Secret paper reveals Labour's lies over ID cards

By JASON LEWIS

Last updated at 21:45pm on 7th April 2007

The Government faces damaging claims of misleading voters over ID cards after documents revealed it always planned to make the controversial scheme compulsory.

Whitehall papers, which the Government has fought for two years to suppress, disclose that Labour intended to force the public to sign up to the programme.

They appear to contradict commitments given by Labour in its 2005 Election manifesto, which pledged that the cards, and the national identity register containing people's names, addresses, fingerprints and other information, would be 'on a voluntary basis'.

The briefing notes, released under the Freedom Of Information Act, show that civil servants had already been told ID cards would be compulsory for everyone by 2014.

Opposition MPs said the papers proved the Government had 'purposely set out to mislead the public and politicians about their plans'.

The Department For Work And Pension's (DWP) 'ID Fraud Benefit Profile' was produced in October 2004 and was designed to show how the project would cut benefit fraud.

In a table illustrating the predicted yearly savings expected by the department it states that from 2014 - Year 7 of the project - 'The identity card scheme is now compulsory'.

But 18 months later, the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke insisted the scheme was voluntary. He told MPs: "In accordance with the Labour party's Election manifesto...we will introduce ID cards...initially on a voluntary basis."

The papers also undermine claims by Ministers that the scheme would halve the £50million lost to benefit cheats. The internal briefing reveals that the much-quoted savings were purely guesswork by officials.

It says: "NOTE: DWP perceive losses to identity fraud to be between £25-£50million per annum, due to the nature of our business processes and recording of monetary value of fraud and error the figures are unreliable therefore DWP can only sign up to a maximum saving in the area of £25million per annum."

The first ID cards are due to be issued in 2009 to anybody who applies for a passport. Britons will be required to give fingerprints, biometric details such as a facial scan and a wealth of personal details - including second homes, driving licence and insurance numbers.

While the ID Cards Bill was going through Parliament, peers and Ministers agreed an 'opt-out' for people who needed a passport but did not want to join the ID cards scheme. But to get a passport, ID card objectors will now still have to hand over all personal details to the ID cards register.

Former Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten, who successfully fought to get the internal documents published, said: "They show Ministers had no basis to claim the cards would combat benefit fraud, that from the very beginning the cards were going to be compulsory and that Ministers were consistently not telling the truth about their true intentions."

The DWP said the details in the papers 'are no longer valid'.

A Home Office spokesman said the documents were 'incredibly out of date'.

'Anti-Semitism is blamed for furore over Lord Levy'

Commit crimes. Yell 'anti-semitism'. Get away with it. Works for Israel.
---
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
Published: 10 March 2007

As the man at the centre of the most high-profile political scandal for years, Lord Levy has enjoyed precious few public expressions of support in recent weeks.

But yesterday the peer found comfort in the form of his many allies in London's Jewish community as a succession of voices claimed that a witchhunt against him was being fuelled partly by anti-Semitism.

Sir Alan Sugar, the Amstrad tycoon and hard-hitting star of the reality television series The Apprentice, said he feared that Lord Levy would be made a "scapegoat" in the police investigation into the cash-for-honours affair.

The famously outspoken businessman claimed that some attacks were being made in newspapers with a record of being "negative" about Jews and Asians. "I think they rub it in when either the Asian or the Jewish community get themselves into some form of trouble," he said.

Lord Levy's rabbi, Yitzchak Schochet, writing in The Jewish Chronicle, denounced "the blatant nastiness in some of the tabloids and the recent seeming trial by media". Rabbi Schochet, of Mill Hill synagogue in north-west London, where the embattled peer is a congregant, earlier accused "sinister corners" for the leaks, and claimed: "The Jewish community is becoming increasingly more sensitive that there is one Jew, who has been called the most dynamic Jew in Anglo-Jewry, seemingly being hung out to dry here."

The Jewish community in north London, where Lord Levy lives and has raised millions of pounds for charity, has praised him in the Chronicle for the work he has done for good causes in their community. Louise Ellman, a Labour MP and member of the all-party Parliamentary group on anti-Semitism, said he had "attracted tremendous jealousy". Asked whether anti-Semitism was behind the smears, she said: "I don't think it is possible to be certain about it, but the whole matter does create a great deal of uneasiness."

Sir Alan, a friend of Lord Levy, mounted an attack on Tony Blair on BBC Radio for failing to do more to protect the fundraiser from damaging leaks which reached fever pitch this week over his arrest on suspicion of perverting the course of justice in the cash-for-honours affair.

