Global Migration Challenge

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Absolutely. I want to thank my hon. Friend because he has been in dialogue with Ministers on that issue. I would be very happy to meet him. Of course, he understands the principle behind all of this, so I am very happy to discuss that with him further.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary asserts that Labour Members do not understand the issue, but she will be aware that a former permanent secretary at the Home Office, Sir David Normington, said last week about her Rwanda policy:

“It’s inhumane, it’s morally reprehensible, it’s probably unlawful and it may well be unworkable”.

How does she come to know better than a former Home Office permanent secretary?

[Priti Patel]

First, I am surprised that the right hon. Lady is using Sir David’s name in vain, given that a former Labour Home Secretary infamously and discourteously described the Home Office leadership and management as “not fit for purpose” during Sir David’s tenure. Things have moved on in terms of the asylum system. Her party and other Opposition Members continuously vote against the new plan for immigration, but they have no plan to deal with these important and difficult issues. It will bring in the reform that our country needs, while making sure that we preserve the efficacy of safe and legal routes for people fleeing persecution to come to our country and get the support they need.

Support for Black Victims of Domestic Abuse

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debates, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) on her very informed and cogent speech. I point out to the Minister that we have an unusually large number of black people in the public gallery, which demonstrates the tremendous concern in all parts of the community about the issue. I hope that an acknowledgement of that concern will be reflected in what she has to say.

I want to start by talking about Valerie Forde, because we are talking about Valerie’s law. As we have heard, she died in particularly tragic and violent circumstances in 2014 and it will be the anniversary of her death in three days. Although Valerie was a victim of domestic violence, she was much more than just a victim. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) says, she was a vibrant woman who was extremely important and respected in her community. I think that her friends and family would want her to be remembered like that, for their contribution to the community.

As we have heard, Sistah Space has done tremendous work gathering all these thousands of signatures. Sistah Space has existed since 2015, but many of the women associated with it have been active in the community for much longer than that. The last time I saw some of them, last weekend, we were out campaigning on Child Q. I will just say a few sentences on Child Q, because that case reflects some of the institutional racism that Valerie’s law is meant to address.

One thing that has emerged in the work and campaigning sufferers have done on the case is the wholly disproportionate number of black children who are strip searched in London. We have some figures available, but I would say that they are almost certainly an underestimate. What strikes me in listening to accounts of what happened to Child Q is that the police came and strip searched her—and they did not just strip search her, they treated her physically in an extremely degrading way—and then went back to the station. They did not tell their sergeant and or anybody. For them, it was all in a day’s work. That they were so casual about that extremely degrading strip search tells me that they have done it more often than the official figures reflect. I have still not had it explained to me why there are teachers in Hackney who think that the appropriate thing to do if they think they smell cannabis on a school child is not to let the parents know, but to call the police, and that that will deal with the issue. There is a lot more to say about Child Q, and I am sure that the opportunity to do so will come up in this Parliament.

On Valerie’s law and black women victims of domestic violence, when I was listening to my colleagues, I was thinking of my mother, who never suffered physical violence but was the subject of extreme coercive control to the extent that she eventually moved out of our home, leaving my father, my brother and me. My father being no kind of feminist, I had to do all the housework and cooking when she left. What he did to upset me, and to point out his feelings about my mother, was to get a photograph of her, slash it with a knife, scribble red ink on it and pin it above the cooker, because he knew I would have to look at the picture three times a day.

My mother would never have dreamed of going to an institution, to a community group or to the state in any form whatsoever. That was 40 years ago, but I think that one of the issues around black women and domestic violence even today is that reluctance to go to institutions—partly through pride, partly through a fear of institutions, partly through an acceptance of patriarchy. That is why we need organisations such as Sistah Space, which can reach out to those women, and support and enable them to engage with the institutions that they need to engage with. Sistah Space is doing very valuable work. We know that black women are particularly vulnerable to domestic abuse and that they do not get the service and the care that they should from some institutions.

Just this afternoon, I spoke to a constituent who has been the victim of domestic abuse. She has been treated very poorly by the police at Stoke Newington police station and by the Crown Prosecution Service. Her husband was convicted of domestic violence, but he appealed and got off. In the end, the court was not willing to accept her word or her son’s word—he witnessed what happened—and her husband was released from prison and continues to harass her. People sometimes talk about domestic violence as if it happens only to ordinary women. This woman is a very educated middle-class woman, and she is clearly completely traumatised by the physical domestic abuse that she has endured. She relates a lack of concern, poor treatment, an unwillingness to take a proper statement and all the other issues around the police, and if a highly educated woman like her can be treated so unprofessionally and so dismissively by the police, what happens to women who perhaps do not have her confidence?

As colleagues have said, there is clearly a real need for training in all aspects of domestic violence and women of colour, be they the cultural and even well-founded fear of going to institutions to complain about their partners or husbands, simple things such as being able to recognise bruises on black skin, or being able to understand the society and culture of black and minority ethnic communities. Clearly, there is an important need for training in all the institutions that deal with victims of domestic violence.

