UNITED KINGDOM
The head of the union representing senior UK Public Servants has hit back at Home Secretary, Amber Rudd’s implied criticism of her own Home Office staff over the so-called Windrush affair.
General Secretary of the FDA Union, Dave Penman said Ms Rudd was attempting to deflect eight years of hostile immigration policies under Prime Minister, Theresa May.
Mr Penman’s comments came after Ms Rudd told Parliament she was “concerned that the Home Office has become too concerned with policy and strategy and sometimes loses sight of the individual”.
His words are the first sign of Whitehall discontent over Ministers’ attempts to blame PS staff for the treatment of an unknown number of people who arrived in the UK from Caribbean countries but were never formally naturalised.
The migrants have been named after the Empire Windrush vessel, which first brought families to help rebuild postwar Britain, arriving on British shores between 1948 and 1971.
Mr Penman’s claim was backed by the former Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, who chaired the Cabinet Committee on Home Affairs for five years while Ms May was Home Secretary.
Mr Clegg said the “silly policies and nasty politics” the Conservatives pursued because of their “obsession” with immigration poisoned the atmosphere and culture of the Home Office.
“They kept resorting to these glib, silly, unproven headline-grabbing gimmicks and that does create the administrative climate when someone somewhere down the food chain thinks ‘we won’t take on good faith what the Windrush generation is saying to us’,” Mr Clegg said.
“That’s the climate they are operating in.”
However, he denied the claim by the former head of the Public Service, Lord Kerslake that Ministers thought the policy was “almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the way it’s working”.
Mr Clegg said that was “rather silly” and no-one would have drawn a parallel with Hitler’s Germany.
Mr Penman said Ms May’s net migration target of 100,000 people a year prompted a series of aggressive laws to cut migration and crack down on illegal immigration while implementing 20 per cent of cuts across the Public Service.
London, 20 April 2018