Downing Street denied being behind leaks that Lord Levy "bullied" Ruth Turner, the Prime Minister's "gatekeeper" to change her version of events about the nomination of Labour donors for peerages. But some observers said the impression was left that Lord Levy was being made the fall guy.

Sir Alan said Lord Levy had a "blind devotion to Tony Blair who claims to be his friend; looking at the newspaper reports and television reports now, with friends like him, you don't need any enemies.

"I have a lot of respect for Blair. I think he is a decent man. But he will go down in my estimation if he allows this nonsense to continue in respect to Levy. Levy has raised a lot of money for his party and assisted him to get elected. It looks like he's the scapegoat, particularly this last week with allegedly some woman he's been allegedly bullying."

Sir Alan said he hoped the police "don't come up with some trumped-up charge to make it look like they are doing their job".

He added: "When you think about it, what's in it for Levy? This is not a man who has lined his pockets. This is a man who got blind devotion to Tony Blair and blagged people for money for the Labour Party; that to me is his worst crime."

Lord Levy is still officially the Prime Minister's envoy to the Middle East, for which he is not paid. He has been arrested twice in connection with Scotland Yard's high-profile inquiry, the second time on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He has been at the centre of a series of allegations about the affair this week, but he has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Politics Lite: No Sacrifice, No Substance, No Success: RORY STEWART

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
GUEST COLUMNIST

Politics Lite: No Sacrifice, No Substance, No Success

By RORY STEWART

Published: March 10, 2007

It is patronizing to assume that voters can’t handle demanding, imaginative and risky policies.

The accepted wisdom in British political circles is that Tony Blair won three elections by giving the British voters charisma and energy unfettered by dull or controversial policies. The Tories have now taken the lesson to heart. They are fighting back with feel-good, idea-light campaigns of their own, and it seems to be working. They are now significantly ahead in the polls.

This is not just electoral strategy. Many of them believe that we live in a postideological age, that there are no great questions anymore and that there can be no new solutions for domestic poverty or problems with immigration, energy or the economy.

But why do people stand as politicians if they have no policies? Many politicians claim privately that they are simply concealing their policies until they are elected. It is more likely that when the winds of office change in their favor, they will find their faces frozen into an expression of affable inaction. The role of a modern politician is apparently to be likable, to tinker with existing institutions and to manage occasional crises.

Churchill has been replaced by Bertie Wooster.

In Iraq, hundreds of thousands have died over the last few years and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent by the U.S.-led coalition. The international system is fractured; the Islamic world is angry.

--MORE

UK: Labour's chief fundraiser Lord Levy arrested

Honours police arrest Lord Levy

Labour's chief fundraiser Lord Levy has been arrested by police investigating cash-for-honours allegations.

He was held on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice when he returned to answer police bail, following his arrest last year.

Lord Levy, a close ally of Tony Blair, was bailed pending further enquiries.

Police are investigating whether money was donated to political parties in exchange for peerages - all those involved deny any wrongdoing.

The Metropolitan Police team investigating the allegations have so far spoken to about 90 people including Tony Blair and former Conservative leader Michael Howard.

Four people have been arrested - Lord Levy, Downing Street adviser Ruth Turner, Labour donor Sir Christopher Evans and head teacher Des Smith, who was involved in the government's City Academy programme. No one has been charged.

Lord Levy was first arrested last July, in connection with alleged offences under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 and Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

Nearly two weeks ago Downing Street political adviser Ruth Turner was also arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. She has denied any wrongdoing and has the backing of Mr Blair.

The inquiry began after it emerged that a number of large secret loans had been made to the Labour Party before the 2005 general election, and that some of those lenders had subsequently been nominated for peerages.

The investigation has since widened to cover the other main parties.

Scotland Yard is due to hand over a file on the case in January to the Crown

Iraq: 'Sick or injured children, who could be easily treated, are left to die in hundreds'

Related
Leading article: Haunted by Iraq
---
The Letter
Published: 19 January 2007

"We are concerned that children are dying in Iraq for want of medical treatment. Iraq, instead of being a country at the top of the league for medicine, as it once was, now has conditions and mortality of a Third World country.

Sick or injured children, who could otherwise be treated by simple means, are left to die in their hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources. Children who have lost hands, feet, and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated.

We understand that the UK may withdraw its forces from Iraq in 2007. Before this happens, we call on the UK Government not to walk away from this problem, but to fulfil its obligations that it entered into under Security Council Resolution 1483 during the period 22 May 2003 to 28 June 2004.