I would also say that, although in the short term we need the training, in the medium to long term we need to see black people in those institutions, whether as social workers and police officers or in management positions where they can take decisions. In the end, that is what will make it possible for people like my constituent or even my mother to go forward and talk about some of the things they are suffering. But in the immediate short term, there has long been a need for proper training.

I hope the Minister has listened to my colleagues and seen the concern of the public, and will be able to come forward with a constructive response to what the petition for Valerie’s law is asking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

First, I thank Sistah Space for all its campaigning, particularly its hard work in supporting victims of domestic abuse. I also thank Valerie’s daughter for allowing us to share her story so that we can get mandatory training for people and organisations such as the police and other agencies.

I also thank hon. Members for their contributions on how things can be done better for victims of domestic abuse, particularly black victims. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) spoke about Valerie and the impact on her family. My hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) and for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) also spoke, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) for sharing her personal story. It is not easy to share such stories, so I thank her for doing so. I also thank the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald). As we know, the hard work has already been done by Sistah Space, so there is no reason why the training should not be put in place.

I thank the Minister for her approach to this debate. I welcome what she said about arranging a meeting with Sistah Space and the College of Policing. I am sure that Sistah Space will agree that that is a massive, positive step forward, so I thank the Minister for that.

I look forward to seeing the domestic abuse plan in detail. I will see that before I make any further comments. I welcome the guidance and new training for engagement with groups, but Sistah Space also needs to feed into it, along with relevant organisations that support black victims of domestic abuse, to ensure we get this right and no one is left behind. I spoke to Sistah Space before the debate and it said that the experience is so distressing for black women, and that that is so frustrating. We need to recognise people’s trauma when they share their stories. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall said, many people have not spoken about their stories and it can be extremely triggering to do so. That even includes talking to the police about their experiences, because they may not always be taken seriously.

[Ms Abbott]

We all agree on the issues in relation to domestic violence and women of African and Caribbean descent, but there are also issues facing our south Asian sisters. As well as looking at issues in relation to black women, it is important that the Minister pays attention to the work being done by groups such as Southall Black Sisters.

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

I thank my right hon. Friend for mentioning the work of Southall Black Sisters. I know that the Minister works closely with them. This debate is a positive step forwards and I look forward to my meeting shortly with the Minister and Sistah Space to talk about next steps.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 578416, relating to support for Black victims of domestic abuse.

Metropolitan Police: Strip-search of Schoolgirl

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

We obviously take this matter extremely seriously. The hon. Lady is right that the report made recommendations to the Government, not least on strengthening and revising code C of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. We will have to consider our response to that in the light of this report, taking into account the outcomes of the IOPC review. We need to understand whether we have a specific problem or a systemic one. The report indicates that we may have systemic problems, and if we do then obviously we will seek to address them. We also need to work out from the IOPC report whether the same is true; if so, of course we will act.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does the Minister appreciate how angry people up and down the country are about this incident, particularly people in Hackney? We had a very big demonstration outside Hackney town hall—it was a completely peaceful one, but people were just consumed with unhappiness and anger and fear. It is not just parents of colour; all parents are thinking, “This could have been my daughter.” Is the Minister aware of how traumatised that young woman still is by the incident, and is he aware that it took the police two full years to apologise? What is he going to do? He is telling us about inquiries, but what is he going to do so that at the very least, the instructions and guidelines to the police are much clearer than they currently appear to be?

[Kit Malthouse]

Of course I understand the anger and concern across the country, and I share it. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), it could have been any one of our relatives. As the right hon. Lady knows, I spent a long time in London government and I understand the impact that these events can have on trust between the police and London’s various communities. It is extremely important that people feel confident that, when such appalling incidents happen, action is taken to try to prevent them in the future. I am trying to stress to the House that, while we have the report of the safeguarding board, we want to ensure that we also have the IOPC report so that we can see the full picture in the round and act accordingly to reassure her constituents and many other Londoners.

It is worth saying, however, that it would be helpful to me if London Members such as the right hon. Lady recognised that the Mayor of London has a role to play in this, as the primary accountability body for the Metropolitan Police, and that the Government and the Mayor must work together to solve these problems with the police.

Metropolitan Police: Misogyny and Sexual Harassment

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) on obtaining this debate. It is appropriate that we are having it on International Women’s Day.

Sadly, concerns about the level and extent of sexism and misogyny in the Metropolitan police are not new. The culture of the Metropolitan police and how they interact with the public has been of concern for many decades. I want to stress that saying that misogyny is endemic in the Metropolitan police force—as I believe it is—is not the same as saying that every single Metropolitan police officer is a misogynist. However, misogyny is too deeply embedded in the Metropolitan police force to ignore. There are too many examples of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia for the force to be excused, as it very often is, as just having a few bad apples.

It was interesting to read an interview with Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth, who is now the national lead for violence against women and girls for the National Police Chiefs Council. She said that this idea that it is a “few bad apples” is wrong and that policing, like other jobs with access to power, could attract people who wanted to

“use their power in a corrupt and criminal way.”

