Windrush Generation

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

First, if I could go back to the 2014 legislation, which I assume the noble Baroness refers to, the Immigration Act 1971 already protected these people. The noble Baroness goes absolutely to the right point, which is that the public are furious with the Government. In fact, successive Governments have failed to deal with this, so this should not be an occasion—and she does not make it one—for political infighting. We need to deal with it, and we need to deal with it now. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to point out that we need experienced people in this task force, and there are. They are not dealing with this as a box-ticking exercise but in a compassionate and sensitive way, and are ensuring that people who come forward, not to apply for citizenship but to have it confirmed that they have always been citizens of this country, will have that dealt with very sensitively.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that on 18 January, on a Motion from the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, the Grand Committee of your Lordships’ House debated the centenary of the arrival of the merchant vessel “Empire Windrush”? In that debate, I raised the cases of Paulette Wilson and Anthony Bryan and asked the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, if he could reply to me about the way in which they had been treated. Not surprisingly, he passed the letter to the Home Office, and on 11 April—almost three months afterwards—I got a letter from the Immigration Minister in which she said that the Home Office had acted appropriately based on the evidence. Would the Minister like to revise that view and possibly offer the apology to these two people, and the others, which I asked for in the debate?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, herein lies the issue the noble Lord has highlighted. I think the two cases he refers to were dealt with appropriately. However, what was deemed as, perhaps, a blip in the system is actually a far more systemic problem that needs to be dealt with. I had not been aware that the debate had taken place, but certainly this is a generation of people whose status now needs to be regularised and regularised quickly.