This Resolution recognised the UK and US as being occupying powers in Iraq but also stated that they had to comply with the Geneva and Hague Conventions. These Conventions specifically require the occupying powers to maintain order and to look after the medical needs of the population. This they failed to do, and the knock-on effect of this failure is affecting Iraqi children's hospitals with increasing ferocity. We also ask the UK, as one of the Occupying Powers designated by Resolution 1483 as Trustees of "The Development Fund For Iraq," to properly account for these assets estimated at $23bn in May 2003. It is asserted that by June 2004 some $14bn vanished in corruption, theft and payment to mercenaries.

We ask that all the revenues from Iraq's oil now pass directly to the Iraqi people, and that illegal contracts entered into by the Coalition Provisional Authority are revoked.

Only in this way can the Iraqi people rebuild their country with its infrastructure, administration, and hospitals."

Submitted by: Dr Chris Burns-Cox MD FRCP Consultant Physician, Gloucester Dr Heba Al-Naseri MB BS BSc Dr K Alston FFARCSI Associate Specialist in Anaesthetics at Torbay Hospital Ghada Karmi MB ChB MRCP PhD MFPHM RCP former Consultant in Public Health Medicine, North Thanes Regional Health Authority Dr Brian Robinson MA MB BCh BAO (TCD) DPM (Engl) Dipl Clin Hypnosis (UCL) Martin Birnstingl MS FRCS Retired Senior Surgeon, St Bartholomew's Hospital Dr Fiona Godlee Editor-in-chief BMJ Dr Ihab M Emran MSc MD Consultant (Locum) Spinal Surgeon, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital Dr Derek Summerfield BSc (Hons) MBBS MRCPsych. Hon Sen Lect, Inst of Psychiatry, Univ of London; Teaching Associate, Refugee Studies Centre, Univ of Oxford Dr. Maggie Wright BSc (hons) Pharmacology MB ChB FRCA Director of Intensive Care Unit, James Paget University Hospital Foundation Trust Lt Col G Vautier RAMC (ret) BM FRCP Consultant Gastroenterologist James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Richard LM Newell BSc FRCS Retired Consultant Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr S.Sadullah FRCP FRCPath Consultant Haematologist James Paget University Hospital, Great Yarmouth Dr Stephen J Wilson MB ChB FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist Honorary Senior Lecturer Dr Tim Paine FRCGP MRCP General Practitioner (retd) Bristol Dr Christopher Richards MB ChB MRCGP DCH Retired General Practitioner and Psychotherapist Bristol Dr Nicholas Mayne MD FRCP Consultant Physician Cheltenham Prof Allyson Pollock Director, Institute for International Health Policy, University of Edinburgh Prof Debbie Lawlor Professor of Epidemiology University of Bristol Dr Eric Brunner PhD FFPH Reader in Epidemiology and Public Health University College London Prof George Davey Smith Professor of Clinical Epidemiology University of Bristol Dr Philip Wilson DPhil MRCP MRCPCH FRCGP General Practitioner and Senior Clinical Research Fellow University of Glasgow Dr John Macleod Senior Lecturer in Primary Care University of Birmingham Prof Trish Greenhalgh OBE MD FRCP FRCGP Professor of Primary Health Care Dr Ian Roberts Professor of Public Health London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Dr Nick Maurice OBE GP (retd) Director UKOWLA Dr Jane Ferrie Senior Research Fellow Dept. Epidemiology and Public Health University College London Prof Martin McKee CBE MD DSc FRCP Professor of European Public Health London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine David Gunnell Professor of Epidemiology University of Bristol Dr Ros Kennedy GP Principal MB BS MRCP MRCGP Dr Sam Richmond MB BS FRCP FRCPCH Consultant Paediatrician and Neonatologist Sunderland Royal Hospital Mr Daniel B Byles FRCOpth Consultant Opthalmologist Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital Dr Megan Byles MB ChB MRCGP General Practioner Ottery St Mary Devon Dr S.Dixon MB ChB MRCGP Appley Somerset Dr L.Ibbs MRCGP MRCP General Practitioner Islip Medical Practice Mr S F Brewster FRCS (urology) Consultant Urologist Churchill Hospital Oxford Mr N Burns-Cox FRCS (urology) Musgrove Park Hospital Taunton Dr Iona Heath CBE FRCGP MRCP Caversham Group Practice Dr David Nicholl FRCP PhD Consultant Neurologist City Hospital Birmingham C.M.Davidson MB MCh FRCS FRCSEd FRFPSG Retired Senior Consultant Surgeon Prof Alun Evans Department of Epidemiology and Public Health Belfast David Halpin MB BS FRCS Consultant Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgeon (retd) Dr Ros Kennedy GP Principal MB BS MRCP MRCGP Robert Shearer MB BS FRCS Consultant Urological Surgeon (retd) Dr David Batty Research Fellow University of Glasgow Dr S Shakti MB BS MRCPH Paediatric SPR Mr Dawlatly MB BS MRCOG Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology Dr Jack Piachaud FRCPsych Felicity de Zulueta BSc MA (Cantab) MBChB FRCPsych Consultant Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital Dr Anita Sharma MB BS BSc Dr Salma Al-Ramadhani MBBS Dr John Ho MB BS MRCPH Paediatric consultant Bob Fryatt MD MRCP FFPHM Strategy Adviser World Health Organisation Geneva Dr Dhanusha Maheshwaren MB BS MSc Dr Deeksha Kashyap MB BS BSc Lord Nicholas Rea MD FRCP General Practitioner (retd) Sir A W Macara FRCP FRCGP DSc Timothy Southwood BDS MB BS MRCGP Nailsea Family Practice Dr Equi Ajogbe MB BS BSc Dr Shalini Kawar MB BS BSc Dr David Tovey FRCGP Editorial Director BMJ Knowledge BMJ Publishing Group Ltd Dr Vidya Thakur MB BS MRCOG Mr Kalshaker MB BS MRCOG Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology Dr John Adey MB ChB MA Dr Salim Ali MB BS BSc Mrs Hussain MB BS MRCOG Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology Dr S Felenstein MB BS Dr Peter Kandela MRCGP PhD General Practitioner Mr Kamal Salman Alubaid MB ChB FRCS Edin Mr John Fixsen MA MChir FRCS Orthopaedic Surgeon to the Great Ormond St Hospital for Children (retd) Dr Rashmi Madhu MB BS Dr Michael Cripwell General Practitioner Dr Gemma Petts MB BS BSc Dr Radika Acharya MB BS Dr Karen Sennett General Practitioner Dr Margaret Tatham General Practitioner Dr G Battle General Practitioner Dr Susan Hunt General Practitioner Dr David Davidson General Practitioner (ret) Dr Michael Sills General Practitioner Namir Kafil-Hussain FRCS Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon (with special interest in paediatrics) Ashford & St. Peter's Hospital, Surrey Dr Beatrice Boctor MB BCh MRCPsych Dr Gohar Khan, Dr Mehnaz Khan MB BS BSc Dr Tariq AlTawil MB BS BSc Dr. Nagin Antoun MB BCh FRCP FRCR Consultant Neuroradiologist Addenbrookes Hospital Dr Peter Hall MB BS MRCPI DGM Dr Syed Raza MB BS Dr K Jain MB BS Dr M Somajundram MB BS BSc Dr Antony Davies MD PhD Professor of Physiology (retd) Margaret L Stewart MB ChB BSc BD retired doctor and Church of Scotland minister D.C. Jameson Evans MB BS FRCS Dr Judith Cook MB BChir DTM&H General Practitioner Dr Runa Mackay MD FRCPE Dr Dominic Scarr MB ChB Dr Shirley Brierley MB ChB MRCGP MPH Specialist Registrar in Public Health Yorkshire & Humber Public Health Training Scheme

