Simon Israel

  • 15 May 2018

    For weeks, the Home Office under Amber Rudd said repeatedly that they were not aware of any Windrush deportations,although they were checking. Today, Home Secretary Sajid Javid has admitted that more than 60 people caught up in the Windrush scandal may have been wrongly deported, and there could be more. When he was appointed last…

  • 15 May 2018

    Restraint methods used on asylum seekers found to be excessive

    The restraint methods used on asylum seekers transferred from the UK to other countries has been found to be excessive, unreasonable, and disproportionate according to the chief inspector of prisons months after the Home Office said the practice had stopped. Peter Clarke said they had serious concerns about the way a plane load of detainees were treated…

  • 10 May 2018

    The public inquiry into undercover policing won’t hand it’s final report to the Home Secretary for another 5 years – in 2023. The revelation comes in the publication of a strategic review of the inquiry into 40 years of undercover policing which opened in 2015 and but will only begin to hear evidence in public…

  • 2 May 2018

    The Windrush scandal has brought the UK’s immigration system into the spotlight. But it’s not just those who came over to Britain decades ago who are concerned. Two young women who were born in the Caribbean but have lived here since they were children talk to us about how it feels to not be officially…

  • 2 May 2018

    The number of potential Windrush cases reported to a specialist Home Office unit has now risen to 3,000. The figures were revealed as Labour used a parliamentary debate to try to force the the government to release of all correspondence between ministers, officials and special advisers between May 2010 and 2018 relating to the Windrush…

  • 26 Apr 2018

    Yesterday she said there were no immigration removal targets. Today the Home Secretary Amber Rudd admitted there were – but declared that what she called ”local” targets would now be abolished. Labour accused her of trying to blame officials – again demanding that she resign as the fallout over the Windrush scandal continues. The Home…

  • 25 Apr 2018

    The Windrush scandal dominated proceedings in Westminster today, with Home Secretary Amber Rudd coming under more pressure to resign. Jeremy Corbyn demanded the government rethink what he called its “cruel” immigration policy and get rid of “bogus” targets. Ms Rudd told MPs she bitterly regretted her failure to grasp the scale of the scandal sooner.…

  • 24 Apr 2018

    It’s not just the older immigrants from the Caribbean who have been caught up in this Windrush scandal. Some of their children and grandchildren have found themselves denied British citizenship too. In a different context Theresa May once lambasted people she called the ‘citizens of nowhere’, but has she in effect created such citizens of…

  • 19 Apr 2018

    They should be in no doubt of their right to remain: this from the Home Secretary tonight after a deal with Caribbean leaders over the Windrush fiasco. And a promise, finally, of security to those who came here as children and have lived here ever since. After talks with the High Commissioners from Barbados and St…

  • 18 Apr 2018

    The mother of a Windrush child has called on Theresa May to reflect on what she is doing to the country after her 58-year-old son was found dead last month.

  • 17 Apr 2018

    The improbable juxtaposition of Commonwealth heads of government, 12 of them from the Caribbean, being in London on the very day that this vast controversy erupted, has deepened the scale of the row.

  • 16 Apr 2018

    The government has admitted the way it has treated people who came to the UK from the Caribbean as children before 1973 was a mistake and apologised. There were angry exchanges in parliament as the Home Secretary Amber Rudd admitted that immigration policy had been put before the treatment of people.

  • 15 Apr 2018

    It’s thirty six hours since the missiles were aimed at targets in Syria. Today the diplomatic battle returned to centre stage. The Foreign Secretary says it’s been important to show the world that the use of chemical weapons is intolerable, but Boris Johnson admits there’s precious little the Government can do about the humanitarian disaster…

  • 14 Apr 2018

    The Government has already published the detailed legal advice justifying the airstrikes on Syria. This after the Prime Minister defended going ahead without seeking Parliament’s backing.  Mrs May held telephone talks with Presidents Trump and Macron this afternoon – with all three leaders hailing the joint bombing campaign as a “success”. A warning, there are some…

  • 12 Apr 2018

    A dozen Caribbean High Commissioners have called on the British Government to stop treating people who came to the UK as children half a century ago as if they are ‘illegal immigrants’. Their demand follows revelations on this programme about people who arrived and settled in the UK in the 1960s but are now being…