Windrush

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, all of us who have spoken so far in this debate have done so because of our profound respect and love for the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, but also because the Windrush reality confronts us, and we feel angered and aggrieved at the obvious discriminatory outcome that the Home Office is facilitating. The facts speak for themselves. We have said them; we know them; we understand them. If this was another ethnic group of people, it would not be this way. We encourage the Home Office to deny it.

My father came here in 1952. He came from Savanna-la-Mar, in Westmoreland, in Jamaica. He came here to join the NHS as a dentist. He brought my mother, who was a young nurse. My brother and I are the product of their adventure to Great Britain from Jamaica. When he and my mother came here, they told us stories of people’s comments and misunderstandings. I remember so clearly my mother, with me as a little four year-old boy at her side, being asked by a kind white lady in a northern town who did not understand, “Before you came here, did you really live in trees?” We chose to take no offence at that, but it never left me, because it told me that people did not understand what we had come to give over many decades.

I do not get angered and aggrieved unnecessarily at what people say to me, but I feel fury for our friends, who are here today, and for the multitudes around the country and the families of those who have died, who feel that they were scandalised and dismissed by a complacent department of government that arrogantly ignored their commands and demands, and simply felt that they were not worth it and could be put to one side.

We have said so much in this debate that does not need to be repeated. When the Minister replies, could he go back to the three points in the Wendy Williams report which a previous Home Secretary thought good to ditch? If it was fine for South Africa to have a truth and reconciliation commission, for the much-adored Rwanda to have a truth and reconciliation commission, and for Northern Ireland to have a truth and reconciliation commission, why is it not fine to have reconciliation for those who have been abused by careless public disregard, deliberately undertaken by a department of government which is evidently failing? If the Home Office could be inspected by Ofsted or a HMI, it would be in the red box, and we know that. Is it not time, seriously, to hand over the Home Office payments system either to an independent department or, maybe, to the Department for Business? When it comes to the Horizon Post Office issue, we have seen pace, energy, impact and speed.

The Government have seen fit to set a £75,000 immediate payment for everyone in the Post Office scandal, with £600,000 for those who were criminalised. Why can we not do the same here, instead of scrapping over whether it is £10,000, £15,000 or £100,000? Just blanket set it and pay it—and end this. If it is good enough for the postmasters, it is good enough for people who have served with their lives and many of whom have lost their futures as a consequence of this careless, arrogant, complacent and disregarding department.

We are not asking anyone in the Home Office to justify what has gone on or to explain that it will be better, because we are already convinced that it will not be. We are asking this department, which has had so many Home Secretaries rushing to Rwanda—although nobody else has—to spend some time rushing towards those who have been victimised by its own careless, arrogant and complacent disregard.

In conclusion, handing back many more minutes than previous Members have, I will make one final point. Would it not be right for this Government to go to the public in an election this year and say, “We fixed all these unfixed scandals: infected blood, the Post Office issues, the Windrush issues and a multitude of others. We fixed them because we’re fixers who get things done, rather simply handing them on to another Government to have to scrap around”? Get it done, get it done.