No 10 'in panic' as Yard extends 'cash for honours' inquiry

By Marie Woolf, Political Editor

Published: 24 December 2006

The UK's elections watchdog is to decide whether Labour has broken the law over cash for honours, and will advise police on whether a case should go to court.

The Electoral Commission will play a crucial role in the Scotland Yard inquiry and advise if there is enough evidence to prosecute Labour. Any file would then be presented to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Amid panic in Downing Street, police are understood to have widened their inquiry and to be examining several aspects of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (PPERA) which the party is believed to have flouted. Sources close to the inquiry believe the case for a prosecution is getting stronger.

The Independent on Sunday has learnt that police are "taking very seriously" evidence that several parts of the Act may have been breached. Scotland Yard is specifically looking at whether, if loans were made on non-commercial terms, Labour failed to disclose the "benefit", besides other possible breaches.

The Electoral Commission has already met the police on several occasions to advise on the law over loans and donations to political parties. The commission is expected to be given the complete file of secret police evidence in late January and asked whether it thinks the case is strong enough to prosecute.

Experts say the allegation that honours were promised in return for cash is bolstered by Labour's apparent attempts to cover up the receipt of loans from millionaire donors who were proposed for honours by Tony Blair.

Labour failed to disclose the loans in its 2004 accounts, and kept its ruling body, the National Executive Committee, in the dark about them. The party's treasurer, Jack Dromey, and most of the Cabinet were also not informed in what is being seen as evidence of a deliberate attempt to keep the loans quiet. Sir Gulam Noon, who was proposed for a peerage by Mr Blair, was also told by Lord Levy to remove a reference to the loan in his nomination form to the House of Lords because it did not technically have to be included.

