Smash hit

When an FoI application was made to see their exchanges, ministers argued that the material was exempt from disclosure because policy advice given by officials to their political masters should remain confidential.

In official correspondence with the information commissioner, the Home Office said that “a Home Office minister” had ruled that the documents should not be released.

But in March this year, Thomas ruled: “The public interest in favour of maintaining the exemption does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure.

“The commissioner requires the (Home Office) to disclose the information which has been withheld . . . In failing to release information, the commissioner finds that the (Home Office) breached sections 1 and 10 (of the Freedom of Information Act.”

The government reluctantly conceded, placing the documents on an obscure part of the department’s website, apparently in the hope that nobody would notice.

Yesterday, the Tories said they would be demanding an urgent explanation of the documents from the government.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said: “This is shaping up to become one of the major political scandals of recent times. Ministers quite clearly broke the law and deliberately misled the public to cover up a policy which most reasonable people would say was utterly irresponsible.”

Whiff of a smoking gun

Why did new Labour secretly open Britain’s borders, while pretending to control the numbers under its so-called “managed migration” policy?

Two weeks ago Andrew Neather, a former speechwriter for Tony Blair, wrote an article saying Labour had allowed immigration to rocket in order to turn Britain “truly multicultural” and “to rub the right’s noses in diversity”.

The heart of his claim was that uncontrolled mass immigration had been a deliberate, covert policy to change the country’s demographics.

But Labour’s core vote, the white working class, were drawn to the BNP at the resulting pressure on jobs, homes and schools.

Alan Johnson, the home secretary, has said Labour was “maladroit” on the issue: the immigration door was left wide open because of “cock-up” not a “conspiracy”. But Neather’s account may be only half the story.

Chris Mullin, a former minister, recalled in his memoirs that ministers had “barely touched the rackets that surrounded arranged marriages . . . terrified of the huge cry of ‘racism’ that would go up

. . . There is the added difficulty that at least 20 Labour seats, including Jack (Straw’s), depend on Asian votes”.

With up to 80% of ethnic minorities voting Labour, it is obvious that the more immigrants who get the right to vote, the greater is Labour’s electoral share. Perhaps Mullin has stumbled on a smoking gun.

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