Scheduled Mass Deportation: Jamaica

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend, as always, puts it very well. Of course, when people come to this country as immigrants and make a contribution—to academia, to the work environment, and in myriad other ways—we welcome them with open arms. Our new points-based system, which will become active in just a few days’ time, does precisely that. However, as he says, if somebody comes to this country and enjoys our hospitality, but abuses that hospitality by committing a serious criminal offence, they can, should, and will be removed in the interests of public protection.

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

I first pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) for having secured such an important and time-critical urgent question. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) for his previous work and advocacy in this important area.

The news of this flight comes just days after the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that the Government, as we have heard, acted unlawfully in their treatment of the Windrush generation through the hostile environment. As Caroline Waters, the chair of the EHRC, said,

“The treatment of the Windrush generation as a result of hostile environment policies was a shameful stain on British history.”

There is no clear timetable for implementing the recommendations of the Wendy Williams report, and with just 12% of applicants having received a payment and at least nine people having died waiting, the Windrush compensation scheme is failing badly. In his written response to me over the weekend, the Minister said that it is wrong and offensive to conflate this returns flight with the Windrush scandal, but I am afraid that given this Government’s track record, their failings on Windrush and the delays in the compensation scheme, we simply have no faith that this Government have done their due diligence in relation to those on this scheduled flight, and we would not be doing ours if we did not ask the questions.

Of course, we recognise that those who engage in violent and criminal acts must face justice. However, we also hear that at least one person on that flight has a Windrush generation grandfather; there is another whose great-aunt was on the HMT Windrush, and another whose grandfather fought in the second world war for Britain. It is clear that we have not yet established just how far the consequences of the Windrush injustice extend. With that in mind, what assessment has been made to ensure that none of those scheduled to be on the flight are eligible under the Windrush scheme, or have been affected by the wider immigration injustices that impacted the victims of the Windrush scandal? What assurances can the Minister provide the House that the mandatory duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of the children left behind, who are innocent in this, has been considered?

It has also been reported that the Home Office has reached an agreement with the Jamaican Government that people who left Jamaica as children will no longer be repatriated. Can the Minister confirm whether this is the case, and can he also confirm what age someone would need to be to have been determined to be a child?

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Lady, the shadow Minister, asks about the Windrush scheme. As she will be aware, over 6,300 people have now been given citizenship, quite rightly, and 13,300 documents have been issued to those people who suffered terrible wrongs in the past. In terms of compensation, 226 people have now received claims totalling in excess of £2.1 million, with a great deal more to pay out. I can also confirm that all of these cases on the plane have been individually assessed, and none of them is eligible for the Windrush compensation scheme.

The hon. Lady spent a great deal of time talking about Windrush during her question, but I say again—as I said in my letter to her—that it is completely wrong to conflate the people who were the victims of terrible injustice in the Windrush cases with these cases, who are nothing to do with Windrush, have no Windrush entitlement at all, and have committed terrible criminal offences. She also asks about the age eligibility. The Government are fully committed to discharging their obligation under the 2007 Act, which is to seek to remove anyone of any age who has been sentenced to a custodial term of over 12 months. That has been, is, and will remain our policy.

I am not going to comment on the individual operational circumstances surrounding any particular flight, but we are fully committed to the 2007 Act’s provisions. In relation to children, there is a well defined test around family rights and how they interact with removal. It is possible for people to go to the courts if they want to test their family rights against the Government’s obligations to remove them. But we are clear that our priority is protecting British citizens from dangerous criminals, and that is what we are doing.