She added:

“There will be some attracted into working in policing, because of the powers that it offers them, the powers to exert and coerce other people, particularly vulnerable individuals. I think we shouldn’t be naive to that”.

We saw the spectacle of the now-departed Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, who seemed to have difficulty in admitting that there was any problem at all, let alone to be willing to do anything about it. In response to her resignation, Ken Marsh declared he had no confidence in the London Mayor, but presumably he has every confidence in himself and his members. That comes despite the tally of awful incidents, which other Members have touched on. That includes, but is not confined to, the terrible death of Sarah Everard, the brutal treatment of the women who attended the vigil in her honour, and the culture that was revealed among police colleagues of Wayne Couzens, who raped and murdered her.

There are, of course, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, whose deaths were not initially investigated sufficiently by the Metropolitan Police Service, as their mother would argue. To add insult to injury, two police officers tasked with guarding their bodies took photographs of themselves with the bodies and shared them online among their colleagues.

Then there is the scandal of the culture at Charing Cross police station, which colleagues have touched on, and the treatment of one of my constituents at Stoke Newington police station, although I understand that she is also a Nottingham resident. The IOPC said that the Charing Cross report illustrates an ugly truth. Much of the investigation concerned messages passed between police officers on social media. The messages include:

“You ever slapped your missus? Makes them love you more.”

“I would happily rape you.”

“Getting a woman into bed is like spreading butter. It can be done with a bit of effort using a credit card, but it’s quicker and easier just to use a knife.”

It is worth noting that the messages were not just grossly sexist; they were often racist. They spoke about “Somalian rats” and Muslim “fanatics”; there were references to Auschwitz; and the word “gay” was used as an insult. Those findings are bad enough, but the scale of bigotry will never be known because the police officers who were being investigated deliberately deleted material relevant to the investigation.

In my constituency, the Metropolitan police had to apologise and pay compensation to a completely innocent woman, Dr Konstancja Duff, whom they arrested and strip-searched. As Members have heard, she was only trying to help a 15-year-old child with a Know Your Rights card. It is worth hearing how Dr Duff described her experience:

“I was pinned to the floor of a cell by three female officers. I had my hands cuffed behind my back and my legs tied together while they cut off my clothes with scissors. They ripped out my earrings, grabbed my breasts roughly while turning me over, and even touched me between my legs, apparently looking for genital piercings”

—remember, this is a completely innocent woman. She continued:

“During the search, I could hear them talking with male officers who were standing by the open door.”

Their derogatory comments included,

“Treat her like a terrorist, I don’t care”

and

“What’s that smell? Oh, it’s her knickers”.

All of that was caught on CCTV. It took Dr Duff nine years to get justice, and she is an educated and relatively confident woman. How many other women are subjected to Metropolitan police sexism who do not have the confidence to pursue a civil claim? How can a police force that seems to be saturated in sexism identify and stop the next PC Couzens?

The IOPC said about Charing Cross police station:

“A culture developed that made it difficult to challenge oppressive comments and behaviour, and an environment that was hostile and felt unsafe for those who were the direct or indirect targets of the discrimination.”

Sadly, that has been the culture of too much of the Metropolitan police for too long. Change is long overdue. The new commissioner must be a reforming one and must not attempt to conduct business as usual or bring in merely cosmetic changes. The reform must be root and branch. Women—not just in London, but all over the country—depend on it.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. I too congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) for securing this important debate on International Women’s Day. I want to start with a quick reflection on our meeting yesterday with some of the families of sisters, mothers and daughters who have been murdered at the hands of men. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) brought them to Parliament. What struck me was how many different errors had been made across the system in many of those murders. There was a woman who had a history of domestic abuse, but who had had two glasses of wine, so the man was tried for manslaughter not murder because there was an assumption that she was in some way responsible for what happened to her. There was also somebody who was pushed out of a high block of flats and killed, but the man has not been charged, even though, again, there was a history of domestic abuse, because the assumption was that she may have had some drugs and it was all her own fault.

What strikes me about today’s debate is that when we talk about misogyny and sexual harassment in the police force, it affects not just those who were affected immediately by that incident, but the way we do policing across the board. There are so many cases where assumptions have been made about women because of ingrained misogyny and sexism and where that has led to them being murdered by their partners, when those partners should have been locked up years before. People are getting away with murder when they should be locked up, because of how the police are thinking about things and approaching their investigations. This is therefore an incredibly important debate.

We have seen a series of issues in the Met police over the last year, which sadly do not just touch on misogyny but go wider. Obviously, we had the events of last year and the horrific murder of Sarah, and others have spoken of what happened in the case of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman. We have had the Daniel Morgan inquiry, which suggested institutional corruption in the Metropolitan police, and the Stephen Port inquiry, which, although inconclusive, certainly showed unconscious bias against people who are gay, and where assumptions were again made about their deaths. There are clearly cultural problems in the force.

