Yesterday at around 2pm the UK Home Office twitter account, released this message and I along with a number of other people found it very disturbing. My question is how can we bring the people who are running the Home Office social media to account? A couple of months ago I wrote this blog about the Home Office tweets when it became clear that what is supposed to be a Government Department was get heavily involved in political discussions. The point being that politicians have their own communication opportunities, but Civil Service settings are supposed to be balanced and take one step back from party politics. Yesterdays tweet once again has some political elements but actually this is a much more disturbing tweet coming from a Government Department.

It may well be that other people are better informed regarding the 14 people that have been deported to Lithuania. Given that we are still part of the EU in terms of our departure this raises a number of questions.

One element of what they have written is that breaking rules and abusing values is sufficient justification for deporting people. Now of course if people break a law and are prosecuted that may justify them being deported although that is a very questionable aspect in itself. However claiming that people who “broke our rules & abused our values” are dangerous Offenders would place a significant number of people in Parliament itself as dangerous Offenders. After all they regularly abuse our values and break their own rules.

The other disturbing element for me is that people who “arrived via illegally-facilitated routes” were people they are attempting to return. Are they suggesting that people who are placed in lorries that are intended for food and material should be returned or should we as a nation be caring for them. By the same token are they claiming that a boat across the Channel is an illegally facilitated route. If that is the case then we need to make all people using boats to travel across the channel that these routes are illegally facilitated. On the other hand if the channel is not illegally facilitated (which for my memory it is not) then this tweet needs to written in a way that is correct and not simply full of nonsense, given it is coming from a Government Department.

Indeed how can we bring the Home Office social media people to account?