Windrush Compensation Scheme

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

On the noble Lord’s last question about the number being lost, it will be of course be a digital token, a digital identity. I acknowledge the fears that some people who are resisting it have about something which is not on paper. It may make them feel insecure but it is probably more secure than a piece of paper which can easily be lost. I totally agree with his point about the culture, which had grown over successive years into a situation where we were more likely not to believe people than to believe them and, over decades, the Windrush tragedy happened. On the question of ensuring that it does not happen again, I refer to the answer I gave previously about Wendy Williams carrying out the lessons learned review. Identity assurance—this goes back to the noble Lord’s question about having a physical document—as it has grown up from the 1970s onwards, has become more important for people in everyday life to enable them to work, to rent and to prove that they are who they say they are.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

I acknowledge the Minister saying that it was a travesty—it is a travesty and a tragedy—but my noble friend Lord Paddick asked how proactive the Government will be in compensating and reaching these people who were wrongly deported and have been treated so shabbily. We have read of terrible cases where people have died, been denied cancer care and deported. Over the years, a number of people under the radar have been deported. The fact that they were deported means that the Home Office must have a record of who those people are and so, instead of waiting for them to contact us or their respective Governments if they are already in the country to which they were deported, what are the Government going to do to contact them? As the Government must have a record of paying for their flight back to their country of origin, surely they should be proactive in bringing them back or compensating them if they are not in a position to come back and are living in poverty in another country. Can the Minister say specifically what proactive measures are being taken to deal with that?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness asks a perfectly logical question about what we have done about some of the people who we might have wrongly removed from this country. Officials spent a long time doing a manual trawl of some of the people we removed. I had the numbers—the number 57 comes to mind, but I will double check and write to the noble Baroness about the exact breakdown of the numbers that we checked.