Others have made the point that the problem goes beyond the Metropolitan police, and that is important because if we focus just on the Met, we miss problems across the country. There have been instances of misogyny and sexual violence in other forces, such as West Mercia and Dorset. We have seen the inappropriate use of social media in Sussex, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Police Scotland, so these issues are not confined to the Met. There is also a wider problem of violence against women and girls, which hon. Members have touched on today, including the very low level of prosecutions for rape and the number of women who just walk away from the system because they cannot cope with the delays and problems we have seen.

I want to focus on some of the solutions, and a lot of them come from Operation Hotton, which we have talked about. What is interesting is not just how it identified bullying, aggressive behaviour, discrimination, toxic masculinity and the banter used to excuse offensive behaviour, but its focus on the way the force was structured, which enabled that misogyny to occur. It focused on the nature of the work—the shift patterns, the isolation and this business of people acting up in an unofficial capacity, so that behaviours were completely unchallenged, which is key to some of the reforms we need to see.

We also heard of demeaning and intimidating actions towards police officers on probation, such as beckoning them with a bell or threatening to cut their hair or take their belongings; officers being shouted at; and women being sexually harassed or treated as the “weary female” when they raise issues. These things are all to do with leadership and management within the force, as well as the misogyny. I know we are talking about misogyny and sexual harassment, but the report also showed horrific racism and homophobia. It was the culture that enabled horrific behaviour across the board, and that is what we need to look at.

My questions for the Minister are therefore around what is going to be done about this. I think that everybody here thinks that something needs to be done. The Government have set up a couple of inquiries, which I am sure the Minister will talk about, but we need to go further and faster, and act more. With policing issues, the Home Office sometimes has a tendency to say, “This is a terrible thing and must not happen,” but it has a key role in leading a change in approach from the top, to make sure that these things do not continue.

We need to look at how we vet police officers. The 250-page document on how we vet them shows that they are vetted for their propensity to be blackmailed: do they have problems with their finances, or problems that would allow them to be blackmailed? The vetting is not good enough on who they are, what they have said on social media over the last five years, what they think and whether they should be with vulnerable people. Our vetting needs to be looked at.

Police training needs to be overhauled. Officers need ongoing training throughout their careers, including on anti-racism and on tackling violence against women and girls. When officers are first trained, they are not specifically trained on violence against women and girls, and we think they should be. We also need to end the inappropriate use of social media, which has come up time and again in all the incidents in the Met. The Government should look at taking action against those private WhatsApp messages.

We have the Dame Angiolini inquiry. The Labour party has called for it to be on a statutory footing, so that it has the powers it needs to go everywhere it needs to go. I ask the Minister to look at that.

[Ms Abbott]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it should be clearer to serving police officers that engaging in misogynistic or racist behaviour will be a bar to recruitment? Of the officers involved in the Charing Cross scandal, two have already been promoted.

[Sarah Jones]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I have talked to the police about that issue and about whether misconduct proceedings, which I was about to come to, need to be improved.

Swift action needs to be taken. When there is misconduct, there are quite a lot of delays in the process. We need to make sure that there are clear management processes to stop misconduct being seen as “banter”. If someone is misogynistic—if it is clear from their social media what their views are—they have no place in the police. We hold our police to higher standards than other professions—quite rightly. That is what the police want; they want to be held to those standards, because they want policing by consent. They need the public to trust them, and that is what they would call for, too. We also need to look at whistleblowing procedures. I have spoken to police officers who say, “We have quite a good whistleblowing procedure, because some people come forward.” Actually, it is not working as it should, and we need to look at it again.

There are wider issues that would help the culture of the police, such as having specialist rape and sexual assault units in each police force, so that the force is more expert. We need to look at the number of women in policing. Only a third of Metropolitan police officers are women, and that changes the culture. As we know, and as hon. Members have said today, having more women in Parliament means that we have better debates, better policy making and better laws. In the same way, the Metropolitan police and other police forces would be better with more women.

There are many other issues we could talk about. My main point is that there are a series of practical actions that need to be taken—not just in the Met, but beyond—and it is the Government’s role to look at those. I thank all the women who have contributed, and our honourable male contributor, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I am honoured to be in a room of very powerful women whom I admire hugely and who have all made, in their own ways, excellent contributions today. They reflect how the House of Commons is shifting towards more powerful women and a better conversation. We need to make sure that the Metropolitan police and the wider police force do the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Abbott]

Does the Minister agree that in the recent past it has been very challenging for women to join the police force? I was very struck by a senior female police officer who told me that when she joined, not so long ago, part of the initiation ritual for new woman police officers was to drop their skirt and have another police officer stamp on their bottom the date on which they joined the police force. That culture is not so long in the past.

[Rachel Maclean]

We all share horror at that and the other incidents referenced by the hon. Member for Richmond Park . That is why we are taking the steps I am about to set out. We must remember that during the coronavirus pandemic in particular the police faced an unenviable task, which for the most part they approached with skill and professionalism. I know that from conversations with my local force in Redditch and I want to pay tribute to them as well. They had to help to enforce the rules the Government introduced with one crucial objective in mind: to save lives.

