Theresa May’s Home Office has been branded “reckless” in its failure to counter racism over the Windrush Scandal, a leaked official report claims.
The ‘lessons learned’ review, leaked to Channel 4 News, focused on Mrs May’s ‘hostile environment’ strategy for dealing with illegal immigrants.
Mrs May was Home Secretary before being elected Prime Minister.
It said the Home Office had failed to monitor the impact and effectiveness of the policy.
The review, led by independent advisor Wendy Williams, added: “This appears particularly reckless considering the significant warnings that the Department was given about their potential consequences.”
The damning document accuses officials of recklessness and a reluctance to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes the Mirror reports.
Wendy Williams, HM inspector of constabulary, who led the review, said that there was a "defensive culture that results in an unwillingness to learn from past mistakes".
She wrote: "Whilst everyone I spoke to, was rightly appalled by what happened, this was often juxtaposed with a self-justification, either in the form of it was unforeseen, unforeseeable and therefore unavoidable... or a failure on the part of individuals to prove their status."
Williams was commissioned to undertake the “Windrush lessons learned” review by the home secretary, Sajid Javid, last summer.
Theresa May introduced a series of hostile environment policies, under which she sought to make life intolerable for people who had illegally entered the UK, in a bid to cut inward immigration numbers during her time as home secretary.
Thousands of people who had been living legally in the UK for decades suddenly found themselves wrongly classified as illegal immigrants.
Many lost their jobs, were made homeless or denied healthcare and some were detained and deported to countries they had left as children.
Draft extracts of Williams’ review suggest the implementation of May’s policies was flawed because “it failed to adequately consider the past ... It failed to adequately consider the impact on people ... It also failed to adequately mitigate equalities issues including the potential for discrimination, particularly in housing”.
She reportedly recommends that the department’s staff be educated in the UK’s colonial past and proposes that government ministers should admit that they were wrong and provide an unqualified apology.
The document reportedly adds that the Home Office failed to effectively evaluate the effectiveness of its policies. “This appears particularly reckless considering the significant warnings that the department was given about their potential consequences.”
Satbir Singh, the chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “This review confirms what we at JCWI have said from the beginning: Windrush was no accident, but the inevitable result of a broken immigration system, driven by the divisive politics of scapegoating and scaremongering.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We do not comment on leaked documents.”