Hostile Environment: Inside Britain’s Home Office
On asylum, the UK’s political class has failed everyone - again and again. This audio deep dive into the making of the modern Home Office finds out why
-Published by Tortoise
-August 2022
-Co-reported with Nicola Kelly
From the fall of Afghanistan to the invasion of Ukraine, in recent years the Home Office has been tested and found wanting. Too slow, too bureaucratic, too defensive, too hard-hearted.
But the Rwanda deportation policy – the determination to wash Britain’s hands of its international duties to people seeking refuge from conflict – has felt like a new low point, the culmination of years of hostile policies designed to magnify rather than solve problems.
We have told the stories of migrants many times at Tortoise, but at the back of them all stands the Home Office, a monument to intransigence.
This special Slow Newscast episode travels deep into the department’s past, and goes behind the scenes of its present, to find out why. How was the modern Home Office made – and what is its culture today?
You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player above, or via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform - just search for ‘Inside the Home Office’ in the ‘Slow Newscast’ feed. You can also hear it on the Tortoise website (registration required) by following the link here.
As part of the wider reporting for this story, a separate ‘Sensemaker’ podcast was also made telling the astonishing tale of Faiz Seddeqi, a young father who risked his life to defend the British embassy in Kabul against the Taliban. The way and he and his family were then treated by the UK government - both in Afghanistan and upon their arrival in England - reveals a great deal about what the country stands for, and whose lives its values.
“There were so many people there [at the Kabul airport perimeter], you know, huge crowds. It was very, very difficult to be able to get to the gates. And in the meanwhile, my little son at the time was about 45 days old. So you know, carrying a child that small, with the family in that big crowd, is of course difficult. But then they threw tear gas in the crowds to disperse them.”
Faiz Seddeqi, British embassy guard in Kabul, Afghanistan
Portrait by Tom Pilston
