\n<\/p>\n
Shabana Mahmood has said the Home Office is \u201cnot yet fit for purpose\u201d after the release of a damning report that was kept secret for years.<\/p>\n
The review, written under the previous government, uncovered a series of perceived shortcomings including a \u201cculture of defeatism\u201d on immigration, a lack of trust from other departments, and \u201cseveral confused and conflicting systems\u201d.<\/p>\n
Written by the former Home Office special adviser Nick Timothy in 2023, it has been released after a two-year legal battle by the Times.<\/p>\n
Responding to the revelations, Mahmood, who took over as home secretary from Yvette Cooper in September, vowed to overhaul the department, which she said had been \u201cset up to fail\u201d.<\/p>\n
Timothy, who was given access to the department during a two-month review, found an excessively \u201cdefensive approach\u201d among the Home Office\u2019s lawyers and a reluctance among senior officials to tell \u201cdifficult truths\u201d to ministers.<\/p>\n
His report said \u201ctoo much time is wasted\u201d on identity politics and social issues, with staff spending work hours in \u201clistening circles\u201d to discuss their feelings about such matters.<\/p>\n
Another finding was the distrust from other government departments, who became \u201cparticularly uncooperative\u201d after the Windrush scandal.<\/p>\n
One impact of the failings highlighted in the report was the crisis at the Manston asylum centre in Kent. In 2022 \u201cfatally overoptimistic\u201d forecasts led to serious overcrowding, with 18,000 people being unlawfully detained in horrific conditions, as well as an outbreak of diphtheria and scabies. The crisis prompted the Home Office to admit it had lost its grip on the situation.<\/p>\n
This month, a coroner found that the Home Office missed opportunities to assess the mental health of an asylum seeker before he was moved on to the Bibby Stockholm barge, where he died in December 2023.<\/p>\n
Mahmood said on Wednesday: \u201cThis report, written under the last government, is damning. To those who have encountered the Home Office in recent years, the revelations are all too familiar.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Home Office is not yet fit for purpose, and has been set up for failure. As this report shows, the last Conservative government knew this, but failed to do anything about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings are now changing. I will work with the new permanent secretary to transform the Home Office so that it delivers for this country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shabana Mahmood has said the Home Office is \u201cnot yet fit for purpose\u201d after the release of a damning report that was kept secret for years. The review, written under the previous government, uncovered a series of perceived shortcomings including a \u201cculture of defeatism\u201d on immigration, a lack of trust from other departments, and \u201cseveral<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[17650,7916,456,11856,1008,11470,293,12018,871],"class_list":{"0":"post-29948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-damning","9":"tag-fit","10":"tag-home","11":"tag-mahmood","12":"tag-office","13":"tag-purpose","14":"tag-report","15":"tag-shabana","16":"tag-shows"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}