23rd August 2021
Our story begins with this article on the Guardian website, published on Saturday evening.
Afghan child refugees left without support in Home Office hotels https://t.co/iaUXCW61rz
— The Guardian (@guardian) August 21, 2021
The first part of the piece comprises a report of the following eight things about Afghan child refugees:
1. child refugees from Afghanistan are being held by the home office in hotels for weeks on end without shoes, spare clothes, money or access to healthcare;
2. one unaccompanied Afghan minor who arrived in the UK a month ago said they had also been given no legal advice or interpreter, their asylum claim had yet to be processed and they had no idea where they were or even where to find the nearest mosque;
3. despite repeated offers from a number of specialist charities, including Barnardo’s, to enter the hotels and assess the children, the home office has so far turned them down;
4. a Muslim community group that offered to supply child refugees in a hotel near Brighton with halal food was turned away despite complaints from some youngsters they were only being offered “boiled vegetables”;
5. there is a claim that children are being put into taxis and driven across the country with no escort or child protection system in place;
6. a child is said to have been driven by taxi more than 250 miles from the south coast to Yorkshire without an escort;
7. one hotel near Brighton is said to hold 70 minors;
8. a five-year-old Afghan refugee fell to his death from a ninth-floor Sheffield hotel window, days after arriving in the UK, and asylum seekers were previously removed from the hotel because it was unfit for them to stay in.
The remainder of the piece mainly consists of quotes from interested parties and the home office, and some background information.
But the the nub of the article comes from the above (eight) pieces of news, of which the first five are stated as facts and the other three are framed as claims.
Presumably that is because the first five were verified and sourced more than the final three.
On the face of it, this was a good strong news report about a worrying situation, resting on particularised examples as well as third party statements.
The sort of news item that not only would not be easily dismissed but should not be dismissed.
An article to be taken seriously.
*
But.
Late on Saturday night, the home office press office chose not to take the article seriously.
The home office did not say that it would look carefully at the worrying report and its numerous examples.
No, the home office chose to be silly instead.
The official home office account sent this tweet.
This article is littered with inaccuracies and claims which are untrue. The Home Office works night and day to ensure the welfare and needs of children in our care are met. https://t.co/CB7rIlcgCK
— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) August 21, 2021
Just looking at the first sentence: the home office assert the article does not only contains ‘inaccuracies’ and ‘claims which are untrue’ (and what is the difference?) but also that the article is ‘littered’ with such ‘inaccuracies’ and ‘claims which are untrue’.
Like many such weak public relations statements, it claims that there are many mistakes in a hard-hitting piece but it does not specify them.
In particular, nothing is said directly about any of the key eight things reported about Afghan children refugees.
The follow-on tweets from the home office were also in general terms.
We will never shirk our obligations to unaccompanied asylum seeking children and to suggest otherwise is false.
— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) August 21, 2021
Nothing in any of these tweets met the detailed news reported.
It was a broad-brush denial that, in effect, denied nothing.
It was also a wrongful – indeed disgraceful – use of a government social media account.
This was not official information nor an informed precise rebuttal.
The author of the piece set out his response:
The Home Office never contacted me before sending this outrageous tweet. Neither did it speak to any of the sources in the article or make any attempt to do so. https://t.co/FsY4WJq1JR
— Mark Townsend (@TownsendMark) August 22, 2021
Then another home affairs journalist shared her experience from January following this home office tweet:
.@Independent This is not true. @PoliceChiefs made clear they have power to remove a person if they breach the rules. Holiday travel is not allowed. Police can fine anyone trying to do so, direct them to go home and, if necessary, use powers of arrest.https://t.co/WebnXJj1md
— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) January 28, 2021
The story is accurate, and the Home Office posted this after I had spoken to 3 press officers and one of Priti Patel's special advisers about it
The Home Office thanked me for tweaking the headline and intro after they complained earlier in the evening, but then did this anyway https://t.co/a3UeOQvGXx
— Lizzie Dearden (@lizziedearden) January 29, 2021
Last time this happened to me I FOI'd it after, and it turned out there never were any arrests despite this https://t.co/gaHEHLJaJW
— Lizzie Dearden (@lizziedearden) August 22, 2021
*
The home office press office is perhaps clapping and cheering at such misdirection and misinformation.
