THE UK Government has been slammed over reported plans to publish a league table of foreign criminals and their offences.
The Scottish Refugee Council has warned that there are “obvious dangers” in publishing the data.
The Scottish Greens, meanwhile, said that Labour are “fanning the flames of the anti-migrant agenda”.
It comes after Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is understood to have ordered officials to publish data by the end of the year showing the nationalities and crimes of those awaiting deportation.
A Home Office source told The Telegraph: “Not only are we deporting foreign criminals at a rate never seen when Chris Philp and Robert Jenrick were in charge at the Home Office, but we will also be publishing far more information about that cohort of offenders than the Tories ever did.”
It is unclear as to whether these statistics will include data from Scotland given it may involve some data sharing.
The National has approached the Scottish and UK Government for clarification.
But now, Scottish Refugee Council chief executive Sabir Zazai has hit out at the move.
“We do not understand what the UK Government hopes to achieve by publishing this data in this way, but there are obvious dangers in doing so,” he said.
“It has been less than a year since divisive and dehumanising rhetoric escalated to violence and rioting on UK streets. Many of the people we support – people who had already been forced to flee war, conflict and persecution – were too scared to go outside because they were afraid of what might happen to them. We all have a role to play in ensuring that never happens again.
Zazai added: “The criminal justice system is responsible for prosecuting individuals who have broken the law. No respectable government should be seeking to use the actions of a select few to unduly influence people’s views of entire communities.”
Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman (below), meanwhile, said publication of the table is “not being done as a matter of public safety or interest”.
“But it will create a harmful sweeping generalisation, claiming that all migrants are dangerous, when that simply is not true,” she added.
“The vast majority of migrants who come to the UK do so in good faith, to live and work, to build their lives here, to study, to pay taxes and give back to the communities that they now call home.
“We know that police forces across the UK have highlighted the problems they face with institutional racism, which will result in a disproportionate amount of reports on people of colour and migrants over the reports on crimes committed by white British nationals.
“The UK Government must think again before they make these claims in the name of public safety, and consider the harm that could be caused to innocent people and their families who fit the nationalities or criminal stereotyping that Labour are trying to push.”