As leader of the Labour Party, Mr Blair could be culpable under the law, along with Matt Carter, the former general secretary and registered treasurer of the party. Penalties under the Act include prison terms of up to a year. Mr Blair's police interview focused on his decision to nominate four millionaire donors to the Labour Party for honours. The police wanted to know why he thought the millionaires, who also lent money to Labour, were suitable for positions in the Lords.

Under the 1925 Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act, the police are investigating allegations that millionaire Labour donors and lenders received peerages in return for huge donations and loans to the Labour Party in the months before.

Labour has begun to pay back the loans and last week repaid several hundred thousand pounds to Sir Christopher Evans, the biotechnology millionaire who lent Labour £1m and was subsequently arrested in the cash-for-honours affair. The repayment, the first in a number of instalments, included interest accumulated at 2 per cent above the Bank of England base rate.

Downing Street officials including Ruth Turner, John McTernan, director of political operations, and Jonathan Powell, Mr Blair's chief of staff, are expected to be reinterviewed by the police about gaps in evidence.

The police are considering whether the loans were given on commercial terms. If not, Labour should have publicly disclosed the "benefit" of receiving loans on favourable financial terms. Other political parties, including the Liberal Democrats, have disclosed the financial benefits of receiving loans on favourable terms.

New Labour's War on the Kurds

[Tuesday 21-11-2006]
By STUART CROSWAITHE Early morning on September 5th security guards burst into the sleeping quarters of Colnbrook detention centre in west London. The guards had come to take thirty two Iraqi Kurdish men away.

