Windrush Review

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms McVey. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) and other Members present who have been so tenacious in pursuing this issue, and I guarantee they will continue if it is not resolved.

The key point here is that after a dreadful, shameful thing happened, there was an inquiry led by Wendy Williams and a report. The Government accepted the recommendations of that report, but today, some five years after the scandal unfolded and two years after accepting those 30 recommendations, they have only implemented eight of them. When promising to implement those recommendations, the Home Secretary said that there would be

“a total transformation of our culture.”

That has not happened, but let us remind ourselves why it was so necessary to transform that culture. What had it led to? What was so scandalous about the Windrush scandal?

As we have heard from others today, people’s lives were turned upside down through no fault of their own. The hon. Member for Edmonton talked about the gentleman who got further and further into debt through no fault of his own, but through the fault of the Government—so much so that when his son tragically died he could not even pay for his funeral. Let us think about that. How must that have made him feel?

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) rightly said that many of the people had never even set foot outside of the UK. These are people we should be celebrating. As the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) said, these people transformed our culture with, for example, music and food. On her idea that the 75th anniversary of the Windrush celebrations should happen across these islands next year, I guarantee that Glasgow and Scotland will be up for that. I will, as a board member of Flag Up Scotland Jamaica, make sure that it happens in Glasgow at least.

When the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton) made her speech, I was very interested to listen to the memories evoked by the festival. I can tell her that my Jamaican partner has amassed a very large collection of whisky and I am trying to persuade him to get a cocktail cabinet. He, the Jamaican, is not up for it, but I will get one, anyway.

How was the scandal able to happen? It is as the Home Secretary acknowledged when she pledged a total transformation of culture in the Home Office. The culture there is what allowed it to happen. Its own internal report, the one that it hoped to suppress but which was leaked to The Guardian, said as much. The hon. Member for Streatham alluded to it. The leaked Home Office report stated:

“Every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation between 1950 and 1981 was designed, at least in part, to reduce the number of black or brown people permitted to live and work in the UK.”

How utterly scandalous is that? As the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) said, the case is proven and that quote is proof.

I say to the Home Secretary through the Minister that she should not suppress the report. It is empowering and freeing to own up to the truth. I speak as someone who was involved in a campaign and subsequently a major theatre production called “Emancipation Acts”, which was aimed at getting the people of Scotland to own up to our past connections to slavery. It worked because people like the truth and they like honesty. It is now widely accepted in Scotland that we were just as culpable as other countries for the Caribbean slave trade. Organisations from the University of Glasgow to Glasgow City Council and many more besides are saying sorry and making reparations, and people respect that.

The Home Secretary was not in her position in the years I mentioned previously. She is not personally responsible for what happened then, so why not publish the report, admit how awful the situation was and get on with making the promised reparations? As we have heard, there are multiple failings in following through on Wendy Williams’ recommendations. The vast majority of people do not have their compensation. People have died waiting for justice. People do not trust the process, and I do not blame them. They talk of being treated with scepticism by officials. As the Home Affairs Committee reported, the burden of proof on applicants is too great.

We heard from the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) about the extortionate legal fees that people have to pay and about the tens of thousands of cases not yet allocated to a caseworker. On the point about caseworkers not reflecting the Windrush communities, I get that. I did not always get that, but I do now. If the Minister does not, there is a room full of experts here who can explain it to him.

Given that the scheme is too slow, that people are still treated with scepticism, that applicants do not trust officials, and that the Home Office is not keeping up with the rest of its work—for example, my constituents seeking asylum are now waiting exceptionally long times for their initial interview—will the Minister not finally accept the recommendation of the Home Affairs Committee that the scheme be transferred to an independent organisation? It would resolve those issues and free up valuable Home Office time.

The Government do not mind outsourcing all manner of other jobs to all manner of other companies—Mears and Atos, to name but two—so why can they not do the same with the Windrush compensation scheme? Nobody is looking to get rich. One reason is that an independent organisation might act more fairly and might offer decent compensation. If someone is offered less than the scandal has cost them, surely that is theft—there is no other word for it. The other reason the Government do not want an independent company to administer the scheme is that, put simply, stalling, making people jump through hoops and letting them die while they wait is all part of the doubling down on the hostile environment to which they are so wedded.

As the hon. Members for Streatham and for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) both noted, we only have to look at the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 to know that nothing has been learned. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam made a great point about the equality impact assessments being completely ignored. We only have to think about the plan to send asylum seekers thousands of miles to Rwanda—a country whose human rights record means that its own people flee to seek asylum with us—to know that the hostility continues. We only need to remember the Government’s announcement last week of the pilot scheme, which will tag asylum seekers as if they were wild dogs, to know that they simply do not care. If they did care, they would not be doing those things, and they would do a very simple but effective thing by outsourcing the compensation scheme to an independent organisation that would treat people—who, let us not forget, the Government have traumatised—with care and compassion. People would feel comfortable approaching this organisation, which would expedite their claims and ensure that the victims of the Windrush scandal were treated with respect.

Like the hon. Member for Battersea and the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, my partner has family members who came here from Jamaica to rebuild this country. His father arrived from Jamaica before Windrush. Had he been caught up in the scandal, I would be at the Minister’s door every single day until he got justice. Even the thought of it is distressing to me, and I cannot imagine the distress not just to the victims but to their families, their friends and the West Indian community as a whole.

Again, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Edmonton and others—including Members who are not present but who have continued to be part of the effort to get justice—for their tenacity and for their refusal to let the Government off the hook. I pay tribute to all my fellow citizens out there whose lives were turned upside down by the Windrush scandal. I hope some are watching, so that they will know we will always fight for them, given everything they have been through. They are still standing, and we are proud to stand with them.

I have lost count of the number of debates and meetings that have been held in this place to discuss the Windrush scandal. Why will the Minister not just get it sorted and let us move on to other matters? More importantly, we need to let the people who are caught up in this move on with their lives. As frustrating as I find it to constantly have to revisit these matters, the Government are wrong if they think that their procrastination will lead to us eventually giving up. We will have as much energy as it takes, and we will not walk away from people. We will keep on fighting for what, after all, are their rights.