The Conservatives faced a new race row today after a leaked letter from the human rights watchdog warned plans for voter ID checks at polling stations could deter ethnic minority groups from voting.
The Government has pushed through the plans in defiance of claims the amount of voter identity fraud in Britain is tiny.
But revelations the policy has been criticised on equalities grounds will refuel a row over the reform in the aftermath of the Windrush scandal.
The policy is due to come partially into force at the local elections on May 3.
The Conservatives faced a new race row today after a leaked letter from the human rights watchdog warned plans for voter ID checks at polling stations could deter ethnic minority groups from voting
The letter, which has been sent to Cabinet Office minister David Lidington by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, is reported to say that there is a risk legal residents who may not have a passport or driving licence may be disenfranchised.
It comes after a slew of stories about members of the Windrush generation facing problems with access to healthcare and other state services.
Many in the Windrush generation, who arrived from the Caribbean between the late 1940s and 1970s, have no record of their status and have found it challenged under recent laws that require them to provide proof of near-continuous residence.
It has also now emerged that thousands of landing card slips recording the arrival of Windrush-era immigrants were destroyed by the Home Office several years ago.
The Home Office said in 2014 it would offer support to people with ‘uncertain immigration status’, but that it was ‘up to anyone who does not have an established immigration status to regularise their position.’
Meanwhile Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the paper the checks suggest the Government is creating a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants, an allusion to the Windrush saga which has seen migrants from the Caribbean face questions over their immigration status in the UK.
The letter, which has been sent to Cabinet Office minister David Lidington by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, is reported to say that there is a risk legal residents who may not have a passport or driving licence may be disenfranchised
He said: ‘Forcing voters at election time to prove their identity at polling stations by producing official documents would have a disproportionate impact on people from black and ethnic minority communities.
‘It is the same hostile environment all over again, shutting our fellow citizens out of public life, treating communities who made Britain their home as second-class citizens. It’s disgraceful and it must be brought to an end.’
Meanwhile, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said the Windrush problem has come about from a pro-European idea which suggests people need to show their papers.
He told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘We are not the sort of country that demands to see your papers, but I’m afraid pro-Europeans think we should be.
‘They buy into the EU-style relationship between individual and state. It’s a shift to state being powerful and individual being weak.’
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the paper the checks suggest the Government is creating a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants,