Windrush

Debate between Lord Cryer and John Baron

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Cryer]

Of course, I agree.

My second example is more unusual and involves a woman who came from Jamaica when she was a baby. She was abandoned by her parents and grew up in a nunnery, which—Members can tell what is coming—was closed down and demolished after she left, and its records were lost. Again, this is somebody with a broad east London accent. She is quintessentially British and has the right to stay here, but she was told, after she had been through all that, “We’re going to deport you.” That is the sort of culture that we are dealing with at the Home Office, and I suspect that it goes across Government, which I will come to in a minute.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I actually agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are aspects of this case that are deeply concerning, and I hope that the Government learn from it. May I suggest that, at the end of the day, we have to protect Government records and civil servants’ advice to Governments to ensure that civil servants can give advice with candour? Given that we will have an inquiry, which we all hope will go to the heart of the matter, we should look to it to take the issue back to where it began, which was before 2010.

[John Cryer]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the inquiry, but this is an issue of transparency. He and I agree about an awful lot of things, but we are on opposite sides of the fence here. The documents should be put in the public domain. We can redact certain things, such as civil servants’ names, but the names of elected people should not be redacted.

Both the cases that I mentioned earlier resulted in victories, but I am dealing with many other cases. Over the past two or three years—this goes back a long way—I have spent an awful lot of time writing to schools, former employers, colleges and the police. In one case I even had to write to the Army to try to check the records to prove that people who had every right to be here could assume that right.

This country has close ties with the Caribbean and with other Commonwealth countries, and we should bear in mind that this debate will be watched across the Commonwealth. Thousands of people will be watching us in countries such as Jamaica, India and Pakistan. Those close ties with the Commonwealth, and with the Caribbean in particular, have their roots in an appalling institution: the empire. It was built on piracy and slavery, but nevertheless the one good thing to come out of that poisonous institution was the Commonwealth, which has always given relatively small countries, often with little political and economic clout, a platform for their voices to be heard, especially here and particularly at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings.

After the war, a series of Governments in this country and in others worked to foster the bonds with the Commonwealth, but those bonds have now been loosened. It is not simply that communities in this country have been given cause to fear what might happen, which is bad enough; we have also undermined relationships with countries across the globe. I never thought I would see the Prime Minister of Jamaica standing in Downing Street, expressing his dismay at the British Government and their policies. That goes way beyond what any previous Jamaican Prime Minister has said, and previous Prime Ministers were fairly critical—I am thinking of Michael Manley and his father Norman. Nobody has expressed such sentiments in the heart of the capital. This Government’s job now is to rebuild links with the affected communities and reassure them that they are safe and not under threat. The Government also need—this includes the Foreign Office—to rebuild links with the Commonwealth countries that have had their faith in Britain shattered.