Windrush Generation

Lord Kerslake Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, for repeating the Statement made yesterday in the other place by her right honourable friend the Home Secretary. As the noble Baroness said, from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, many people came to this country from around the Commonwealth to make lives here and help rebuild Britain after the war. Before that, many of them fought in the British Armed Forces to defeat both Nazi Germany and Japan—people such as my friend Sam King, who served in the RAF during the Second World War. Sam came back to Britain in 1948 on the “Empire Windrush”, served his local community as a postman, was the first black mayor of the London Borough of Southwark and was awarded the MBE for his services to the community. Sam loved this country very much. He sadly passed away at the age of 90 in 2016. It is people such as Sam King who have been treated in such a shameful way.

Despite the apology from the Government and their admission that a terrible wrong has been done to the Windrush generation, no Minister is taking any responsibility whatever for these gross abuses of the Windrush generation’s rights—their rights denied, their rights taken away and people who are in the UK legally being treated appallingly by the country they call home. So my first question to the Minister is: when is a Minister of the Crown going to accept responsibility for this scandal and resign? The noble Lord, Lord Bates, offered his resignation because he turned up late for Questions earlier this year—quite rightly, it was not accepted by the Prime Minister. This is a monumental scandal and what is offered here does not go far enough. A Minister or Ministers have to accept responsibility.

The Government’s hostile environment for illegal immigrants was badly designed and put together, with no thought given to how to ensure that people who are here legally would be protected and not caught up in that environment. People here legally should not be at risk of losing their jobs, driving licences or homes or be threatened with deportation. Does the Minister accept that some of the people who are here legally will actually be scared to come forward to the Home Office, having heard the terrible reports of abuses and denial of rights? What is she going to do to gain the confidence of these individuals, who need help and support but will be worried about coming forward?

At the bottom of my copy of page 2 of the Statement, the last sentence reads:

“Instead, the caseworker will make a judgment based on all the circumstances of the case and on the balance of probabilities”.


Can the Minister be crystal clear about exactly what she means here? That statement does not appear to be an unequivocal guarantee that people who came here as part of the Windrush generation will not have their rights taken away or be denied justice. They are still at risk of deportation from the country that has been their home for decades. Who is bearing the civil standard of proof? Is it the person or is it the Home Office? At the top of my copy of page 3 of the Statement, it says that, for some of the Windrush generation, the burden of proof,

“to evidence their legal rights was too much on the individual”.

Other than saying that,

“we are working with this group in a much more proactive and personal way”,—[Official Report, Commons, 23/4/18; col. 620.]

which I hope we would expect to be the norm, what has actually changed here? How are other people being treated when they enter the system? This is not shining a very good light on how Ministers run the Home Office.

In paragraph 6 on page 3, it says that a new customer contact centre will be “staffed by experienced caseworkers”. In paragraph 7 on the same page we are told that 50 senior caseworkers will be put in place to help junior members of staff who are unsure about a decision. Surely we should ensure that these matters are dealt with by experienced staff in the first place. Will the Minister comment on that and tell the House how the experienced staff at the contact centre relate to the junior members of staff mentioned in paragraph 7, who are making the decisions, and how the 50 senior caseworkers fit above that? That part of the Statement seems very confused.

I agree that it was never the intention that the Windrush generation should be disadvantaged by measures put in place to tackle illegal immigration; but they were, because of poor implementation and development of policy at the Home Office by Ministers. Because of that, people who deserved better have been treated badly by the state. They have been treated appallingly, and someone in the Government should take responsibility for that.

Compensation is referred to on the last page of the Statement. Other than saying that people will be compensated and a scheme will be set up, run by an independent person, there is absolutely nothing about compensation. Will the Minister give the House some more detail on what this will look like? We do not want to read in the media about people who, having been denied their rights, are being made to jump through hoops to get the compensation they deserve for the abuse they have suffered.

This is a shameful episode and it is about time someone in the Government took responsibility for it.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. My noble friend Lord Paddick very much wanted to be here but is precluded by circumstances beyond his control. Not only he and I, and these Benches, but many others feel frankly ashamed to have discovered what has been going on. The Minister, whom I believe to be a compassionate, caring person, must be very uncomfortable too. She will understand that this is not a matter of what people “deserve”—the term used in the Statement—but of their rights.