Barefoot, handcuffed, with the guards swearing at them, the thirty two were taken to RAF Brize Norton. Their threatened forced deportation to Arbil in northern Iraq was imminent. In response, one man slit his throat and up to fourteen others took overdoses or cut themselves in a desperate attempt to avoid "removal". One eye witness described the scene at the holding area at the airport as "carnage with blood on the walls".(1) The Kurds knew the danger of returning to Iraq. They had fled the country years before because of that danger. The UK Home Office is alone in their view that northern Iraq is safe for Kurds to be forced back to. Amnesty International, the Refugee Council, and even the UK Foreign Office all stress the lethal danger to those entering northern Iraq. (2) But if northern Iraq, like the rest of the country, isn't safe; if Saddam's weapons of mass destruction never existed, then why was the war on Iraq waged? In a speech entitled "A War Not of Conquest But of Liberation", delivered in March 2003, Prime Minister Blair laid out Labour's reasons for its planned war on Iraq. "Our objective is to protect the people in the Kurdish autonomous zone" and, he added, "to secure the northern oilfields" (of northern Iraq/Kurdistan) (3). The latter was certainly true. This article aims to show that the first stated objective - protecting the Kurds - was a calculated lie. That Britain has in fact waged war on the Kurds over eighty years; that this war has followed the Kurds from their homeland to the streets and detention centres of this country. The Kurds are the biggest stateless ethnic group in the world. (4) This fact is not unconnected to their repeated abuse and manipulation by the imperial powers and their proxies. Britain's record is particularly shameful. Winston Churchill set the standard in 1919 when he told the War Office (referring to the Kurds and Afghans): "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes". (5) Six years later the RAF did just that against the Kurdish town of Sulaymaniya. In 1988 Saddam Hussein took Churchill's advice and killed five thousand Kurds at Halabja using poison gas supplied with the knowledge of the West. After the first Gulf War in 1991, the UK joined the US in encouraging a Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein. After one month, Kurdish fighters and civilians were fleeing Saddam's (western-supplied) tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships. Thousands of peshmerga (militia fighters) and civilians were killed, hoping for a western military intervention that never came. Over one and a half million people were made refugees. Most Kurdish refugees tried to escape to Iran or Turkey. Over one thousand people died each day as they crowded at the borders, abandoned by their self-appointed "protectors" in the West.(6). In the following decade, many abandoned their lives in Iraq in an attempt to reach the apparent safety of Europe. No surprise then, that the UK's Iraqi Kurdish population rose from a few thousand in the early 1990's to over 30,000 in 2006. (7) They were trying to escape from an Iraqi state that terrorised them because they were Kurdish; from a civil war between the two main Kurdish political parties during the 1990's; from ethnic tensions deliberately fostered by the Iraqi state and, particularly for Kurdish communists, from repression by Islamic groups. It wasn't the opportunity to claim UK state benefits that brought them to this country. As one Iraqi Kurdish man explained at a public meeting in Sheffield in September 2005: "I am a solicitor in Iraq, Kurdistan is a rich country. I didn't come here for a £35 a week food voucher." Nor did Kurdish engineers and scientists arrive with the hope of serving kebabs or working in a car wash. It was the chance to live safely, to find asylum in the UK - the country that had claimed to protect them. Most hoped to return soon to northern Iraq, to their families, to their oil-rich and culturally rich homeland. But northern Iraq, like the rest of the country was, of course, never made safe by the West's war and occupation. These refugees were to find that the cynical manipulation that led to them fleeing their homes in Iraq was echoed by their treatment in the UK. "Protecting the Kurds": Forced Deportation #1 The UK Government is alone in western Europe in carrying out mass forced deportations of Iraqi Kurds. Their first attempt was in November 2005. On that occasion, successful legal challenges limited the number to twenty from an original intention to deport seventy. (8) Then Home Secretary Charles Clarke was forced to admit to a "regrettable mistake" when one man was deported in error after he had been denied access to legal representation. (9) This case prompted High Court Judge Justice Collins to criticise Government policy: "Frankly, the court has got a little fed up with how the Home Office is putting these removals into practice. It is not good enough." (10) "Protecting the Kurds": Forced Deportation #2 Judge Justice Collins would have, doubtless, been rather peeved with Home Secretary John Reid's handling of the second forced deportation in September 2006. In an unprecedented move, Reid warned the duty High Court Judge that the Home Office would ignore any last-minute applications for a judicial review of individual cases which would defer or prevent deportation.(11) Despite the huge difficulties facing potential deportees in obtaining injunctions to stop their deportation, six of them applied for an injunction, with the support of the Refugee Legal Centre. Of the six applications, five injunctions were granted, halting their immediate deportation. The National Audit Office estimates the cost of each deportation at £11,000. The Home Office was determined to get its money's worth, despite legal niceties. Their response to the successful injunctions was simple: select another five from the pool of around seventy who they had captured and served deportation notices on during previous weeks. This gruesome version of an airline "stand-by" system adds weight to the claim that the Home Office has scant regard for an individual's circumstances in its pursuit of quota-fulfilment. The forced deportation of September 5th 2006 is significant not just because of its calculated brutality and its attack on the legal rights of detained asylum seekers. It marks a shift in the tactics of the Home Office towards Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers in the UK. "Protecting the Kurds": Blackmail In February 2004 the UK Home Office announced its intention to deport "thousands" of Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers. The deportations were to begin in April that year at a rate of thirty per