Members referenced the report published last month by the IOPC, which looked into the bullying and discrimination in Charing Cross police station. Those findings were shocking. The report described behaviour that is unacceptable and depicted an environment where such conduct was commonplace amid what can only be described as a toxic culture where leadership was sorely lacking. Policing and the Met must do better, and we are absolutely committed to raising the bar.

As the public would expect, when officers are found to have committed gross misconduct and are dismissed, they cannot re-join policing. We are also ensuring that initial police recruitment vetting practices carried out in each force, to which the hon. Member for Croydon Central referred, are rigorous. The assessment process addresses a candidate’s suitability for the role of police officer, including testing against core behaviours and values. When officers move force, they are re-vetted.

Members rightly pointed to problems with those processes, so I will talk about what the Government and the Met are doing. Restoring confidence is not just about how individuals are disciplined and vetted. It is also about making sure the kind of culture flagged up in the report is not allowed to take root. It is about ensuring those rotten elements in policing are rooted out and removed. We are taking action to address the issues we established the Angiolini inquiry, which started on 31 January. Obviously, Dame Elish has focused on the particular case of Sarah Everard’s killer, but she will consider whether the culture and places where he worked meant that alarm bells did not ring earlier. She will present the findings of that phase of the review to the Home Secretary later this year. In the second phase of the inquiry, we expect a light to be shone on wider issues across policing, including workplace cultures.

In October 2021, the MPS announced that it had commissioned Baroness Louise Casey of Blackstock to lead an independent and far-reaching review into standards of behaviour. She will also assess the extent to which the force’s current leadership, recruitment, vetting, training, communications and other practices effectively reinforce the standards the public so rightly expect.

Further, the Home Secretary has requested that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services—HMICFRS—inspects forces across England and Wales to judge their vetting in counter-corruption capabilities. We specifically asked the body to look at how forces identify and deal with misogyny and sexism in the workplace. We are working closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council to ensure professional standards in social media use for police officers—another important issue.

Ukraine: Urgent Refugee Applications

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. I would make the point that people do not need to wait in Ukraine if they are thinking of applying for the humanitarian family visa and if they are able to travel safely across Ukraine. We all recognise the reality of the barbaric approach that some Russian forces are taking to civilians. It is clear that there are regular breaches of international law and that war crimes are being committed, so there is a real issue about whether people can genuinely travel safely across Ukraine, but if they wish to, they can travel to a safe and democratic country across the border and make their application from there. As I have said, we have extended the definition, and we are rapidly expanding the caseworking teams to ensure that we can get through the applications and get people here so that they can be with their relatives in the UK.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does the Minister understand how poorly it reflects on this country that our system for processing Ukrainian refugees is so slow and shambolic? Even accepting the need for biometric tests and so on, why can they not be done on the spot? Why can this not be expedited so that these desperate people can come and join their families here in the UK?

[Kevin Foster]

Across the world, people are reflecting on the immense support that the United Kingdom and this Government have provided to the people of Ukraine. That is reflected quite regularly in comments by those who are in Ukraine. We are looking to speed up the process but it is important to carry out essential security checks for the reasons we have outlined.

Windrush Compensation Scheme

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Windrush generation was the generation that came from across the Commonwealth, but largely from the Caribbean, to help to rebuild this country after the war. The point about the Windrush generation—a point that may not be understood by Government Members—was that these people thought they were British. They thought they were coming to the mother country. Many of them had pictures of the Queen in their living rooms. The way they have been treated, first in the Windrush scandal itself and then in the debacle of the compensation scheme, could not be more unfair or more cruel.

The lawyers and many of the people who gave evidence to the Select Committee talked about money and compensation, but for the people of the Windrush generation the real scandal was the humiliation at having it brought home to them, by the many aspects of the Windrush scandal, that this society did not consider them British. They were not treated with the fairness and dignity that they would have liked. For the Windrush generation—I cannot stress this enough—this was not about the money; it was about being respected and being genuinely accepted as British. They were treated completely unfairly, in practical, emotional and subjective ways.

The thing that should have struck the Government about the workings of their scheme was that in 2020 Alexandra Ankrah, who worked as head of policy in the Windrush compensation scheme team, resigned because she lost confidence in a programme that was

“not supportive of people who have been victims”

and

“doesn’t acknowledge their trauma”.

It is their trauma that I want to try to convey in this debate.

The head of the scheme resigned, and they paid no notice—they carried on as before. In that same year, nine law firms wrote to the Home Secretary explaining the complex nature of the Windrush compensation application process and asked that claimants be given access to funded legal assistance. The Government’s response was to say, “Well, the scheme was designed so that people could apply without legal assistance.” What people? People who are known to Government Members, and people who are known to Ministers—not ageing members of the Windrush generation. They cannot deal with the scheme without some kind of legal assistance. I put it to Ministers that it is the complexity of the scheme that has meant we have not had the number of applications that we should have had, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) set out.

