Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I have highlighted, both today and in previous statements, it is absolutely my intention, my desire and my focus, and the focus of the Home Office, to ensure that we do more around compensation. These cases, I am sorry to say, are complicated for a whole range of reasons, but that does not necessarily mean that we should allow process to just consume these cases. We must make sure that we are getting support to individuals and the Department is absolutely geared up to do that.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Recommendation 6 of Wendy Williams’s review calls for an education programme to be introduced for all new and existing Home Office staff to make sure that all staff

“learn about the history of the UK and its relationship with the rest of the world, including Britain’s colonial history, the history of inward and outward migration and the history of black Britons.”

It is right that the Home Secretary has announced today that that programme is being introduced in the Home Office. Does she agree with me that if we are to avoid such a shameful scandal as the Windrush scandal ever happening again, that content is important not only for staff in the Home Office, but for every child being educated in British schools? If she does agree that that is important, will she speak to her colleague, the Minister for Schools, who has recently refused to meet me and campaigners from my constituency—young people—who are desperate to see reform in their education system, so that they can all say, collectively, “Our history is British history”?

[Priti Patel]

Of course.