week. Even the Home Office could not claim that Iraq was safe to return to - or that there was a safe route of return - until August 2005. (12) Until then their policy was to encourage voluntary return to northern Iraq, organised by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). There were few takers amongst Iraqi Kurds in the UK. From August 2005 letters were sent to all traceable Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers in the UK. The Home Office used these letters to claim that there was now a "safe route of return" to northern Iraq. Casual observers, not directly affected by events in northern Iraq, could have been forgiven for accepting this claim made by the UK Government. However, for Iraqi Kurds threatened with forced "removal" the claim that there was "a safe route of return" was an incredible one. It was not lost on them that the "safe route" included Highway 10 from Jordan to Iraq, a road so hazardous that the occupying US and UK military forces hesitated to use it. Arbil airport in northern Iraq was to be the destination for direct flights carrying those returning to Iraq. In 2005 neither UK nor US military aircraft were prepared to land there, such was the danger. These Home Office letters stipulated a new condition for the receipt of "Section 4" support. Named after a section of the 1999 Asylum and Nationality Act, Section 4 support consists of a £35 per week food voucher and rent paid on accommodation provided through the National Asylum Support Service (NASS). (13) The ultimatum from the Home Office stated that unless Section 4 recipients agreed "voluntarily" to return to "safe" Iraq they would "be required to leave your accommodation and will not be entitled to any other form of support". (14) This blackmail sparked nationwide protest from refugee support organisations and from Iraqi Kurds themselves. One man, Naseh Ghafor in Sheffield, sewed his lips up and refused food for over forty days stating, "I would rather die here than go back and get killed in my own country" (15). "Protecting the Kurds": Kidnapping Those Kurds who agreed to return voluntarily to Iraq lost any legal right to contest their deportation. They also became immediately traceable to the authorities through the practice of monthly signing at reporting centres. Such centres are usually at local police stations. From late 2005 it became increasingly common for those entering reporting stations never to leave them: except in an Immigration Service van on the way to a detention centre. This practice, had it occurred in Iraq, would have been labelled "kidnapping" by the UK Government. One of the men deported in November 2005, Karwan, was kidnapped in this way when he reported to Dallas Court in Bolton for a Home Office "interview". "Protecting the Kurds": Creating Destitution Many Kurds refused to sign the Home Office letter which bound them to return to northern Iraq. Destitution became widespread. In Leeds around 250 Iraqi Kurds lost their homes and all state support between September-December 2005. In Sheffield, about 200 Kurds were forced onto the street with nothing.(16) These "failed" asylum seekers do not have the right to work legally, leading to a boom for employers wanting a desperate workforce prepared to work for a pittance. From summer 2006 there has also been an increase in the scale of Immigration Service raids on those forced to work illegally. (17) All routes, except that of returning to lethal danger in Iraq, are being closed. "Protecting the Kurds": Bribery "The Kurd has the mind of a schoolboy...He requires a beating one day and a sugar plum the next." So wrote Major WR Hay, a political officer in the British army, stationed in Arbil, northern Iraq in 1919. (18) Eighty six years later, the UK Government supplemented the beatings of deportation, kidnapping and destitution with a £500 sugar plum. The Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP) was extended from June to December 2006. Operated by the IOM, the scheme offered voluntary returnees to Iraq a £500 cash "relocation" grant and a further £2500 conditional on strict "reintegration" criteria.(19) Immigration and Nationality Directorate figures show that only 1,020 Iraqi Kurds in the UK took up this offer in the whole period from June 2004 - December 2005. (20) The latest forced deportation of September 2006 is surely aimed (along with the weapon of destitution) at increasing the number of "voluntary" returns. I met Kawa (not his real name), a local Kurdish man, in the Sheffield restaurant where he worked illegally, and asked him why he planned to return to Iraq with VARRP. Kawa was working twelve hour shifts for £1.50 an hour and sleeping on friend's floors at night. He explained: "If I go back I might die, but here I die every day." He also recounted the story of a man who had previously returned to Iraq with VARRP. After the plane landed at Arbil airport this man was robbed of his £500 (in $US) by a taxi driver. He knew other men who had stepped off the plane at Arbil and were immediately taken into detention by the security forces of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). (21) "Protecting the Kurds": Corruption and Collaboration The establishment of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), was cited by the UK Government as a vindication of their war on - and occupation of - Iraq. However, the human rights abuses and corruption of the KRG have been well documented.(22) Ahmed (not his real name), from Sheffield's Kurdish community, described the KRG: "That dictatorship - it's worse than Saddam Hussein's." Why, he asked, did the leadership of the KDP need to travel around Kurdistan in 200-car convoys for its own protection? (23) The two main Kurdish parties, the KDP and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have long collaborated with Western governments (and with Saddam Hussein at times) in their desperate attempts to achieve Kurdish statehood, or any form of regional or national autonomy. Since 2005 there have been regular meetings between senior civil servants representing the UK Home Office, Iraqi Embassy officials, representatives from Iraqi Kurdish community organisations and KRG officials, including members of the KDP and PUK. Publicly both KDP and PUK have opposed forced deportations of Iraqi Kurds from the UK to Iraq. (24) However, at a meeting in March 2006, KDP representatives urged the UK Home Office to continue and to increase deportations of Iraqi Kurds from the UK. Iraqi Embassy officials at the meeting supported this position. (25) In northern Iraq young Kurds are fleeing KRG persecution, corruption and poverty at a rate of 2000 per week. (26) This leaves the area short of labour and potential recruits to the armed and security forces of the KRG and its main constituent parts - KDP and PUK. The return of political opponents, through forced deportation, from the UK to northern Iraq also gives the KDP and PUK the chance to settle political scores. These two parties, now in an uneasy governmental alliance, spent much of the 1990's embroiled in a civil war between themselves and against communist and Islamic Kurdish organisations. Sherzad Ahmed, an Iraqi Kurd demonstrating against the September deportation, told a reporter: "I don't understand how anyone could think I will be safe if I'm sent back." He explained that his wife had been murdered and his family targeted for their communist sympathies and opposition to the KDP and PUK.