| 
London, Sunday, March 28, 2004  David
Irving comments: SO the gatekeeper gives
up on her job, opens the gates, and throws
away the key.
A tide of
unEnglish "migrants", as the Labour Party
calls them (hoping that people won't
recognize the deception), comes pouring
in, with the usual surf-riding scum of
drug dealers, racketeers, Russian
oligarchs, and slave traders.
The minister lies to
Parliament about it. She will survive,
that I predict: But what grist for the
mill of the British National Party, whom
Michael Howard so recently derided
as "a stain on British democracy"!
What purpose has
"democracy", when an elected Minister so
blatantly lies to the House of Commons
about a matter of such profound importance
to all people with England's incomparable
values at heart?
And here's the question: Who really
benefits from this ugly tide of the
unEnglish pouring in through our unmanned
gates? |
Memo traps
migrant row minister by David
Leppard THE [British]
immigration minister Beverley Hughes
personally authorised a policy to allow tens of
thousands of migrants into Britain without adequate
checks, according to a leaked Home Office
document. Despite being cleared by an internal inquiry
into the "fast-tracking" of migrants last week, new
evidence indicates that the minister approved a far
wider policy than previously disclosed to
rubber-stamp applications. According to the
confidential memo, staff at the immigration service
headquarters were ordered to wave through
applications which had been on their files for more
than three months. The policy, it says, was "agreed by the minister
of state, Beverley Hughes" who, along with senior
officials, would "totally support" staff on the
results of the exercise. The disclosure contradicts statements by Hughes
that she had not sanctioned a fast-tracking policy.
Last night the Conservatives renewed calls for her
resignation, claiming she had misled the House of
Commons. David Davis, the shadow home
secretary [Conservative Pary], demanded to
know why last week's Home Office inquiry had failed
to disclose her decision to authorise the widescale
fast-tracking. "This smacks of a cover-up," he
said. The Sunday Times broke the story three
weeks ago of how checks had been relaxed on
thousands of eastern Europeans wishing to enter
Britain. Hughes said the procedures had been
authorised "at a junior level" and that they were
confined to "a very particular group" of migrants
processed by a "team in Sheffield". She told MPs
that rubber-stamping was "rare and untypical" and
added: "I am not condoning for a moment the dip in
scrutiny that has taken place." She commissioned an inquiry which appeared to
support her statements when its report was
published last week. It said the policy on eastern
European migrants was based on a "misunderstanding"
between senior officials who did not involve the
minister. However, the report made no mention of
the fact that, at the same time, Hughes had
personally approved the operation of a similar and
far more extensive policy. The existence of this
policy was revealed to The Sunday Times last
week by a disgruntled Home Office civil servant who
claimed that it was "corruption and abuse of the
system on a massive scale". The memo, passed anonymously to the newspaper by
the official, is a record of an instruction
authorised by Hughes that no inquiries were to be
made on thousands of applications by migrants
wishing to enter or settle in Britain. According to
the note, the policy was approved by the minister
in July last year. It states that the policy of rubber-stamping
applications operated across Hughes's department -
not only at Sheffield but also at the Croydon
headquarters of the Home Office's Immigration and
Nationality Directorate (IND). It states that
fast-tracking with no checks was applied to "all
applications" more than three months old from
migrants processed there. Senior officials involved in the procedure say
it involved approving thousands of applications
from those seeking to enter or settle in Britain as
students, spouses, au pairs, domestic servants,
working holidaymakers and dependent relatives of
migrants already here. The leaked memo was written by Graham
Austin and Moira Bing, two senior
immigration officials in the casework directorate
at Croydon. It states: "As there are
[sic] a large
number of applications that are over three months
old waiting to be decided, it has been agreed at
ministerial level that an enhanced procedure should
be undertaken to clear these as quickly as
possible. "This note confirms that the decision
in this case has been taken under an enhanced
procedure for clearing backlog cases, which
commenced on 14 July, 2003. Bill
Brandon/Christina Parry (two senior
immigration policy managers) have instructed
that all applications - as far as possible -
over three months old should be granted unless
the information available on file is such that
it can properly and defensibly support a
refusal. Where a case will result in a refusal,
the case must be cleared by a senior caseworker.
No further inquiries should be made." The note adds: "This exercise has been agreed by
the minister of state Beverley Hughes and has Bill
Brandon and Christina Parry's complete authority.
They will totally support staff on its outcomes."
It is understood that the memo was shown to Ken
Sutton, the Home Office mandarin whom Hughes
commissioned to report on the Sheffield fiasco, but
no mention of it appears in his report. Nor does
Sutton mention that Hughes herself authorised the
fast-track policy at Croydon. The civil servant who
passed the memo to The Sunday Times said
that the fast-tracking exercise - known as Backlog
Reduction Accelerated Clearance Exercise (Brace) -
"resulted in virtually no control on applications".
She said: "There are now tens if not hundreds of thousands
of foreign nationals being allowed to stay who do
not qualify to be here. This includes drug dealers,
other criminals and probably the odd
terrorist." She said that the note showed "the appalling way
senior officials in IND are instructing their staff
to grant all manner of applications without
inquiry. I know the instruction has one or two
get-out phrases such as 'as far as possible' but be
in no doubt that this instruction means grant every
application without inquiry unless you absolutely
have to refuse." When The Sunday Times put its original
allegations to the Home Office earlier this month,
the department claimed that there had been no
relaxation of procedures. To verify the latest
memo, an undercover reporter posing as a Whitehall
information officer spoke directly to one of the
officials involved in the authorised
"fast-tracking" policy who confirmed that it was
genuine: "It's gone up in internal briefings but
there's no way the press should have seen it
unless someone has leaked it." Confronted with the leak yesterday, the Home
Office finally admitted that a secret no-checks
policy was introduced last August [2003]
for all cases more than three months old, and had
been approved by Hughes. It claimed that the
fast-tracking procedures at Sheffield were
different from those elsewhere. But insiders said
that the distinction was a nonsense and the schemes
were identical. Copyright 2004 Times
Newspapers Ltd. |
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