Windrush

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Benjamin on securing this debate, for the eloquent and passionate speech she made today, and for the brilliant monument installed at Waterloo station last year, to which her tireless campaigning led.

Although many people will have heard about the Windrush scandal, they—like me—may not know how it arose. The tale is worth retelling, because it sets the context of how the Windrush scandal was allowed to arise, and how it went from bad to worse. Under the Immigration Act 1971, foreign nationals ordinarily resident in the UK were deemed to have settled status and given indefinite leave to remain. However, many people were not issued with any documentation confirming their status, and the Home Office did not keep a full register confirming who was entitled to this status. So the fault for what subsequently happened lies, at least in part, at the door of the Home Office.

Then we had the “hostile environment”, initiated by Theresa May in 2012 with the intention of deterring illegal immigrants—but the Home Office started checking more widely. By late 2017, media coverage started to pay attention to individual cases of long-term residents facing hardship due to their difficulties in proving their lawful immigration status. Jobs, homes, healthcare and welfare benefits were lost, as we have all heard. People were detained, removed from the UK and denied re-entry to their homes following trips abroad.

I can only imagine what it must have felt like to be faced with billboards saying, “Go Home or Face Arrest” and the psychological distress felt by people whose residence was suddenly called into question after so many years. Research by the University of London found that psychological distress suffered by the Windrush population rose markedly after the Immigration Act 2014 and the subsequent Windrush scandal came to light. This had a worse psychological effect than the coronavirus on the general population.

Some interim measures to redress the damage were introduced and Theresa May apologised in words to the effect of, “But I didn’t mean you”. But it was too late—the hostile environment had spread and infected large parts of the white British psyche.

We have heard that, in 2018, Wendy Williams began her review of “lessons learned” and made 30 recommendations, which were accepted in full by the then Home Secretary Priti Patel. The compensation scheme was introduced in 2019, administered by the Home Office. It is shameful to note that by 2023, fewer than 2,000 claims had been settled—only 13% of the outstanding claims.

UNISON has commented that the Home Office administrators of the compensation scheme have

“placed victims under scrutiny … treated their claims with skepticism and placed their … lives in limbo. For too many of those affected, the compensation scheme feels like more of the same rather than … justice”.

The Home Office, aided and abetted by the “hostile environment”, was clearly the source of the problem. I cannot see it being capable of delivering the solution any time soon, given its record so far. It seems clear to me that administration of the compensation scheme, as has been called for by so many others, should be placed in independent hands. Age UK and many others, including the Lib Dem group here, are calling for this.

Even when compensation has been offered, some offers were insultingly low and arguably the most important element of all—loss of private pension—was not considered, consigned to the “too difficult” box. Many of these individuals are now pensioners, with no opportunity to make up the lost pensions they would have received.

After Priti Patel accepted the Wendy Williams recommendations in full, the next Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, reneged on three—to have a migrant commissioner to engage with migrants directly, to have a review of the remit and role of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, and to have reconciliation events with Windrush families. Wendy Williams said that the Home Office must

“open itself up to greater external scrutiny”

and advised it that it was

“vital to improve the accountability, effectiveness and legitimacy of the system”.

UNISON is currently working with other parties to provide a legal challenge to this decision and has been given permission to go to the High Court this spring. In September 2021, Wendy Williams reviewed progress and said that the Home Office was

“potentially poised to make the … changes it needs to”.

Given that in 2023 it was only 13% through the case load, I wonder whether she is anywhere close to being satisfied.

I will ask four questions of the Minister. First, will the Government ask Ms Williams to include a further independent review of progress as part of her current wider remit to look at the Home Office’s functioning more generally?

Secondly, a Home Office source said that they were worried that reneging on three of the recommendations previously committed to signalled that it was

“rolling back from the commitments that we publicly made about not repeating those mistakes”.

What evidence does the Minister have that this is not the case, and that the hostile environment is a thing of the past?

Thirdly, will the Government hand the management of the compensation scheme to an independent body? It would help to restore trust and confidence. If the Minister was considering responding by saying that this would prolong completing the job even further, perhaps he could consider that it could hardly be slower.

Fourthly, on pensions, will the Government consider creating a team of actuaries to work solely on pensions claims? That way, it would not hold everything else up.

Before I sit down, I will refer to another, bigger picture that we might want to consider here. I wonder how many, if any, illegal immigrants actually gave up and went home, or were deterred from coming to the UK at all by the “hostile environment”. It certainly has not stopped people risking their lives in small boats in the channel—as we saw only yesterday from the tragedy in the news.

We can conclude that the Government’s immigration strategy is a failure, except in one sense. It has succeeded in helping to stir up racism and racial intolerance in this country and has fostered hatred against all immigrants and even people of second, third and further generations back. After all, the Home Office only responds to the tone set by the Government of the day; unfortunately, the Government of the day have been the Conservative Party, which has been setting the hostile environment tone for far too long.