In the Select Committee’s hearings, we heard evidence from distinguished practitioners, such as Martin Forde QC, who had been the independent adviser to the scheme and also advised on its consultation and design, and Holly Stow, a senior caseworker at North Kensington Law Centre. The significance of that law centre is that the earliest generation of Caribbean migrants lived in that area long before it was as expensive to buy a home there as it is now, and I knew that area well as a child. Another important person we took evidence from was Jacqueline McKenzie, who at that time was assisting with approximately 200 claims and is probably assisting with more by now.

The policy head of the scheme resigned because she was so appalled at the way the scheme was functioning. Lawyers and others went to the Government to talk to them about the complexity of the system. Above all, given the Government’s original estimate for the potential number of claimants—I think it was 15,000—the number of people applying to the scheme, certainly when the Committee did its inquiry, was relatively tiny. Yet the Home Office has been quite brazen in rejecting the analysis of people who had worked for the Home Office on the scheme and of lawyers and potential claimants.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North pointed out, the Home Office rejected many of our key recommendations, and its response demonstrated that the Department was not engaging with the issues. Above all, the Department’s response to many of our separate recommendations was that it would conduct a review. On almost everything we raised, the Home Office said it was conducting a review. It is all well and good that it is conducting a review on all those separate issues, but it should not need to have a review; it should be prepared to listen to the lawyers, claimants and people working with the community and to look at its own figures. It should be prepared to listen to its own staff members who have worked on the scheme. It should not need to launch a series of reviews.

Meanwhile, because those who came over on the Windrush are an ageing generation, many of them have died or will die before they get the compensation they are entitled to, and I consider that quite shameful. It is hard to believe that the Department does not understand that the more the process is prolonged; the less willing the Department is to take up practical suggestions made in good faith by not just my Committee, but others; and the more the Department is unwilling to listen to people, the longer it will all take and more people will have passed away without justice.

As my right hon. Friend said, many people have argued that the Windrush compensation scheme was inadequate. We know, as my colleague said, that the number of people who have applied for compensation is paltry compared to the number the Home Office originally said were entitled to it. The experience of applying for compensation is traumatic in itself. As I have said, one of the things that is not necessarily factored in when people talk about the Windrush generation is their sense of humiliation, as people who came here to the mother country, at being treated the way they were and having to go through the scheme at all.

As my right hon. Friend said, people have been put off from applying for the scheme partly because of its complexity, which Ministers have been told over and over again. Seeing what happened, seeing how people were treated originally and seeing how some even ended up being deported—seeing all that—the potential claimants of the Windrush generation lacked all trust in the Home Office. That is why one of our key recommendations was that this scheme should be passed to an independent organisation.

The Home Office said, “Well, that might introduce delays,” but it could not have introduced more delays than the Windrush generation are experiencing now. It could not be any slower than what is happening now. There could not be more people dying than now, while the Home Office is processing what it is supposed to be doing. It is preposterous for the Home Office to argue, “We don’t want to pass it to an independent organisation because of delays.” With this scheme, those at the Home Office are the masters of delays.

We called for an independent organisation because we felt that it would be more efficient and that—I come back to this question of confidence—applicants would have more confidence in an independent organisation and would be more willing to come forward, so that we could increase the number of people applying and getting justice before they pass away, as they continue to do. At the time of the Committee’s report, 23 individuals had died without receiving compensation, and I have no doubt that even more have passed away by this point.

Among other things, we pointed out the excessive burden on claimants to provide documentary evidence of the losses they have suffered. That is a burden. Somebody might have worked hard in the NHS or elsewhere in the public sector, or in manufacturing as my father did, but they are not used to handling that level of paperwork, so it is a burden. In a way, that insistence on finding all the documentary evidence just compounds the pain and misery they have gone through in the Windrush scandal.

Then there are the delays. Like I said, how can those at the Home Office complain that passing the scheme to an independent organisation would cause delays when they themselves have presided over inordinate delays in processing applications and making payments? They themselves have staffed the scheme wholly inadequately. We pointed out the failure to provide urgent payments and the delay in launching and adequately supporting grassroots campaigns, and I think something has been done about that.

It is frustrating for the Committee even to have had to write the report, because many of the systemic faults were highlighted first in the Home Office’s own lessons learned review by Wendy Williams. It is not that we are bringing the Home Office’s attention to such things for the first time; Wendy Williams had set out many of them. The title of her document was “lessons learned”, but the only thing that one can conclude at this point is that the Home Office has learned nothing—lessons have not been learned at all or, if they have been learned, they have not been implemented.

Where do we go from here? It would be good if the Home Office, even at this late stage, listened and implemented some of the findings of the Wendy Williams review, listened to what lawyers and claimants themselves are saying, and listened to the findings of my Committee’s report. The Windrush compensation scheme has to go to an independent organisation, for reasons of increased efficiency and so that people can have some confidence; the Home Office has to look at the level of documentation being insisted on; and, given that Martin Forde QC, has said that applications being completed with legal assistance would speed things up dramatically, the Home Office should guarantee access to legal assistance for all claimants who require it.

