
“Beverley Hughes has seen and noted your submission of 7 March . . . Beverley feels the basic point is that while staff have to take some risks, this was a decision that flew in the face of common sense.”
The e-mail was copied to David Blunkett, then home secretary, and Sir John Gieve, his most senior mandarin. The words “to be withheld” were later scribbled across the top, an apparent instruction not to comply with an FoI request for its release.
The same words appear on a note, prepared by Jeffrey, sent to Hughes a few days later. In it, in response to Hughes’s insistent complaints about the need to clear the 45,000 backlog, he outlined the new “risk-taking” policy. This involved fast-tracking all 337,000 applications, with little or no regard as to whether they were merited.
The policy, codenamed Brace, meant that officials had to make quick decisions based on the paperwork in an applicant’s file, regardless of whether it was complete. No further follow-up checks were to be made.
Jeffrey said staff were given guidance that “Brace is about pragmatic (ie not pursing every angle that could conceivably justify refusal) grants rather than pragmatic refusals”.
In other words, the official policy was in principle to grant applications rather than to refuse them.
This telling exchange — and equally significant evidence of a concerted cover-up — is buried deep in a batch of documents that ministers tried desperately to prevent being made public.
Their illegal activity followed an application by a Whitehall whistleblower, Steve Moxon, to force them to release the material under the Freedom of Information Act.
An immigration case worker whose ultimate bosses had been Jeffrey and Hughes, Moxon was sacked after telling The Sunday Times about the fast-tracking process in 2004. He has spent five years trying to obtain the truth about the policy, which Hughes always claimed publicly was implemented by junior officials without her knowledge.
Not only do the papers expose her claim as untrue; they go further in showing that Hughes and Jeffrey were happy to encourage the culture of deliberate risk-taking.
When an FoI application was made to see their exchanges, ministers argued that the material was exempt from disclosure because policy advice given by officials to their political masters should remain confidential.
In official correspondence with the information commissioner, the Home Office said that “a Home Office minister” had ruled that the documents should not be released. But in March this year, Thomas ruled: “The public interest in favour of maintaining the exemption does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure.
“The commissioner requires the (Home Office) to disclose the information which has been withheld . . . In failing to release information, the commissioner finds that the (Home Office) breached sections 1 and 10 (of the Freedom of Information Act.”
The government reluctantly conceded, placing the documents on an obscure part of the department’s website, apparently in the hope that nobody would notice.
Yesterday, the Tories said they would be demanding an urgent explanation of the documents from the government.
Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said: “This is shaping up to become one of the major political scandals of recent times. Ministers quite clearly broke the law and deliberately misled the public to cover up a policy which most reasonable people would say was utterly irresponsible.”
Whiff of a smoking gun
Why did new Labour secretly open Britain’s borders, while pretending to control the numbers under its so-called “managed migration” policy?
Two weeks ago Andrew Neather, a former speechwriter for Tony Blair, wrote an article saying Labour had allowed immigration to rocket in order to turn Britain “truly multicultural” and “to rub the right’s noses in diversity”.
The heart of his claim was that uncontrolled mass immigration had been a deliberate, covert policy to change the country’s demographics.
But Labour’s core vote, the white working class, were drawn to the BNP at the resulting pressure on jobs, homes and schools.
Alan Johnson, the home secretary, has said Labour was “maladroit” on the issue: the immigration door was left wide open because of “cock-up” not a “conspiracy”. But Neather’s account may be only half the story.
Chris Mullin, a former minister, recalled in his memoirs that ministers had “barely touched the rackets that surrounded arranged marriages . . . terrified of the huge cry of ‘racism’ that would go up . . . There is the added difficulty that at least 20 Labour seats, including Jack (Straw’s), depend on Asian votes”.
With up to 80% of ethnic minorities voting Labour, it is obvious that the more immigrants who get the right to vote, the greater is Labour’s electoral share. Perhaps Mullin has stumbled on a smoking gun.
This government is morally bankrupt, has the Queen got any say on calling an election? As she is the only authority left that could halt the relentless crap that this bunch of shysters come out with!!
