Anti-racism campaigners have criticised proposals to allow police to reveal the ethnicity and migration status of suspects, after a row triggered by claims police “covered up” the backgrounds of two men charged in connection to the alleged rape of a child.
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, this week told the BBC she hoped the Law Commission would “accelerate” a review of contempt of court and that “guidance needs to change” about information released when a trial is pending.
But the anti-racism group the Runnymede Trust – which this month claimed “hostile language” from politicians and the media towards immigration was fuelling “reactionary politics” – says the proposals risk framing violence against women and girls as an issue of ethnicity instead of misogyny.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) said the proposals would “undermine” justice.
The debate was reignited after George Finch, the Reform UK leader of Warwickshire county council, accused police of a “cover-up” over the migration status of two suspects charged after the alleged rape of the child, claiming they were asylum seekers. The force strongly denies a cover-up, saying it merely acted in line with national guidance.
The details of suspects before trials are routinely limited to ensure the fairness and legal safety of proceedings. But Downing Street has called for “transparency” to rebuild public trust after false rumours spread after 2024’s Southport murders.
However, campaigners warn that politicians and media are emboldening the far right by linking migration to crime.
This month, the Runnymede Trust released a report that – after analysing more than 63m words from 52,990 news articles and 317 House of Commons debates on immigration between 2019 and July 2024 – found the word most strongly associated with migrants was “illegal”.
After Cooper’s remarks that “more information should be provided … including on some of those asylum issues”, Dr Shabna Begum, the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said: “These proposals do nothing to address the urgent issues of male sexual violence, divert attention away from women and girls and fixate on nationality and asylum status – as part of an increasingly aggressive far-right agenda.
“Instead of recycling age-old tropes about men of colour as inherently threatening to white British women, we should be centring victims and survivors of all backgrounds.
“We all deserve better than this pantomime politics that offers us easy villains but deals with none of the wider conditions where misogyny has increased.”
Runnymede’s recent report said there were “many” examples of media “stories about distressing crimes that emphasise the immigration status of the perpetrator”, claiming they were used to frame asylum seekers as a potential threat to women and “the British way of life”.
The report also cited comments made by the former home secretary Suella Braverman, in the context of 2023’s illegal migration bill, which linked people arriving on boats to “heightened levels of criminality” and Robert Jenrick’s X post this year that spoke of “importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes towards women”.
Runnymede’s report said the “long-term effects” of such claims would be to “normalise” violence against women and girls by making it seem as if it is “determined by ethnicity rather than the perpetuation of misogynist practices in society”.
Cooper described the release of information about suspects as “an operational decision for the police and Crown Prosecution Service on an individual case” to the BBC, stressing ministers had to take care to avoid legal prejudice.
But Griff Ferris, the interim director of communications at JCWI, said prior release of ethnicity and migration status would “undermine what’s left of justice in this country” and make all communities “less safe”.
He added: “This deeply irresponsible and dangerous proposal is guaranteed to fuel racist narratives and further embolden the far right.
“Policies like this send a chilling message: that some people are inherently more ‘suspect’.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary has made clear that there is a strong public interest in maximum transparency wherever that is possible.
“That is why the Home Office and College of Policing are working together to strengthen and clarify the guidance around how and when information is released.”
Ahmad Mulakhil has been charged with rape and Mohammad Kabir has been charged with kidnap and strangulation after an alleged attack on a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton in July.