It is important that the Home Office understands that what Home Office Ministers and officials see as a minor administrative challenge, as they have so many more important things to do and to think about, is, for the Windrush generation, their lives. This is a signifier of the care and respect that this society holds for that generation. For Ministers to ignore what is said to them, year after year, about the complaints process and to ignore the suggestions that people make in good faith, suggests to me that they do not respect that generation or understand the humiliation that the generation feels. As I said earlier, it is as if they are waiting for this generation to pass away.

Finally, the Windrush generation came not just from the Caribbean, but from other parts of Commonwealth, as we pointed out in our report. They did not all come on the Windrush or on other boats either. My own father came on an aeroplane, which was very dashing of him at the time. He was an impetuous person; no doubt, that is where I get it from. As I said, they came in good faith and I believe that the Home Office should deal with them in good faith. It is not too late for Home Office Ministers and officials to pay attention to our report, and to other statements that have been made and issues that have been raised, including the view of its own head of policy for the scheme. It is not too late for the Home Office to listen to criticism and finally give justice to the Windrush generation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

We hope it will be quicker than the right hon. Lady has just suggested, and potentially a lot quicker than one of the timeframes that she suggested. I am not in a position today to give a specific date, but we are making excellent progress towards finally resolving this issue. We accept that we need to bring certainty to people, particularly given the age of many of those we are talking about, as touched on by the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Even the children of that generation are well into their 50s and 60s, given that, in many cases, we are talking about people who arrived in the UK before 1 January 1973. We are conscious of the urgency of resolving this issue. I do not want to make a misleading statement today and give a specific date by which it will be resolved, but certainly we believe we are making excellent progress and getting close to resolving it.

The changes we made to the scheme in December 2020 have significantly increased both the amount of compensation awarded and the speed at which awards are made. Since December 2020 we have paid out over £33 million, in contrast to a total of just under £3 million prior to those changes. We now frequently pay out over £1 million a month in compensation, and we recently paid out one of our largest awards to date—a single award in excess of £260,000 to one individual. I hope that Members will understand why I will not give further details of that case, which may identify the person concerned, given the sums involved.

[Ms Abbott]

The Minister has helpfully told us the total sum that has been paid in compensation, but how many claimants does that represent?

Oral Answers to Questions

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I have committed before, and I am happy to do so again, that before the end of the Parliament we will produce a new funding formula to ensure that my hon. Friend’s constituency gets exactly what he deserves, as indeed he should.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does the Home Secretary accept that many Members of this House are dismayed that she did not make a statement in the normal way, so that she could have been questioned in the normal way? Does she further accept that that is not just disrespectful to the House of Commons, but it shows a lack of real concern for those desperate people escaping Ukraine?

[Priti Patel]

I completely reject the right hon. Lady’s latter point, and naturally I will always be happy to return to the House and take questions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

We could rerun the debate on the Nationality and Borders Bill, which I would happily do. This Government are determined not just to reform what is a broken asylum system—we are lifting up every aspect of the dysfunctionality of the system—but to tackle the root causes of illegal migration. In March 2021 the new plan for immigration was published, and we had the Nationality and Borders Bill in this House last autumn. The Opposition seem to be on the wrong side of the argument. They do not really want to support an end to illegal migration or stop the people smugglers.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Is there any truth in the reports that the Government want to have asylum seekers processed offshore in countries such as Gambia? Has any such country actually agreed to this? Does the Secretary of State accept that having people processed hundreds or thousands of miles away might meet the letter of our obligations to asylum seekers but certainly does not meet the spirit?

[Priti Patel]

I absolutely disagree with the right hon. Lady’s question. Had she read the new plan for immigration—the policy statement published for the benefit of all Members in March 2021—she would know that this Government are considering all options for outsourcing processing and for removing people with no legal basis to be in our country. I completely recognise that she disagrees with the policies of this Government—[Interruption.] It matters not which countries. We will continue to discuss this with a range of countries, because I, as Home Secretary, and this Government are determined to fix the decades-long problem of a very broken asylum system. Frankly, under successive Labour Governments there were mass failures to remove people with no legal basis to be in the country.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

I wish to speak to new clause 8 about child citizenship fees, which I am grateful has been signed by a number of Members. The children in question are not migrants. I repeat that they are not migrants, because every time this issue is raised, there is some suggestion that there is something slightly illegal behind this, which is disgraceful. On the contrary, the large majority are exactly like me and the Prime Minister, and have every right to British citizenship. This Government, and all successive Governments, accept that, but the issue is that they are being priced out.

