Windrush

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lady Benjamin on securing this important debate on the Windrush scandal and the compensation scheme. I will focus mainly on the implementation and effectiveness of the compensation scheme. But first, like other speakers, I note my noble friend Lady Benjamin’s extraordinary contribution to challenging Ministers and others about the Windrush scandal over many years. The right reverend prelate the Bishop of Newcastle referred to being a “Play School” baby. I had the privilege of working on “Play School” with my noble friend Lady Benjamin as a brand-new trainee floor manager in the mid-1970s, and I have to say that it was a complete joy. As others said, and as she herself said, my noble friend Lady Benjamin chaired the Windrush memorial committee. I agree that the memorial is uplifting and moving. It is also a constant reminder, to those of us in the public eye, that something was got wrong and has still not been righted.

Others have spoken about how we have heard about the Windrush scandal in other parts of our lives. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked a question about children in schools. My noble friend Lady Benjamin’s book Coming to England is the most beautiful story about a Windrush arrival, and it is in almost all the primary schools I have heard about. I know that the children write to my noble friend Lady Benjamin because she and I talk about it. My own grandchildren were shocked by the racism that she faced as a six year-old. Our hope for the future is that, through the dramas and books, we will have a new generation who will not accept what has happened and will continue to fight.

What has happened at the hands of officials and Ministers is dreadful. As my noble friend Lady Benjamin said, members of the Windrush generation were never illegal migrants, so people being thrown out of their jobs, losing their homes and pensions, and being imprisoned and deported over many years is now a real disgrace. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, talked about plays. We have now seen documentaries, dramas, screenplays and books. The Windrush generation has shouted from the rooftops—are we listening properly yet?

The noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, rightly said that we respect the Windrush generation, and our problem remains specifically with the Home Office and successive Governments. The Windrush generation’s perseverance and contribution to our country must be noted, and we need to be reminded. It has served large elements of our public services over the last 60 or 70 years—the NHS, transport—but it is now a key participant in every part of our working, social and community lives.

I will not go into the detail of what happened after 2017—many other noble Lords have talked about it—when media coverage started to bring attention to individual cases. But the way the Home Office has reacted, then and now, means that it is not held in any sort of regard at all. I do want to mention one person: former MP Norman Baker, who was the Home Office Immigration Minister in 2014. He resigned because he was not aware of those vans going round—he was not told before he actually saw them on the streets—and he felt that the lurch to the right on immigration of Theresa May in particular, and the Conservative Government, meant he could not continue to serve.

My noble friend Lady Burt reminded us of when and how the press and wider society became aware of the treatment of the generation. She set out the timeline of the government apologies in some detail. In 2018, Wendy Williams’ review and report focused on events from 2008—well before the coalition Government came into place. But absolutely at the heart of her findings was the fact that, despite the Government saying that they were taken by surprise by the scandal, she found that, over the years, officials and Ministers repeatedly ignored the warnings. She said that

“those in power forgot about them and their circumstances”.

This was compounded by successive Governments wanting to be tough on immigration by

“tightening immigration control and passing laws creating … the hostile environment … with a complete disregard for the Windrush generation”.

As with other departments and scandals, there were also institutional blockages in the Home Office that have made everything much, much worse. Wendy Williams also said that, while she was unable to make a definitive finding of institutional racism within the department,

“I have serious concerns that these failings demonstrate an institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race and the history of the Windrush generation within the department, which are consistent with some elements of the definition of institutional racism.”

As others have said, she made 30 recommendations, which have been grouped under three headings. The first was acknowledgement: that the Home Office needed to acknowledge the wrong that had been done. The second was transparency: that the department must open itself up to greater scrutiny. The third was culture changes: that the department must change its culture to recognise that migration and wider Home Office policy were about people and, whatever its objective, should be rooted in humanity.

Many noble Lords have talked about the three recommendations that the Home Office initially accepted and then rejected. It is appalling that the third one, on reconciliation and training of Home Office staff, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, referred, is gone. The ninth was on the commissioner, to which other noble Lords referred, and the 10th was on the review of the remit of the ICIBI, ensuring that it works closely with the migrants’ commissioner. These are at the heart of the cultural change of the Home Office, so will the Minister say whether those three recommendations will be reinstated now that Suella Braverman is no longer Home Secretary?

Time is short, so I will not say very much, but Wendy Williams, in her review in 2022, said that the Home Office had “obscured the full extent” of her original findings and this had led to “misunderstanding and incorrect implementation”. Can the Minister, therefore, say whether she will be asked back again, a further two years on, to complete that review, as other noble Lords have asked for, to ensure that the implementation and that change in culture do happen?

Turning to the compensation scheme, I have been speaking in your Lordships’ House on both the Post Office Horizon scandal and the infected blood scheme. There is a systemic problem in this country, with numerous Governments over many decades, about how these schemes are instituted. I absolutely agree with the recommendation from Age UK that, for this Windrush scheme, a separate, independent scheme should be set up. There is a much bigger ask—and I raised this in the Post Office compensation Bill, which went through in one day last month—that we actually need a truly independent body to oversee all compensation schemes where any public service is involved. The one lesson that we should have learned over the last 50 years is that the Government, their departments and their arm’s-length bodies cannot be independent when trying to administer compensation schemes. Will the Minister tell us if this is likely to happen?

The other points that have been made have also been covered in the other schemes. Despite people saying that the Post Office Horizon scheme is moving ahead swiftly, the postmasters are getting derisory amounts offered to them. They are still competing with a simplified form that is utterly bemusing. They still do not get any money for legal advice to help them apply. That is exactly true for the Windrush scheme as well, and this needs to be followed through.

As other noble Lords have said, the problem with a badly working compensation scheme is that it revictimises the victims. From these Benches, we absolutely want to see the Government put this scheme alongside the Post Office Horizon scheme and the infected blood scheme, at the heart of working at pace—a phrase they frequently use. The Windrush generation has supported and helped us in our country—their country too—for many, many years. Why are they still being treated as different?