Windrush

Lord Bishop of Newcastle Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, for securing the opportunity to debate this important topic. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, for his speech; it is an honour to follow him and with him I wish to acknowledge and honour those sitting in the Chamber today. I am personally indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, for being an inspiring role model. Being one of her “Play School” babies—I was born in 1973—I grew up with her visibility firmly in my view. However, as a child, and even as a young adult, I had no knowledge of her story or indeed of the narrative of the Windrush generation and the scandal associated with it. She has had an indelible impact on my life and being in her company in this House is a tremendous honour.

In the other place yesterday, a Question was asked about another matter of delay, the infected blood scandal compensation. This, and other areas of concern, such as Grenfell and the Post Office, mean that we have a tapestry of issues with recurring themes of redress, compensation and delay. Yet these are not just issues; they are about lives and they are about justice. I must note the disparity in processes that the noble Lord just mentioned.

I am only too aware that the Church of England is rightly getting its own house in order, albeit not fast enough. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, is working tirelessly in his role as chair of the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice. In her closing speech in a debate at the Church of England’s recent General Synod, the Bishop of Dover reflected that representation at all levels of the Church is not yet where it should be. In 2020, the members of the General Synod voted unanimously to apologise for the Church’s racism and to give thanks for the contribution of the Windrush generation and their descendants to British life and culture.

In my own context of north-east England, the city of Newcastle is passionate about its sport, particularly football. It is well documented that children of the Windrush generation changed football in Britain for ever. They confronted discrimination not just on the pitch, but, as the anti-racism charity Kick It Out reports, these players

“have had to cope with the additional pressure of beating racists on the terraces … in the media and in the boardroom”.

In 1996, the former Newcastle and Trinidad and Tobago goalkeeper Shaka Hislop, from his own experience of racist abuse, helped to found the charity Show Racism the Red Card. From its north-east origins, this charity now works tirelessly across the UK and plays a vital role in tackling racism within professional and grass-roots football. With this sporting context in mind, this issue is not a siloed one; it is about all of life, recreational and cultural, and especially about the lives of those who still wait for recognition and compensation. That is why we are here today, shamefully.

In my own life and work, calls for justice and reconciliation are deeply ingrained throughout the biblical narrative. Other faith traditions also speak into these themes. I find it deeply distressing that, as other noble Lords have pointed out, people have died waiting for their Windrush compensation claims to be processed. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley, told us that there have been 53 deaths. In 2023, there were more than 2,000 claims where victims received a zero payment, more than double the number in the same period in 2022. It is not hard to see or understand the impact of delays, and it is not surprising that claimants distrust and feel suspicious about the Home Office. They must feel that they are being retraumatised. They are being retraumatised by being asked for documents and proof in the same way that they were asked to try to prove their residency in the first place.

This scheme was meant to be designed to compensate for the failings of the Home Office in the Windrush scandal and to provide justice for those people, yet it seems that the tenor of many claimants’ interactions with the Home Office does not reflect that. A new report by University College London has found that government policies had a worse effect on the mental health of black Caribbean people than the pandemic lockdown had on the wider population, as the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, mentioned in her speech. This increase of psychological distress deepens the trauma and injustice.

Calls from victims, Members of this House and of the other place and many campaign groups to address all these matters are ongoing and are also seeking to ensure that legal aid is guaranteed to all eligible claimants, because this is a huge barrier, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said. I, too, ask the Minister whether the Government will provide this or at least a system to recover legal costs, as the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, indicated in his excellent speech.

In the progress report on the “lessons learned review”—this has been referred to in many speeches—and in follow-ups, Wendy Williams said that the review of the compliant environment policies remains essential to ensuring that the Home Office learns from past experience and adopts a more compassionate approach. That matter was raised again in this House by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, in November last year. Once again, I ask the Minister: what has happened to that review? We must surely rebuild the public’s trust in our Government. I fear there is a risk that the compensation scheme meant to redress injustice is becoming part of the problem and a source of injustice in itself.

Again, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for tableting this debate today. I commit to following her tireless work in this matter and to offering what support I can in my role.