Amber Augusta Rudd

Hostile Environment Policy

The UK Home Office hostile environment policy is a set of administrative and legislative measures designed to make staying in the United Kingdom as difficult as possible for people without leave to remain, in the hope that they may "voluntarily leave". The Home Office policy was first announced in 2012 under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. The policy was widely seen as being part of a strategy of reducing UK immigration figures to the levels promised in the 2010 Conservative Party Election Manifesto.

The policy has been cited as one of the harshest immigration policies in the history of the United Kingdom, and has been widely criticised as inhumane, ineffective, and unlawful. The United Nations Human Rights Council has stated that the policy has fostered xenophobia within the UK, while the Equality and Human Rights Commission has found that the policy broke equalities law.

It has notably led to significant issues with the Windrush generation and other Commonwealth citizens being deported after not being able to prove their right to remain in the UK, despite being guaranteed that right. The resulting Windrush scandal led to the resignation of Amber Rudd as Home Secretary, on 29 April 2018, and the appointment of Sajid Javid as her successor.

In 2012, Theresa May, who was the Conservative Home Secretary at the time, introduced the Hostile Environment Policy saying that: "The aim is to create, here in Britain, a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants". In May 2007, Liam Byrne, who was the Labour immigration minister at the time, had referred to a "hostile environment" in an announcement of a consultation document: "We are trying to create a much more hostile environment in this country if you are here illegally".

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