Immigration, expenses, public sector mismanagement, buying votes, benefit explosion, promoting unelected crooks to high office (with peerage) ...what next!! Maybe they will extend the elected term to 10 years, and get that in before the next election (which will then go on hold). I am too old and unskilled to rank up enough points to become a migrant to Australia, I wish I had seen this lot coming and got out whilst I had the chance!!
Rant over....
Oh, and I would like to add unwinnable wars to that list!!
Immigration, expenses, public sector mismanagement, buying votes, benefit explosion, promoting unelected crooks to high office (with peerage) ...what next!! Maybe they will extend the elected term to 10 years, and get that in before the next election (which will then go on hold). I am too old and unskilled to rank up enough points to become a migrant to Australia, I wish I had seen this lot coming and got out whilst I had the chance!!
Rant over....
Oh, and I would like to add unwinnable wars to that list!!
Edited by andrewws on Sunday 8th November 08:11
agreed
kingbelievable for words.Mon Ami Mate said:
One word. Treason.
Unfortunately, whilst noisily banning fox hunting / smoking etc our treason laws were "overhauled" making crimes like this and selling the UK out to the EU possible without risking winky and bLiar coming up on charges for itEdited by AndrewW-G on Sunday 8th November 08:33
Imagine how this could play out in the context of an EU seditious libel case against somebody leaking a story like this. If the leak revealed a major political scandal involving gross incompetence and worse, this would be seen as supporting a seditious libel action, not as a defence against it - since the harm to the reputation an EU member state would be greater if the leaked story was true compared to where it was false.
Scroll down a few paragraphs here to the Connolly case:
Silencing Opposition in the EU via Seditious Libel
Scroll down a few paragraphs here to the Connolly case:
Silencing Opposition in the EU via Seditious Libel
Guam said:
I for one will be interested to see how the Nu Labia supporters on here will defend the deliberate flooding of our country with scum!
Whatever your political beliefs, to institute a policy that knowingly allows Criminal Gangs and unchecked individuals guilty perhaps of who knows what to just walk in. Is appalling IMHO!
Cheers
I'm amazed anyone is surprised this has been happening to be honest when there has been an open door policy.Whatever your political beliefs, to institute a policy that knowingly allows Criminal Gangs and unchecked individuals guilty perhaps of who knows what to just walk in. Is appalling IMHO!
Cheers
Just to add, I've said on many occasions that when one country joined the EU, in one day, around 250 of it's known and hardened criminals where allowed to freely wander straight through our borders. I dread to think how many have come through since.
odyssey2200 said:
Mon Ami Mate said:
One word. Treason.
Here he is committing another act of treasonPlease tell me that High Treason still carries the death penalty!
Edited by odyssey2200 on Sunday 8th November 08:32
TimJMS said:
The very mention of 'his' name reminds me of Question Time, and his twittering, quivering, frightened, half - baked gittish performance. Cuntwaft.
One of the only things of note I learnt in that particular episode of QT was that Straw's dad was locked up for refusing to fight the nazi's..votes!
"Chris Mullin, a former minister, recalled in his memoirs that ministers had “barely touched the rackets that surrounded arranged marriages . . . terrified of the huge cry of ‘racism’ that would go up
. . . There is the added difficulty that at least 20 Labour seats, including Jack (Straw’s), depend on Asian votes”.
With up to 80% of ethnic minorities voting Labour, it is obvious that the more immigrants who get the right to vote, the greater is Labour’s electoral share. Perhaps Mullin has stumbled on a smoking gun."
"Chris Mullin, a former minister, recalled in his memoirs that ministers had “barely touched the rackets that surrounded arranged marriages . . . terrified of the huge cry of ‘racism’ that would go up
. . . There is the added difficulty that at least 20 Labour seats, including Jack (Straw’s), depend on Asian votes”.
With up to 80% of ethnic minorities voting Labour, it is obvious that the more immigrants who get the right to vote, the greater is Labour’s electoral share. Perhaps Mullin has stumbled on a smoking gun."
Edited by Pesty on Sunday 8th November 10:53
I can safely say this is yet another area where Labour's underhand tactics were sussed out by most on PH many years ago. That leaves a few rather naive, unintelligent or plain deceitful people who supported them. Where are they now? Let's here the justification for supporting Labour. Come on, now's your chance... 
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