UK

Home Office’s ex-asylum boss joins pro-migrant charity  

OUCH


Edward Malnick
Sat, 26 August 202

Ms Haddad was known as being 'very difficult' during her time at the Home Office, one source claimed

A former Home Office chief accused of resisting key Conservative policies while in charge of asylum is joining a charity that has said the Government’s policies are “inhumane, racist and divisive”.

Emma Haddad, who was the Home Office’s director general for asylum until October 2022, will help to oversee Amnesty International UK, which has been campaigning against the Government’s attempts to halt Channel crossings and deport migrants to Rwanda.

Ms Haddad’s appointment will intensify tensions between Conservative ministers and senior officials. A senior Tory said: “This demonstrates the extent of the institutional hurdles that we have been up against.”

One source described Ms Haddad as “very difficult” and the “chief blocker” of ministers’ policies during her time at the Home Office. A Home Office source claimed that, during her time at the top of the department, the senior civil servant was “hostile” to the Government’s agenda on asylum, including a plan to move migrants out of taxpayer-funded hotel rooms and into large-scale accommodation.

The Home Office source said that Ms Haddad also oversaw the introduction of “lenient” guidance in which asylum caseworkers were told they could not reject the testimony of a migrant caught lying.

Sources cited her move to Amnesty as evidence that Ms Haddad was politically opposed to Conservative policies on asylum and immigration.

Obeyed Civil Service code

Responding to the claims, Ms Haddad said: “As with any civil servant, my job was to serve the government of the day. All civil servants must abide by the Civil Service code and uphold the Civil Service’s core values of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.”

The row came as a poll by Public First found that almost half of pro-Leave voters who backed the Conservatives in 2019 believe the Government is not trying hard enough to deal with asylum and immigration.

The survey highlights a potential backlash brewing among the primary group of voters that Mr Sunak had set out to win over with his pledge to stop illegal Channel crossings.

Ms Haddad’s move to Amnesty will also heighten concerns about the “revolving door” between Whitehall and organisations that seek to influence government policies.

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which vets jobs taken by former senior officials, said the Home Office acknowledged that Ms Haddad’s knowledge of the department’s “strategic thinking” on asylum and immigration would improve Amnesty’s “effectiveness as a lobbying organisation.”

It has banned Ms Haddad from lobbying the Government for two years, and added: “Ms Haddad has confirmed she will not have contact with the Government in this role and is inwardly focused.”

During Dame Priti Patel’s stint as home secretary, which ended in September 2022, scores of officials voiced their opposition to the Government’s Rwanda asylum deal on an internal Home Office online noticeboard – with some threatening to strike over the issue.

In March, mandarins complained after an email in Suella Braverman’s name to Conservative members blamed an “activist blob of Left-wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party” for blocking the Government’s plans to stop small boats carrying migrants across the Channel.

It later emerged that the Home Secretary had not seen or sanctioned the email before it was sent out.

Ms Haddad, who has also taken up a post as chief executive of St Mungo’s, the homelessness charity, since leaving the Home Office, applied for the unpaid role at Amnesty having seen an advertisement.

Amnesty has been one of the fiercest opponents of the Government’s crackdown on illegal Channel crossings over several years, describing Rishi Sunak’s Illegal Migration Act, which became law in July, as “inhumane, racist and divisive”.

The legislation changed the law so that those who arrive in the UK illegally can be detained and then deported, either to their home country or a “safe third country” such as Rwanda – an element currently being challenged in the courts.

In April, the charity stated: “Harsh asylum and immigration policies do not deter people from making dangerous journeys, indeed, the Home Office’s own research contradicts this … The Home Secretary has spread nonsensical scare stories about the numbers of people trying to come to the UK and blamed people for failing to take safe and legal routes that do not exist.”

Ms Haddad left the Home Office a month after Mrs Braverman was first appointed as Home Secretary by Liz Truss, having served as director general for asylum since February 2021, when Dame Priti was home secretary.

Dame Priti introduced the Nationality and Borders Bill, which tightened up asylum rules, including by creating a two-tier system under which those who arrive via illegal crossings may receive less protection and support. Ms Haddad’s approach at the time was “all about not being able to do things,” a source claimed.

The legislation under Dame Priti was opposed by Amnesty on the grounds that it was “racist” and “drags the UK’s reputation through the mud”.

A spokesman for Amnesty International UK said: “Non-executive directors at Amnesty International UK do not determine our policy positions on legal or human rights matters but are expected to support those positions while serving on the Board of Amnesty UK, and we have full confidence that all the members of our board do so.”