Windrush

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department to make a statement on the Government’s policy on Windrush.

[The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)]

It is a pleasure to be back, Mr Speaker.

The Home Secretary has been very clear both that the Government deeply regret what has happened over decades to some of the Windrush generation and that we are determined to put it right. The Home Secretary laid a written statement in the House on 24 May to establish the Windrush scheme, which ensures that members of the Windrush generation, their children born in the UK and those who arrived in the UK as minors and others who have been in the United Kingdom for a long period of time will be able to obtain the documents to confirm their status and, in appropriate cases, obtain British citizenship free of charge.

The last update on our historical review of removals and detentions was presented to the Home Affairs Committee on 21 August. The Home Secretary has written to apologise in the case of 18 people whom we have identified are most likely to have suffered detriment as a result of Government action. To the end of July, 2,272 people have been helped by the taskforce to get the documentation they need to prove their existing right to be in the UK under the initial arrangements put in place prior to the establishment of the Windrush scheme, and 1,465 people have also been granted citizenship or documentation to prove their status under the formal Windrush scheme. The taskforce is also working to help eligible individuals return to the UK.

The Home Secretary has announced a compensation scheme for those who have been affected as a result of not being able to demonstrate their status. The public consultation for that scheme was launched on 19 July and will run to 11 October. The Home Office is using a range of channels to engage with those who have been affected and to encourage people to respond to the consultation. We will announce details of the final scheme and how to apply as soon as possible after the consultation has ended.

Finally, the Home Secretary has commissioned a lessons learned review, to identify how members of the Windrush generation came to be entangled in measures designed for illegal immigrants. He has been clear that the lessons learned review requires independent oversight and scrutiny and has appointed Wendy Williams as independent adviser to the review. I know that, across the House, we are united in our determination to deal with the problems faced by people of the Windrush generation. I therefore hope we can take a cross-party approach which recognises that the most important thing we can do is ensure the wrongs that some have faced are put right.

[Ms Abbott]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker.

Ministers might have thought that they had drawn a line under the Windrush scandal, but it continues to throw up new horrors. This summer I was in the Caribbean, and Ministers should not underestimate the concern that the Windrush issue has caused throughout the Commonwealth. We are preparing to leave the EU. At a time when we should be strengthening our trading links with Commonwealth partners in Africa, the Caribbean and south Asia, are Ministers aware of how much damage the Windrush scandal has caused?

Now we have learnt that three citizens have died in Jamaica after having been wrongfully deported from this country. This is something that ought to shame Ministers. Worse, we did not learn this from our own Government. This intelligence comes from Her Excellency the Foreign Minister for Jamaica, Kamina Johnson-Smith. Left to this Government’s own devices, we might never have learnt of those deaths.

The Government have been dilatory in fulfilling their repeated verbal commitments to find out who the victims are of this scandal and what they will do to correct it. Instead, we have the Home Secretary making an apology to just 18 of the victims identified who have been wrongly detained or deported. This is despite the fact that the Government themselves have identified 164 such victims. Were any of the three victims now deceased who have been identified by Jamaican Ministers included in the Government’s list of 164? If they were, what was done to try to remedy the situation before the deaths? If not, we are entitled to believe that the Government’s list of 164 is of little value, with gaping holes in its information.

The Home Secretary’s apology to the 18 is welcome. A sincere apology is long overdue, but why only these 18, when the Government have identified many, many more cases? What is the basis of the apology? Does it include an assurance to address the hardship being caused here and now, or will the 18 have to wait like everyone else until the Government finalise their compensation scheme?

We learned from newspaper reports that the Government are losing the majority of their appeals in immigration cases. They are still trying to deport thousands of people who are entitled to be here. The Windrush scandal lives, even while some of its victims have died. This scandal is due to the Government’s hostile environment policy, which is supported by the entire Government, including the Home Secretary, who has tried to rebrand it. Ministers need to abandon the hostile environment policy. Unless and until they do, the reek of the Windrush scandal will forever be associated with the Home Secretary and this Government, not just here in Britain but throughout the Commonwealth.

[Caroline Nokes]

I was delighted to hear the right hon. Lady refer to the importance of reaching out to different parts of the world in a post-Brexit scenario. She will be aware, as I am, of the work the Prime Minister has done in Africa over the past few weeks. I agree that it is important that we foster relations right around the globe, which is why we have been extremely proactive in working with high commissioners across the Caribbean to make sure that the 164 people identified so far as part of our review are proactively contacted and that we can, as I said earlier, put right the wrongs that have been done to the Windrush generation.

The former Home Secretary and the current Home Secretary have been clear in their apologies to the Windrush generation, and those have been sincere and heartfelt. However, I would point out to the right hon. Lady that there have been policies under successive Governments to make sure that those who have the right to be here are able to access benefits, employment and services, but those who do not are correctly identified by a series of compliant-environment policies. The right hon. Lady speaks as if those policies were begun by this Government, but in fact right-to-work checks commenced in 1997, controls on benefits in 1999, controls on social care in 2002, and civil penalties for employers of illegal workers in 2008.

It is notable, as I said right at the beginning of my statement, that people from the Windrush generation who have had wrong done to them, for which we have apologised and will continue to apologise, have been affected over decades. The right hon. Lady might like to reflect that, of the 164 individuals identified so far by the review, in the region of half were impacted prior to 2010.