New report condemns Home Office

By Timothy Goode

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

A critical report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission has said that the Home Office broke the law when it introduced its hostile environment immigration measures.

The rights body announced the department now has a legal duty to review these policies to ensure they are not racially discriminatory, and that they comply with equalities legislation.

Caroline Waters, interim chair of the EHRC, said the policies would look “very different” once this review had been completed. “We would expect them to be different because we found that equality was generally dismissed or overlooked,”

This is another damming report on the Home Office, that has already faced scrutiny over its hostile work environment, and the Windrush scandal.

In its report the EHRC noted an organisation-wide “lack of commitment, including by senior leadership, to the importance of equality and the Home Office’s obligations under the public sector equality duty. There was a misconception by some officials that immigration was exempt from all equalities legislation.”