(27) The KDP has not condemned the September 5th forced deportation of thirty two Iraqi Kurds from the UK. With the cooperation of at least one of the two main Kurdish political parties, all the links in the chain of the deportation process have been fastened: an Iraqi Kurdish asylum seeker signs at a reporting centre each month to entitle him/her to Section 4 support. There they can be seized and held by police. Immigration officials can then take them to a detention centre. They are then served deportation notices en masse, denied access to legal support and taken (usually at night) to an airport. When the plane flies to northern Iraq, its destination is Arbil - controlled by the KDP. "Protecting the Kurds": Abandonment What happens to people after they get deported to northern Iraq? According to European Council for Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) guidelines "member states should implement an effective system for monitoring forced returns." (28) Questions to Home Secretary John Reid's office have yielded replies explaining that the UK Government has put no such monitoring system in place for northern Iraq (or indeed for anywhere else). Nor, it seems, does it have any plans to do so. Reports about those forcibly deported have come only from the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees and phone contact between individuals in the UK and their fellow Kurds back in northern Iraq. Recent reports suggest that the September 5th forced deportation was not the last: at least twenty two more Iraqi Kurds were seized through dawn raids and kidnapping at reporting centres in September. There were at least two workplace raids by immigration officials in Sheffield during October. Many of those held are now in detention centres. We can now expect beatings without sugar plums. The Tony Blair regime is in its final months. Home Secretary John Reid is positioning himself to continue Blair's work. The same Labour Government that launched a war in 2003 against Iraq to "protect the Kurds" has now declared another war: on Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers in this country. Stuart Crosthwaite can be reached at: stuartqqqq@yahoo.co.uk Notes: 1. The Sun Online, "32 Iraqis are booted out of UK", 7/9/06 2. Amnesty International, "Forcible return to Iraq would be unlawful". Refugee Council, "Forced removal of Iraqis expected to begin today". UK Foreign Office, "We advise against all but essential travel to the north of Iraq". 3. "A War Not of Conquest but of Liberation", 24/3/03 4. Kurdish statelessness makes exact figures impossible. A reasonable estimate seems to be 30 million. See D McDowall, "The Kurds: A Nation Denied". 5. War Office minute of 12/5/1919, quoted in Martin Gilbert, "Winston Churchill" companion Volume 4, Part 1. 6. Observer, 14/4/91. 7. Precise figures are not available: official figures do not recognise Kurds as a nationality. The quoted figures are arrived at through use of Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) statistics for asylum applications from Iraq along with estimates from the Refugee Council on the number of Kurds in the UK and the proportion of those Kurds who are from Iraq. See the Refugee Council's "Asylum by Numbers 1985-2000" and IND website. See also European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) report. ECRE gives numbers of Iraqis (not solely Iraqi Kurds) seeking asylum in the UK as increasing from "about 4,200 in 1989" to "over 41,200 in 2001".www.ecre.org/publications/gmfreport.pdf 8. Refugee Council, "Response to the Forced Removal of 15 Iraqis", 20/11/05 9. Daily Telegraph, "Clarke to bring back wrongly deported Kurd", 20/12/05 10. Independent Online, "Search for Kurdish refugee deported to Iraq by mistake", 20/12/05 11. Guardian Society Online, "Reid warns judges not to block Iraqi's deportation", 5/9/06 12. Refugee Council briefing, "Iraq-return and Section 4 support", December 2005 It was also difficult for the UK Government to carry out their policy because beforesummer 2005 Kurdish members of the interim Iraqi Government were vocal in their opposition to forced deportations from the UK to northern Iraq. 13. The NASS vouchers (set at two-thirds the rate of UK subsistence benefit levels) can only be used at certain supermarkets and no change is given. 14. Home Office letter, undated. Copy held by author. 15. Personal communication to author, July 2005 16. Leeds Today, "250 Iraqis forced on to the streets", 14/12/05 and estimates made by Sheffield Kurdish Community Centre. 17. See Committee to Stop Deportations to Iraq (CSDIraq), 18. FO 371/5068, "Note on Rawanduz", 26/12/1919. Quoted in D McDowall: "A Modern History of the Kurds". 19. European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), "Guidelines on the treatment of Iraqi asylum seekers and refugees in Europe", PP1/03/2006/EXT/SH, March 2006 20. IND figures quoted on CSDIraq website, 21. Personal communication to author, January 2006 Ominously, all returnees are required to sign a waiver stating, "I acknowledge that IOM has no responsibility for me or my dependents once I return to Iraqi territory and I hereby release IOM from any liability in this respect." See Refugee Council briefing, Iraq-return and Section 4 support, October 2005. 22. See, for example, Amnesty International's view quoted in The Guardian, "Home Office makes sure asylum flight is full", 6/9/06. Also, ECRE March 2006 report and CSDIraq website, 23. Personal communication to author, September 2006 24. For example, Kurdmedia, "Barzani slams Britain for returning Kurds to war-torn country", 20/8/05, www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=7534 25. Personal communication to author, March 2006. 26. CSDIraq website, 000043.html 27. Quoted in Independent Online, "Iraq: Deported refugees fearful of persecution on their return", 8/9/06. 28. ECRE guidelines, www.ecre.org/positions/returns.shtml#MONITOR Also, "All returns should be safe, dignified and sustainable", URL