Perhaps the press officers think themselves very clever.
But a moment’s thought should make them realise that this is being very foolish.
Credibility in official statements can be lost.
And once that credibility is lost then there can be serious political and social implications.
*
If a detailed press article is incorrect then, of course, a government department can seek to correct it – but the correction should be as detailed as the report.
Else the official objection reeks of bluster and bombast – and it has no place as an official publication.
The home office has many faults – some of which are depressingly familiar – but in its desire to manage bad news, it should avoid such disgraceful late night tweets.
The currency of official information can be debased, just like any other currency.
A wise home office should realise this.
**
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I wondered if this is the result of a direct ministerial instruction.
The news report is already depressing if accurate as it seems to be. But, in its own way, the tweeted rebuttal is even more bleak. For how did we ever fall so low as to employ persons who could think that such a reply could be credible, could influence anyone old enough to wield a vote? Above 12 years even? Et encore?
Strange days turning to grim days of despair that the human race can go much further. I am staring to think, hell mend them.
A wise Home Office? Indeed.
“ A wise Home Office? Indeed”
My thoughts exactly. We all know that the Home Office is notorious for insensitive, not to say blatantly cruel, policies badly administered, but it has never been as clear as now that it is a reflection of the views and personality of the person at the top.
And we all know that the current Prime Minister takes the view that the more unpopular the Minister the better she or he does the vital job of distracting attention from his own failings.
To coin a phrase, “Brace”!
Sadly, this is what we’ve come to expect from a government whose reflex action is to deny any criticism rather than toengage with it. It’s like the response of a guilty child – ‘it wasn’t me’, ‘I wasn’t there’, etc.
“If a detailed press article is incorrect then, of course, a government department can seek to correct it – but the correction should be as detailed as the report.”
A couple of years ago Singapore enacted POFMA – the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act. Anybody publishing information that the government considers false is required to publish a statement of what the government considers to be the true position. Very hefty penalties apply for non- compliance. There is a judicial appeal procedure available but, this being Singapore, the government will be very sure their facts before issuing a POFMA order so any appeal is unlikely to succeed.
POFMA is regarded by some as a constraint on free speech, but there is no requirement to take down the original statement unless it is illegal through being, for example, seditious or likely to incite racial hatred. It has the merit of requiring the government to produce a detailed response to the alleged falsehood so giving them the opportunity of getting their own
message out convincingly and discrediting the original piece. They have a department devoted to scanning social media and issuing quick directions. It’s a million miles away from the Home Office tweetasphere.
As I see it the Home Office is where the rubber meets the road. All the untruths, defects, underfundings and impossibilities arising from every government department meet up on the HO’s patch. And dear Mrs Patel cannot tell the truth or put the blame where it belongs. All she can do is deflect, obfuscate and deny and force her staff to do the same.
This must make the Home Office a rather unpleasant place to work. You must know that almost everything you deal with is a lie or does not work but you dare not let out a hint of the truth. One would need a heart of stone not to laugh. I can only hope that good lawyers collect evidence and sue the arse off the Home Office and its minions.
I have the feeling that the train of information being debased left the station long ago. The peak was going into the Iraq war on the false claim that Iraq had WMD.
But let’s look at the optic of the first tweet: a child has died, many others are let down and there are Home Office employees who are rewarded for writing those amoral tweets or, worse, for creating a hostile environment. That structure of incentives affects the mix of workers that choose to work for the Home Office and, more generally, the Civil Service. That has dire consequences for the quality of the Civil Service and for the country.
A couple of levels up, look at the competence, let alone sense of decency, of a cabinet that was selected on the basis of its loyalty to Brexit. Would decent, competent people have wanted to be part of it, had they been asked (which they weren’t)? The consequences for the country are for all to see.
Isn’t a large part of the appeal of Nicola Sturgeon her, surprisingly rare, knack of addressing the electorate as if they and she were adults? Why does the opposite not apply to this this so-called government, so they are despised? John Smith’s comment above adds to many others across the media which indicate that many of us are repelled by the attitudes such poor communications reveal. And yet the poll numbers do not. Brits in the street approve the government, just as the Republicans now abase themselves before Trump.
