The Home Office is trying to censor a report that makes blunt and damning criticisms of ministers’ failure to manage the impact of mass immigration, integrate minorities and tackle extremism.
The report, by the government’s integration tsar, Dame Louise Casey, has been ready for months, but publication has been delayed after Home Office officials expressed “concern” and “unhappiness” about its content and language.
The report is understood to:
- Attack the government for failing to get a grip on the pace of immigration and its impact on public services until too late
- Criticise the lack of a strategy to integrate communities, by allowing some areas to operate as if they were Muslim-only zones, with state schools closing for Friday prayers
- Warn that “liberal tolerance” has gone too far with political correctness that gives a boost to the far right
- Criticise the failure to promote and defend the Prevent programme, designed to counter radicalism in communities, which has allowed Islamists to categorise it as an attack on Muslims.
Charlie Edwards, a senior Home Office official and adviser to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, has told a number of anti-extremism professionals in recent weeks that Casey’s report will be dramatically rewritten and launched in a much lower-key way than had been planned.
Several of Casey’s criticisms directly concern the performance of the Home Office under Theresa May, who was home secretary for six years before becoming prime minister.
One person who has seen Edwards recently told The Sunday Times the official wanted Casey’s review to be “gutted”. Another said: “He told us the Home Office didn’t like it and was trying to find a way to water it down.” One source said Edwards believed the report focused too narrowly on Muslim extremism and integration.
A Home Office spokesman refused to deny the claims, saying only that the review would be published “in due course”.
Casey was appointed by May’s predecessor, David Cameron, in July 2015 to review “social integration,” “segregation”, and “how we can prevent extremism and hate”, among other issues. Before he lost office, Cameron was planning a prime ministerial launch for the review, and a series of actions in response, but this is now in doubt.
Casey was unavailable for comment, but people who have spoken to her about the issue in the past month say she is determined to publish her full findings, under government auspices or not. She told one person: “Don’t ask an old big beast to write something if you don’t want a big beast. Find yourself a puppet, find yourself a muppet if that’s what you want.”
The report is understood to be highly critical of the government’s failure to deal with the consequences of rapid immigration and the swift change in the make-up of many previously homogeneous communities.
In a speech in July, Casey said it was “not racist to say that the pace and rate of immigration has created a lot of change in Britain and for some people that feels too much . . . Not talking about this and the issues that arise from it only creates more tensions, rather than resolving them.”
The review is also believed to criticise ministers for lacking a serious integration strategy. Earlier this year, in previously unpublished remarks, Casey told The Sunday Times: “There’s a lot of stuff with steel drums and Britain’s biggest curry, everything that’s easy, while Rome burns in Bradford and there are [state] schools closing for Friday prayers.”
The review says that many state institutions have been “weak” in the face of extremism, have extended principles of tolerance for Islamist fundamentalists “too far” and to such an extent as to “gift” the far right. In her July speech Casey said the government needed to be “much bolder in not just celebrating our history, heritage and culture, but standing up for our democratically decided-upon laws of the land, and standing up to those that undermine them”.
She criticised some officials and politicians for “making excuses” and “looking at [their] shoes and hoping it will go away” in the face of extremist and separatist pressure in institutions such as schools and universities.
The review is also expected to criticise ministers for not doing more to defend Prevent, the embattled anti-extremism initiative that aims to tackle the radicalisation of young people. The Home Office is slated for failing to communicate the programme properly, not rebutting lies told about it by extremists and allowing groups such as Cage, which defended the Isis killer known as Jihadi John, to fill the vacuum with false claims that Prevent is an exercise in criminalisation and “spying” against Muslims. Prevent is described as underresourced and a cottage industry with variable standards.
One of those who spoke to Edwards said: “One half of their thinking is, kill anything that came from Cameron. The other half is just weakness. He was very specific about the fact that [the Casey review] needs to be much broader and deal more with other forms of extremism.”
Islamist sympathisers often claim the far right is as big a problem in Britain as Islamist extremism. But the report is believed to reject this; for the past 15 years nearly all terror plots in Britain, outside Northern Ireland, have involved Islamists. The only hate murders of British Muslims in the past three years were committed by other Muslims.
Casey, previously the troubled families tsar, has a long record of outspokenness on social issues. Last year, in an official report following the sexual abuse of 1,400 children in Rotherham, she lambasted the local council for its “resolute denial” and “deep-rooted” culture of cover-ups. The authority was taken over by government commissioners and the council leader resigned.
May’s position on the Casey review, and the broader issue, is not clear. Edwards was previously an adviser of hers and is described by some anti-extremism sources as her “eyes and ears” in the Home Office.
However, the review was jointly commissioned by May and Cameron, and last year she launched her own anti-extremism strategy, including investigations into sharia and the possible infiltration of public institutions by Islamists.
Anti-extremism sources said senior Downing Street officials were supportive of Casey’s work. The Home Office said: “Louise Casey was commissioned in 2015 to review what more we can do to create more cohesive communities in England. The report will be published in due course.”