PLEASE my friends ask yourself a simple question. Why would a government spend public money in court to stop the public seeing a migrant data spreadsheet?
A think tank asked the Ministry of Justice for the figures on offences committed by foreign nationals between 2018 and 2024. The MoJ said no. The Information Commissioner looked at it and ordered the department to hand it over.
That should have been the end of it. Ruling made, data released, argument had in the open like grown-ups.
Instead, Burnham’s government is appealing. Lawyers, court time, your money, all deployed to keep a file shut that the regulator has already said belongs to you.
And remember what this file is. Not a research project. Not some vast new collection exercise costing millions. It sits on the Police National Computer already. Denmark publishes this. Germany publishes this. Sweden publishes this. Somehow only in Britain is it a state secret.
Victims have now written asking for it, like my friend Siobhan Whyte, whose daughter was murdered by a hotel migrant. People who were attacked, whose families were destroyed, are being told the numbers are too dangerous for them to see. Think about what a government has to believe about you to take that position.