Home Office Ascension Island plan ‘lifted from far right extremist playbook’
The Home Office is punishing some of the world’s most vulnerable people while lawlessly fanning the flames of prejudice, say the Scottish Greens.
This comes as newspapers report that the Home Office is considering using Ascension Island, a UK territory in the South Atlantic, if its Rwanda policy fails.
The Party’s justice spokesperson, Maggie Chapman MSP, has accused the Home Secretary of pursuing evermore reactionary and inhumane policies, lifting these cruel and unusual ideas straight from far right playbooks.
In June the Court of Appeal ruled that the Rwanda deportation policy is illegal. Last month the High Court ruled that the Home Office was breaking the law by putting unaccompanied children in hotels.
Ms Chapman said:
“Proposals like this expose how out of control and totally unfit for purpose the Home Office has become. What could be more abhorrent than pursuing these punitive and inhumane policies in order to punish some of the world’s most vulnerable people?
“The Home Secretary is sadistically fanning the flames of prejudice and lifting policies out of the far right playbook. It is the kind of politics that used to be associated with racist thugs and extremist groups but is now being implemented at the highest level of government.
“The Tories are putting their desperate desire for authoritarian headlines over the rights and lives of refugees and people seeking asylum.
“The human cost is terrible, and the hostile environment they are inflicting is so brutal and unforgiving that core parts have been found to be illegal as well as immoral.
“It is beyond shameful. This is not the country I want us to be. With the powers of a normal independent country we can develop a humane system that recognises and respects human dignity and prioritises solidarity, compassion and human rights."