Immigration: Pausing the Hostile Environment Debate
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Chris Bryant
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Immigration: Pausing the Hostile Environment
Chris Bryant Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes
The hon. Gentleman is always a forceful advocate for his own constituents. Throughout the Windrush crisis, I have seen Members of Parliament from all parties interceding and acting with great speed and compassion. It is essential that we convey a message of reassurance, which is what I sought to do when I attended a drop-in surgery with members of the Caribbean community in Southampton. Individual Members of Parliament are very well placed to do that, but it is absolutely the case that individuals can contact the taskforce without any need to approach immigration lawyers or advisers. I strongly recommend that they do that rather than approach a lawyer.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Do we not need to learn a much bigger lesson? Mr Speaker is descended from Romanian Jews. The former Foreign Secretary’s great grandfather was Turkish. The Agars, the Jardines, the Poulters and the Villiers all came over with the Normans. The de Bois and the Corbyns came over with the Huguenots. The Gillans, the Bryants, the Brennans, the Keegans, the Donelans and many others are, frankly, in the end Irish. Is not the truth of the matter that not a single Member of this House has pure, pure, pure British blood and that we should rejoice in the fact that we are all the children of immigrants?
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. I am sure that he was desperately trying to work out where Nokes came from. [Interruption.] I do not know. It is my ex-husband’s name. It is really important that we acknowledge, celebrate and recognise the contribution that immigrants have made to our country, to our community and to our society, and I do that. I hope that, over the coming months when we get to debate the immigration Bill, people will remember that.