Charity Commission rejects Tory lies over 'Valentine's Day cards for asylum seekers'

The Conservatives were out in force in a show of apoplexy last year after learning that schoolchildren as young as five had been told to write Valentine’s Day cards to asylum seekers.

The party claimed that schools in Labour-run Birmingham had been working with Schools of Sanctuary UK, a refugee charity, to take part in a scheme in which pupils wrote “heart-shaped messages” to asylum seekers with messages such as “You are welcome here”.

Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, fumed that “children as young as five shouldn’t be used to push political agendas” in an article for the Daily Telegraph by its reporter Aaron Newbury (who just five months previously had been a full-time press officer for the Conservative Party). Perma-furious shadow home secretary Chris Philip, meanwhile, said that “Labour’s Britain is one where safeguarding is thrown out the window, classrooms are turned into propaganda hubs, and children are weaponised to push a dangerous ideology.”

And Gavin Williamson, the hapless former education secretary who you may be astonished to learn is still an MP, went a step further, making a formal complaint to the Charity Commission. “I am sure that I do not need to emphasise how inappropriate it is for schools to encourage minors to send Valentine’s Day cards to adults,” he wrote.

“However, this initiative is all the more concerning in light of the many recent instances of sexual harassment and assault perpetrated by asylum seekers against minors.”

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Now, seven months after Williamson’s complaint, the Commission has reported – and what you may not be astonished to learn is that it was all a load of lies. The complaint has been rejected outright, and the Commission said the charity had been the victim of a baseless misinformation campaign that resulted in its staff and trustees receiving threats.

Helen Earner, the director of regulatory services at the Commission, said: “In this case, concerns about the charity’s work were fuelled by online misinformation, something charities are increasingly subject to and a concern for us as regulator.

“After examining the available evidence, we found the claims to be misleading and that the schools of sanctuary programme is within the charity’s purposes and complies with our guidance on campaigning and political activity.”

It concluded that while “heart-shaped general messages of welcome to refugees were displayed in schools”, it was satisfied that “at no point did children write cards to individual adult asylum seekers or refugees”.

The charity and its staff faced numerous threats as a result of the Tories’ lies, including accusing them of “indoctrinating children” and “making migrants more brazen in attacking schoolchildren” and even “child abuse” and being a “terrorist group”. None of Williamson, Trott or Philp have commented on the Commission’s findings, and the Telegraph hasn’t reported it.