Can We Trust The Home Office?

The Home Office is central in all things, lording over some of the most hotly-discussed issues in everyday life – migration, borders, drugs, policing, and terrorism. Its vast armoury of laws and high-powered forces of order “keep citizens safe and the country secure”, in their own words.  

Despite that armoury, when Shabana Mahmood arrived as Home Secretary in 2025, she was compelled to state that her ministry was “not fit for purpose”. Chronic issues raised included distrust from other departments, poor collaboration, and a failure to use operational insights in policymaking. It is possible that Shabana Mahmood has instilled a collaborative and listening culture at the Home Office, but her public appearances would suggest not quite.

In her live comedy podcast appearance with Matt Forde, she swore at and (erroneously) dismissed a heckler as a “white liberal” before cynically victimising herself over her immigration policy changes. During a conversation with Tony Blair, she stated her passionate desire to construct an AI version of “what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his panopticon” for British society. 

On LBC, she stated that “there are no civil liberties, there’s no true liberty if you are unsafe in your own country” while justifying her decision to roll out AI facial recognition technology to police forces before the public consultation was completed. The technology is provided by Corsight AI, an Israeli intelligence firm allegedly working with the IDF in Gaza. 

She has said a lot of not very charming things, and her immigration policy is even less charming. Her policy changes have breached human rights considerations, including the 1951 Refugee Convention, and have thus far only reduced legal migration or those exercising their right to seek asylum in the UK. That includes care worker staff, who do difficult and stressful care jobs, often on a knife edge household budget. 

Instead, the changes have made no measurable effect on reducing the number of unauthorised migrants in the UK, because federated AI facial recognition technology or not, that change cannot be accurately measured. One could delude themselves via a residual guess, or one could recognise that unauthorised entries will simply adapt and drop the King Cnut act.   

Yet there is no sign of any such insight; perhaps because of ministry group think. Those civil servants in charge of operating the Home Office have churned since the days of “rebellion” against the Tory government, perhaps replaced by operators who are happier to toe the line. Instead, the pattern of making aggressive decisions with little evidence of consultation appears across the Home Office portfolio.

The 2026 National Security (State Threats) Bill currently being rushed through parliament in the aftermath of the Golders Green attack is a case in point. Both David Anderson and Jonathan Hall KC, independent reviewers of terrorist legislation, have raised concerns alongside civil society voices of poor development of safeguards within the bill to prevent scope creep. Their recommendations were ignored by the ministry. 

Jonathan Hall himself is seen as controversial, after the Canary was able to connect him to UK Lawyers for Israel. They further suggested that he is uninterested in surging far right violence, which allows him to maintain a focus on promoting violent Islamism as the real problem, conflating pro-Palestine marches and strawman Palestine motives for terrorism as a way to justify cumulative impact additions to Public Order legislation.

This came in the wake of an uncertain proscription on Palestine Action, whereby the cautious analysis by both the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, and the Proscription Review Group seems to have been overruled by a number of monied vested interests. That said, the agency housing the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has repeatedly lied to the courts, breached the human rights of journalists in Northern Ireland, and according to the Pat Finucane Centre, permitted covert agent impunity and engaged in “extraordinary rendition”.

Shabana Mahmood responded that she would increase her oversight of that agency, but that is not a glowing indictment. In fact, the Intelligence and Security Committee, actually tasked with oversight, wrote in their 2025 report that it was unable to “fulfil” its statutory functions. Similarly, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office wrote in their 2024 report that financial pressures and constraints would lead to “efficiency measures”. 

If this is anything to go by, there is no question of why shouldn’t we trust the Home Office – rather why should we? Evidence of eschewing oversight, processes, and human rights laws across departments and agencies in the name of a nebulous “safety” disrupts public trust in the ministry to fulfil its function – particularly from minorities and people at risk of harm.

Mark Wallace attributed these patterns to a combination of “blundering” incompetence and “deliberate” obstruction. I take his words with a pinch of salt, and more charitably put it down to a natural consequence of the Home Office mindset. If “safety” is the hammer, then every concern can only be treated as a nail.  

The chronic problems which Shabana Mahmood addressed in 2025 seem to remain. The culture of command, control, and siloing as the way to protect us from the “dark forces” actually makes our sociopolitical environment unsafe. The wider failure to address the issues of political representation, social mobility, and online information regulation guarantees the Home Office’s strategy actually plays into the hands of the (nebulous) “dark forces”. 

I suspect some in the Home Office would admonish me for lacking perspective or experience of real horror first hand. They may do so either because they actually believe it and cannot face critique, or perhaps it is their genuine intention to assist the “dark forces” in creating some sort of sick authoritarian fantasy world. Whichever it is, trust them we cannot.

Image: Flickr/diamond geezer

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