Immigration: Hostile Environment

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank and congratulate my noble friend Lord Bassam on securing this debate and introducing it so well. I will concentrate on a slightly different aspect of this whole thing, namely, the hostile environment: why did it get created and who created it? In so doing, I will look at the assumptions and attitudes we have brought to bear on this question of immigration.

The “Empire Windrush” story is not new. Some of the things that are now coming out had been known to us for quite a while. When I was deputy chair of the Commission for Racial Equality one heard these stories. We made some small inquiries. Nothing happened. Things moved on and went on. We hear stories of people who owed HMRC only £1 or £2 who have been deported or threatened with deportation.

Why is there this kind of attitude? Where does it spring from? From what soil does this kind of attitude to our fellow human beings, now labelled as illegal immigrants, spring? That is the question I want to address. In the course of doing so I will certainly talk about a few of the contemporary situations.

I think we will all agree that, unless there are reasons to the contrary, unlawful immigrants should not be here. They should go. The question is, how far are we prepared to go in making them go? Is there no point at which we will stop? In any liberal society there are certain human rights and basic values. Any attempt to get rid of an evil has to be balanced against those values and rights. Why, then, do we give so much importance to the evil we want to get rid of and ignore the values to which we are committed?

A very particular attitude springs up in Britain from time to time. I have been here for nearly 60 years and I have seen this happen. A kind of obsession grips the nation. Then a kind of psychosis comes and overtakes the country. That becomes such a dominant passion that everything that serves that cause is to be tolerated and encouraged. That is what we have allowed to happen in the case of unlawful immigration. We convince ourselves that these illegal immigrants are a national threat, a danger to the country, an enemy within—people coming from outside taking over our country. Unless we get rid of them we will not be able to maintain our identity. How do we get rid of them? It does not matter: all ways are fair.

This needs to be looked at very carefully. This attitude that all means are fair—that all the powers that the Government and the Home Office need to secure those results are acceptable—is all part of our history over the last 30 to 40 years. If one looks at, for example, the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016, they give draconian powers to the Home Office that in ordinary circumstances would be unthinkable. We cannot simply talk about the “Empire Windrush” unless we are also prepared to talk about those powers of the Government.

In the course of exercising those powers there have been high-profile enforcement campaigns. Remember those boards on the buses saying “Go home or face arrest”? In the course of exercising those powers we have used schools to provide the data. We have gone to workplaces to find out what happened. The benefit system has been capped to find out illegal immigrants. Access to services, hospital doctors—at any conceivable point where we can catch them we have been trying to do so. We have set targets, although those became the subject of some controversy, and put them ahead of people. We threaten people with deportation and detention. We look at their bank accounts to see whether any illegal transactions are taking place.

In the course of using those powers to try to achieve this kind of goal, inevitably mistakes are made—they are bound to be. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration said that 10% of the cases have been wrongly identified. Not only that but small derelictions become very large—they get magnified in our views and become subjects for deportation. As I said earlier, one has read cases of people owing Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs £1 or £2. Small mistakes are made, different papers presented and someone is ready to be deported or detained. This is particularly evident in the case of the “Empire Windrush” and I want to look at what happened in that context. I do not want to sound too professorial here—although that is, or has been, my job—but it is very striking that the “Empire Windrush” was not the first ship bringing West Indians here, nor was it the largest. Why has it then become so iconic? That is a story I shall have to wait for another opportunity to tell.

Something else is striking. I welcome what my noble friend Lord Bassam said about the Labour Party’s attitude; and please forgive me if I do not entirely exonerate my own party for what it did in the case of the “Empire Windrush”. When the “Empire Windrush” was ready to leave Jamaica, sadly, the British Government of Prime Minister Attlee sent a message asking whether there was any way of preventing it sailing. A few days later a message was sent asking if it should be diverted to east Africa, which was part of our empire, where all those on the boat could be given jobs. After it landed, sadly, about 10 Labour MPs approached the Government saying “it was not a good thing for Britain to have too many blacks”, because it might damage race relations. Now, despite this dark chapter, throughout the last 40 or 50 years Labour has been very sensitive to any kind of racism, occasional mistakes apart. The Labour Party came around and followed a policy of controlling immigration and anti-racist legislation.

I should not go on too long. Let us agree that with regard to the “Empire Windrush” and other cases, we have resorted to a policy of catching illegal immigrants. The way in which we have done so has caught some illegal immigrants, but what have been the larger consequences? First, some legal immigrants have been identified and punished. Secondly, the country’s sensibility has become very coarse, such that if a man is branded as illegal, anything goes, anything can be done to him. Thirdly, because we talk about illegal immigrants, all immigrants get marked in this way and that accounts for the populist reaction that we have been witnessing, not only in Britain but everywhere else. Where people feel so possessive about the country, then the figure of the immigrant, not just the illegal immigrant, becomes a dangerous one, something to watch against. As soon as someone is identified as an immigrant, people will say, “Oh, my God, lock him up, send him away”. The psychology behind the politics has not developed in a vacuum. It has developed slowly, each step being sensible in its own right, but all collectively leading to disaster.

It is also the case that it has tarnished Britain’s reputation. Those of us who read newspapers in other countries feel deeply saddened that a country we love should be represented in this way as a country which is prepared to denigrate its own citizens, deport them and detain them. This is not the way a civilised country should behave.

What, then, should we be doing? I do not want to talk about compassion. I do not think the Conservative Party is particularly keen on compassion, so I will not say let us take a compassionate attitude to immigration; instead, let us take a realistic attitude to illegal immigration. What would a realistic attitude to illegal immigration be? First, let us recognise that it is bound to occur. Desperate people in desperate parts of the world are going to struggle to come to us. Secondly, they come here because we were there. How did we break open their societies? Did we behave? I can give accounts of what Lord Clive and others did in my own country. Did we behave more sensibly? Did we live up to the standard that we are now expecting them to conform to? Oh, come on!

The other important thing is that they come here because we have messed up their countries through our foreign policy and they are in a situation where their lives are unliveable. When I read horrible stories about Syria and Afghanistan and elsewhere, and people coming here, I ask myself why are they coming so late? I should have expected them to come before. They come illegally because they would like to come legally but we have closed the legal door. Illegal immigration takes place because legal immigration has been blocked. So I do not think we should simply blame the villain out there, in the form of an illegal immigrant; we should also look at ourselves and our policies with some degree of modesty and humility and ask ourselves whether we are responsible for what is going on. I do not think the Minister would want to say that we have no responsibility of any kind for the illegal immigration that is taking place.

I want to alert noble Lords to something. The “Empire Windrush” story is only one, and that has resulted in so many cases. A friend came to see me the other day and I am told there are similar stories waiting to break. This man told me his life story. He cannot bring the wife he married in the Dominican Republic here and cannot bring his daughter. His mother is dying and is desperately anxious to see them. Why is a long story, but the important thing is that there are cases waiting to break and I think it is about time that the Government became proactive and seized themselves of the situation.