Internal memorandum from the Ministry of Propaganda (sorry… Home Office. Old habits die hard).

Minutes of Home Office discussion on human rights and immigration.

For civil service eyes only.

It has been brought to the department’s attention that its plans for dental checks on so-called minors, has received a setback from the plebs in the hoi polloi (predictable) but even worse, received support from the Sun.

As usual the proceedings began with the more antediluvian elements in the department calling for the banning of the hijab.

This has now become traditional despite at least one senior member of the department implying that any device meaning that the female sex was invisible could only be a good thing.

This opinion was, as usual, espoused from the confines of his gentleman’s club, or as he describes it the last bastion of sanity and institutional misogyny. Thank God he doesn’t know what Twitter is. Frankly an abacus would be a challenge for the honourable member in question.

So, logically, the word on the grape vine is that he is to be shunted to the Treasury at the next reshuffle where the figures are so astronomical no-one really understands them and all the harm that can be done has already been done.

His expressed opinion, once highly popular in the party has, apparently, been somewhat toned down in recent months to one more approximating amelioration. The reasoning behind said shift, it is important to note, has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that our new PM is, shudder, a woman.

Besides which, our departmental understanding is that — despite being one of the fairer sex — Ms May has no compunction when it comes to putting the exquisitely made boot into her fellow females.

It would seem, quite properly, that the recent calls for equality which sent the Civil Service into paroxysms of panic need not be adhered to in the strictest sense. Or even at all.

As usual it was left to the civil service to point out that a ban on religious attire, although not without its obvious merits, could in a very real sense open a Pandora’s box.

Such a ban, it was argued, could mischievously be interpreted to extend to the wimple and the habit and the last thing we want is nuns wandering around in mufti. Far better to be able to avoid, I mean identify, them at a safe distance.

It was agreed that the proposal be shelved until such a juncture, in the fullness of time, when such thorny problems could be properly “thrashed out.”

This turned out to be an extraordinarily unfortunate turn of phrase and led to not a few of those present apparently drifting off misty-eyed to the halcyon era of their prep school days. At least one honourable member retained an unhealthy gleam in his eye for the remainder of the meeting and upon its conclusion departed with an alacrity that belies both his age and supposed infirmity muttering something about an appointment with matron. The mind boggles.

Which brings me to the next item on the agenda, the vexing issue of child migrants, or rather adult migrants posing as children to gain entry to this sceptred isle.

At first the department seemed minded to consider the policy put forward by David Davies MP that the teeth of so-called minors be scrutinised as an assistance to determining their true age.

Davies’s proposal, although whole-heartedly embraced by a few back benchers and the loyal press predictably met with outrage from the professional do-gooders who called it invasive, draconian and even barbaric.

Some even went so far as to compare the suggestion with the way horses are examined.

This brought much amusement from the assembled MPs who are, if you will excuse the pun, long enough in the tooth to know that the British public would never allow the government to treat horses in such a fashion.

Britain is a nation of animal lovers! And besides horses are far more valuable.

One MP, who shall not be named, pointed out that it was less invasive than cutting them in half and counting the rings. He probably wasn’t serious but you never can tell with the Home Office who have their own, ahem, idiosyncratic way of interpreting the world. Curiously this is markedly similar to that of Josef Goebbels.

The proposal was reluctantly put on a back burner after it was pointed out that if introduced as policy it might prove an incentive for particularly small adult migrants to remove all their teeth and pretend to be babies.

I provide this synopsis for your perusal and consideration but frankly I do not feel that even the employment of the 30-year rule would suffice in this case.

Yours,

[REDACTED]

Permanent Secretary Home Office.