We in this country charge British children—children!—up to 10 times more to claim their citizenship rights than their counterparts in Spain, France, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. The fee is the most expensive in Europe. If the £35 fee introduced back in 1983 had risen in line with inflation, it would be only £120 today. Instead, we charge £1,012—a fee that has doubled in the past decade, and which the Government have the ability to increase at will. It is a fee that far too many cannot afford, and a fee the level of which neither I nor the Prime Minister had to pay.

Why do I keep mentioning myself and the Prime Minister? It is because the circumstances of our births are no different to those of the children in question today. Indeed, many Members across the House were not born here or were born to migrants, and none of us faced such barriers to claiming our citizenship. No one questions our rights, and our British citizenship gives us the right to sit as Members of this House. I repeatedly mention myself and the Prime Minister because I believe that neither of us should be in a position to make things difficult for those children born after us. I certainly did not come to this House to do that.

Like the Windrush generation, through no fault of their own, and often with no idea of what is to come, these children go on to face real difficulties with everyday life and with things that we take for granted, such as travelling, getting a job, renting a home or going to university without being asked to pay international fees. That is in the country they were born in or have lived in their whole lives. Make that make sense.

Citizens UK, Amnesty International, and the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, which has led on this campaign, have estimated that between 85,000 and 215,000 children with a legal entitlement to British citizenship have ended up undocumented due to the extortionate registration fee. Imagine how many children have never had the opportunity to reach their full potential because they spent the end of their childhood, and the beginning of their adulthood, fighting to prove that they have rights in their own country, or fighting to prove that they belong in the only place they have ever called home. It is exactly what happened with the Windrush generation.

We must understand that the harm of being denied citizenship rights in the only country you know cannot be overstated. It is not just about societal barriers; it is the psychological impact of being constantly treated like a second-class citizen. Why do I continually compare them to the Windrush generation? That is because, just like the Windrush generation, a piece of legislation or policy that attempted to dissuade migrants and make the environment more hostile for them is impacting on a group of people who have every right to be here. Just like the Windrush generation, this policy disproportionately affects those of black, Asian, and minority ethnic heritage.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that to make children bear the burden of this Government’s hostile environment policy must be wrong?

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend, and I am sure she will agree with me that, clearly, no lessons have been learned.

New clause 8 does not even ask the Government to scrap the fee, which is my personal preference; it just asks them to reduce it to cost and examine its impact on the rights of children. The new clause does, however, ask for the fee to be scrapped for children in care, for the obvious reason that children in care are the responsibility of the state. As we approach Christmas and we are thinking about families and home, with all the disadvantages that children in care face, the Government seem all too at ease with telling these children that they have no country to call home unless their local authority is willing to pay for it.

I spoke to children who were Lambeth care leavers and they told me horrific tales of threats of deportation to countries they have never been to because they cannot prove their link to their citizenship due to issues with their relations with their parents. Our cash-strapped local authorities cannot afford to keep paying these fees, and they are not border guards or immigration specialists who understand exactly what is happening.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) is absolutely right that there are parts of the citizenship section of the Bill that we appreciate, and things have been corrected. I spoke to the Immigration Minister earlier this week, and I was grateful for his time—I promised I would say something nice, and I did. If we are correcting all these other things, why would we not correct this policy now? We know exactly what the issue is. We know that the courts ruled, the Government appealed, and the courts ruled again that these fees are not in the best interests of children. This Bill is so horrible in so many other areas; is there not just one thing that we can all agree on? Just like with the Windrush scandal, why do the Government want to be dragged screaming into submission on something that they know is absolutely right?

I am glad to be standing here today, because I get to keep the promise that I made just before my election to a group of students from St Gabriel’s College who, along with Lambeth Citizens, explained to me their plight as children who were suffering in this way. I am proud to be a governor at their school, because they are what I call citizens. They are affected by this issue. Some of them have moved on, but they continue to fight for others in their place. I promised that I would stand up in the House and try to show that these young people are valued by their country—because this is their country. I hope that, when new clause 8—hopefully—goes to a vote, every other Member of this House will walk through the Lobby with me and show those young people that they have every single right to be here, that we will not continue to price them out, and that they should be able to access every single right, just like myself and the Prime Minister have been able to do.

Channel Crossings in Small Boats

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Let me put my hon. Friend’s mind at ease and at peace: I have done exactly that.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary spoke earlier about the importance of viable plans; does she still consider the use of wave machines in the channel to turn back small boats to be a viable plan? Does she still consider the sending of desperate asylum seekers to a third country, such as Albania, to be a viable plan? When will she stop using desperate asylum seekers as pawns in this Government’s culture wars?

[Priti Patel]

I categorically reject that notion and the right hon. Lady’s points. She mentioned wave machines; I have never ever suggested or recommended them. I say that for clarity and on the record for the House. As for the other matters, the right hon. Lady has heard me say this afternoon—I refer her to my earlier comments—that her party objects to changing our asylum system, fixing a broken system and, actually, improving the processing of asylum claims, which would, by the way, be of benefit to the individuals who have come to our country illegally. We want to make sure that we have a differentiated approach so that those people who are in genuine need get the support they need and those who have no legal grounds to be here are removed.