Windrush

Debate between Jeremy Quin and Shabana Mahmood

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this incredibly important debate. A lot has been said today and over the past week or so about this scandal, but I still feel that there are not words strong enough to describe how awful, appalling, heartbreaking and profoundly un-British this whole scandal has been. I associate myself with all the remarks made by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary in her opening speech. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and, in particular, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on the tremendous work they have done on bringing this issue to light.

This is a horrendous, horrible moment, not just for the Windrush generation and their children but for all of us in our collective national life, and it will have an enduring legacy. If we choose, and if the Government listen, it could be a positive legacy that helps us to move forward in a way that is in the best of our British traditions of fairness, decency and a desire to do the right thing. In that context, I say to Home Office Ministers that they should take heed of our motion and simply release the paperwork. If there is an issue as to how extensive the wording of the motion is, they should work with either the shadow Front-Bench team or the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee to come to a wording that is acceptable and to bring forward the disinfectant that is sunlight.

[Jeremy Quin]

I do not think the hon. Lady understands the import of the motion. If the motion is passed, the papers are required to be given; it is a resolution of the House. Then the Government would have to comply, I presume, with the orders of the Humble Address. It is not an invitation to treat or to discuss.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, but as we all know in this place, there are always the usual channels for discussions to be had, and if there was ever a moment for the usual channels and for discussions to be had, I would say that in resolving this most important national matter, this would be the time. It is open to the Government at any point to work with those of us who want the paperwork released, so that we can get to the bottom of what happened and truly learn lessons, and move forward in a way that would honour the Windrush generation and put right what they have suffered. That is what needs to happen.

I welcome the move today to provide legal certainty about how the Windrush generation will be treated in their future applications, but I ask Home Office Ministers to consider giving those citizens access to legal aid and good-quality legal advice as they try to regularise their status. I say that because the absence of legal aid has pushed people towards rapacious and terrible solicitors who give bad advice, and because simply saying, “We have put this on a legal footing and now you can trust the Home Office,” is not enough for people who are still too scared to come forward. The Government have lost the trust of a generation. I know people who, despite my personal assurances, are still too afraid to come forward. A simple legal and legislative change will not be enough. They need access to independent legal advice, and they need financial help for the purpose.

I shall make a couple of general remarks on illegal immigration. Some Conservative Members attempted to ask the Opposition, “What would you do about illegal immigration?” We dishonour the Windrush generation if we make this a debate about illegal immigration, and if we miss the point about the culture of disbelief that fuels the hostile environment, which, as the scandal has shown, sits at the heart of what has happened. It is that culture of disbelief that renders British citizens and British nationals as if they were not just immigrants but illegal too. It visits upon them the ignominy and humiliation of being deemed illegal in their own land. That assumption, which is made at the heart of our system, does not simply go after illegal immigrants; as we have said, it goes after those of us who look like we could be immigrants. We have talked a lot about illegal immigration sitting at the heart of this debate, but what we are not talking about so much is race.

I say to hon. Members who do not quite understand how these policies impact on their fellow citizens and their fellow British nationals: try making an application to the Home Office while having a name that is demonstrably African in origin. Try making an application, as a British national, to the Home Office with a name that is demonstrably south Asian in origin. I promise that the protection of a British passport will not help one little bit. People will have visited upon them casual humiliation upon humiliation. The system will treat them as if they were dirt on the bottom of its shoe, and that is not good enough.

That happens to British nationals on a daily basis when they apply for visitor visas or spousal visas. If they can get past the income threshold and prove the legitimacy of their love for somebody they fallen in love with and married, the system still makes them take a DNA test to prove that a child who might have been born while they visited their foreign-based spouse is in fact their child. That is not acceptable in 21st-century Britain. I say to Government Members: do not be complacent about what your system is doing on a daily basis to people who have the protection of a British passport. If you are in any doubt, come to see me in my constituency, which is 70% non-white. I have one of the highest immigration caseloads in this country and I see this daily. If you have illusions about this, I suggest that you disabuse yourselves of them straightaway.

This is a moment of national truth—of clarity. It is a moment when we can make a choice to have a better debate about immigration. It is a moment that we must not allow to be missed. We will honour the Windrush generation if we move forward in a way that is humane, that is compassionate, and that acknowledges the truth of the failures at the heart of our system and seeks to put them right.