No wonder Xi thinks democracy is nonsense.
There is clearly a serious cultural problem within the Home Office, where various actions which outrage any sense of common decency are justified with no obvious evidence that anyone within the organisation ever pushes back. This office culture survived a long period of Labour government unscathed, indeed if anything it’s worse than it has ever been. I think we’re at the point now where the only solution is to abolish the Home Office and give its various individual tasks to other departments. We do need to manage immigration. We do not need to hand the task to people who seem to believe that immigrants have fewer human rights than anyone else.
In a similar vein, Sajid Javid recently opened one of the governments vaunted 48 “new” hospitals. No doubt there were tweets in addition to the official press release. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/health-secretary-opens-new-cancer-hospital
Despite some press releases labelling it the “Cumberland Cancer Hospital”, this new facility in Carlisle is actually a part of the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, which has been in operation since 2009. https://www.nhs.uk/Services/clinics/Overview/DefaultView.aspx?id=1306
The new unit started as a £17m project under the ProCure22 programme in September 2018. https://procure22.nhs.uk/update/
So it was in the pipeline almost a year before our present prime minister took office and long before “40 new hospitals” became a slogan. Demolition of the existing building that the new centre replaced began in January 2019.
https://www.ncic.nhs.uk/trust/projects-and-campaigns/cancer-centre
The new centre ultimately cost £35m, and brings existing non-surgical services at the hospital (including radiotherapy and chemotherapy) together under one roof. But even this new unit it is not a complete solution to cancer in the northwest and northeast, and some patients will continue to be referred for treatment at a similar unit in Newcastle. https://www.newcastle-hospitals.nhs.uk/services/northern-centre-for-cancer-care/
What picture does “new hospital” bring to mind? A small unit replacing services within a larger hospital, providing some but not all of treatments for a particular medical specialism? Is this a “modern oncology hospital”? https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-confirms-37-billion-for-40-hospitals-in-biggest-hospital-building-programme-in-a-generation
The new centre replaced another building on the site of the Cumberland Infirmary, which is a PFI hospital that opened in 2000. That is what a proper 400 bed district general hospital looks like. https://www.ncic.nhs.uk/locations/cumberland-infirmary Each one would costs several hundred million pounds.
Perhaps they should simply reopen 48 cottage hospitals with a handful of beds each and say they are done.
“Arrogant and offensive. Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters?”
Is this the opposite of Trigger’s Broom? As long as you replace either the handle or the head, it is a new broom.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-48-new-hospitals-building-b1909183.html
According to my communications playbook, it does satisfy the criteria I have set for myself of what a new broom is (a major refurbishment, delivering a significant extension to useful life which includes major or visible changes) and so it must always be referred to as a new broom.
Andrew commented: “The government has committed to build many new brooms by 2030, backed by an inadequate amount. Together with other new brooms, this project will mean many new brooms by the end of the decade, the biggest new broom programme in a generation.”
God help us all.
It’s not surprising that the Home Office’s tweets are politically partisan. Earlier this month Jonathan Isaby announced that he was taking up the post of Communications Private Secretary to the Home Secretary in her Private Office. Mr Isaby was Director of the Politea think tank and previously worked as co-editor of ConservativeHome, Chief Executive of the Taxpayers Alliance, and Editor of Brexit Central.
That he could be appointed as a civil servant, funded by the taxpayer, shows the system is rotten. Would he as a politically neutral civil servant work for a non-Conservative Government? Of course not.
My only amendment I would suggest for your comment Guy Dreich, is that thankfully, it is a minority of “Brits in the street [who] approve the government”.
Sadly, our outdated electoral system allowed the Conservatives to take a disproportionate amount of power, despite (according to BBC figures) 57% of the country not voting Conservative in 2019.
When things become too distressing, I force myself to remember that this government, despite what they say, do not represent the majority of people.
“The Home Office had many faults”
Typical DAG understatement there.
If even half of the stories one hears from the AIT are true, “Unfit for purpose” doesn’t even cover it.