Former Prime Minister Theresa May has acknowledged errors in her “hostile environment” policies regarding illegal immigration.
May admitted that she did not anticipate the adverse effects these policies would have on legal immigrants, including members of the Windrush generation.
In a recent ITV documentary, she also condemned the 2013 Home Office-sponsored vans bearing the message “Go home or face arrest,” calling them “wrong.”
The MP for Maidenhead, who is set to retire from Parliament after the upcoming election, made these remarks during the documentary.
May’s immigration policies, implemented during her tenure as home secretary, were previously found by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to have caused “serious injustice” to Windrush immigrants. These individuals had arrived from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Commission reported that demands for missing documentation led to many of these immigrants facing threats of deportation.
In her interview with ITV, May accepted responsibility for the Home Office policies enacted while she was home secretary from 2010 to 2016.
Reflecting on the Windrush scandal, she stated: “Should we in the Home Office have had a greater sense of trying to identify whether there were other people, people who were going to get caught up in this way? I don’t believe that question was ever asked. And that’s what lay behind the problems.”
Regarding the controversial Home Office vans, she added: “It was wrong, and we stopped it. We realized after a short period that we needed to cease that campaign.”
The documentary also covers her time as Prime Minister from 2016 to 2019. May reiterated her regret over not meeting Grenfell Tower survivors sooner following the 2017 fire.
She also characterized former U.S. President Donald Trump as “unpredictable,” noting that such unpredictability posed significant challenges.
Gavin Barwell, May’s chief of staff, recounted to ITV a particularly disheartening conversation with Trump regarding the 2018 poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury. He recalled Trump’s initial reaction being, “well, why should I do anything?”
The documentary, titled “Theresa May: The Accidental Prime Minister,” is scheduled to air on June 5.