Theresa May

Theresa May, 2016, while serving as Prime Minister.

Theresa Mary, Lady May (/təˈriːzə/;[1] née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served in David Cameron's cabinet as Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016, and has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidenhead in Berkshire since 1997. May was the UK's second female prime minister after Margaret Thatcher, and the first woman to hold two of the Great Offices of State. Ideologically, May identifies herself as a one-nation conservative.

May grew up in Oxfordshire and attended St Hugh's College, Oxford. After graduating in 1977, she worked at the Bank of England and the Association for Payment Clearing Services. She also served as a councillor for Durnsford in Merton. After two attempts to be elected to the House of Commons, she was elected as MP for Maidenhead at the 1997 general election. From 1999 to 2010, May held several roles in shadow cabinets. She was Chairman of the Conservative Party from 2002 to 2003.

Following formation of the coalition government after the 2010 general election, May was appointed Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities, giving up the latter role in 2012. Reappointed after the Conservative success in the 2015 general election, she became the longest-serving Home Secretary in over 60 years. During her tenure she pursued reform of the Police Federation, implemented a harder line on drugs policy including banning khat and brought in further restrictions on immigration. She oversaw introduction of elected police and crime commissioners, deportation of Abu Qatada and creation of the College of Policing and the National Crime Agency. May supported the unsuccessful Britain Stronger in Europe campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union.

Feminism

In 2005, May co-founded the mentoring and pressure group Women2Win. This group and May's personal efforts have been credited with increasing the number of Conservative women MPs and with supporting them. In government she lobbied for improvements to maternity leave, and as Home Secretary she acted on FGM and introduced a law on coercive control. However, she has been criticised for the financial cuts made by her government, which have been claimed to have had the greatest impact on poor and vulnerable women.

Same-sex Relationships

In 1998, May voted against lowering the age of consent for homosexual acts. May was also a supporter of Section 28, calling a failed repeal in 2000 to be "a victory for commonsense". She was absent for the vote when it was successfully repealed in 2003. She also voted against the Adoption and Children Act 2002 that allowed same-sex couples to adopt.

Beginning in 2012, however, May expressed support for the introduction of same-sex marriage by recording a video for the Out4Marriage campaign, in which she stated "I believe if two people care for each other, if they love each other, if they want to commit to each other... then they should be able to get married and marriage should be for everyone". In May 2013, May voted in favour of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, which legalised same-sex marriage in England and Wales. In 2017, May apologised for her past votes while taking credit for helping advance LGBT rights within her party.

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".

Windrush Scandal

The Windrush scandal was a British political scandal that began in 2018 concerning people who were wrongly detained, denied legal rights, threatened with deportation, and in at least 83 cases wrongly deported from the UK by the Home Office. Many of those affected had been born British subjects and had arrived in the UK before 1973, particularly from Caribbean countries, as members of the "Windrush generation" (so named after the Empire Windrush, the ship that brought one of the first groups of West Indian migrants to the UK in 1948).

As well as those who were deported, an unknown number were detained, lost their jobs or homes, had their passports confiscated, or were denied benefits or medical care to which they were entitled.[3] A number of long-term UK residents were refused re-entry to the UK; a larger number were threatened with immediate deportation by the Home Office. Linked by commentators to the "hostile environment policy" instituted by Theresa May during her time as Home Secretary, the scandal led to the resignation of Amber Rudd as Home Secretary in April 2018 and the appointment of Sajid Javid as her successor. The scandal also prompted a wider debate about British immigration policy and Home Office practice.

The March 2020 independent Windrush Lessons Learned Review, conducted by the inspector of constabulary Wendy Williams, concluded that the Home Office had shown "ignorance and thoughtlessness" and that what had happened had been "foreseeable and avoidable". It further found that immigration regulations were tightened "with complete disregard for the Windrush generation" and that officials had made "irrational" demands for multiple documents to establish residency rights.

Despite a compensation scheme being announced in December 2018, by November 2021, only an estimated 5 per cent of victims had received any compensation and 23 of those eligible had died before receiving payments. Three separate Parliamentary committees had issued reports during 2021 criticising Home Office slowness and ineffectiveness in providing redress to victims and calling for the scheme to be taken out of the hands of the Home Office.

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