We are told that the Home Secretary is committed to resolving the situation with “urgency and purpose”. They are, indeed, needed, and more widely than on this issue. The position of the Windrush people—citizens who seem retrospectively to have become migrants—is a symptom, not a cause, of the problem. The cause, as we see it, is the culture within the Home Office, an attitude that one cannot avoid saying must come from the top: hostility or compliance—which seems to be the substitute term now—and certainly carelessness, by which I mean “care-less”, as in lacking in care.

That seems to be why every immigration lawyer to whom I have spoken says that the first thing they do is ask the Home Office what information it has on their client, because so often they find that it is wrong. That is why the Home Office has such a poor record before the tribunal. The Minister will not be surprised by this: it is why I sought to remove the Home Office exemption from the Data Protection Bill, which can be applied in the interests of effective immigration control—a matter others are now pursuing. The Home Office might say that it can choose not to apply that exemption or that it will be applied only when it is relevant, but it is the Home Office that has to assess these aspects.

My first question to the Minister is therefore a question and a plea. Before the UK finds itself in an even more embarrassing position—which I assure her I do not want—will the Government reconsider whether the exemption is just, wise or even common sense?

My second question is about staffing, to which the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has referred. Are the officials concerned being redeployed within the Home Office, or is the establishment being increased? If so, may we have details of this? It has appeared for some time that Home Office officials are really overloaded. As regards the customer contact centre, or indeed any part of the work, is this being outsourced to the private sector? Again, may we have details?

Thirdly, what information will the Home Office publish so that we can see the whole picture systematically, rather than as a series of individual stories, and not just about deportations?

This affects many, many people. Another cohort, of course, is the 3 million EU citizens in the UK. They raise it in their current 128 questions on settled status. It must affect UK citizens abroad as well. Manifestations of the Home Office policy are very wide, but I will mention just two. One is the right to rent, on which the chief inspector has recently reported less than fully positively. One of his recommendations mentioned quality assurance checks. Another manifestation is immigration detention, to which people unable to prove their status have been consigned.

Immigrants might be legal, they might be illegal or perhaps they cannot prove their status, so the Home Office makes an assumption, if not a presumption, that they have no rights. This issue is more extensive than—I do not want to say “just”—the Windrush generation.

[Lord Kerslake]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is so keen to get up that I was going to give him the opportunity, but he will get the opportunity. I thank both noble Lords for their comments, and echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on the endeavours of the Windrush generation, who rebuilt this country after the war. Some of them actually fought in the war, and I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s friend Sam King: what a truly rich and fulfilling life he clearly led in his time in this country.

The noble Lord makes the point about no Minister taking responsibility. I have to say that when my right honourable friend the Home Secretary stood up yesterday, apologised and made very clear that she was going to put right this wrong, she took responsibility. It takes a big person to stand up and say, “Sorry, we’ll make this right”. So she firmly took responsibility yesterday, as well as in the weeks preceding.

On compensation, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said yesterday that she will set out further details on its scope, but she made it clear that it would be run independently of government. Details will be set out in due course. The noble Lord also made the point about a hostile environment, which was made yesterday as well in the Question I answered. This country should be a hostile environment to illegal immigrants but it should not be a hostile environment to people who are here as of right, which is the whole point of what the Home Secretary is putting right here. These people are welcome in this country and we are not hostile to them. If anybody feels scared about coming forward—I hope none of the scaremongering is being generated within these walls—they should come forward. The Home Secretary made very clear yesterday that there will be a sympathetic and human approach to the help these people will get.

The noble Lord also commented on the balance of probabilities. I hope he appreciates that the Home Secretary yesterday made it clear that people can produce a wide range of evidence, including school and parish records. The evidence people will need to produce will be treated in a sensitive and light-touch manner. As regards the contact centre, experienced staff will deal with these cases. The point about the junior staff is that in every set-up there will be junior and senior staff, and where there is any difficulty in determining a case it will be passed to a senior member of staff. All the staff in the contact centre, as well as in the task force, will be trained, and nobody need feel any fear about approaching members of the task force or the contact centre, nor need fear the hearing they will get.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said that this was not about what these people deserved but about their rights, which were established when they came here as part of the Windrush generation and of course more recently. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary made it clear that perhaps the Home Office is sometimes too focused on cases as opposed to humans; she made it very clear that this is a human consideration.

As regards the immigration exemption, I hope we will not conflate immigration rights with the cases of the Windrush generation, who, as the noble Baroness says, are here as of right, and we just need to regularise that status. Therefore I will not go into the immigration exemption in the Data Protection Bill. However, I will go on to discuss EU citizens, because that clearly points to how it is absolutely right to be proactive about having a system to establish settled status and to plan it well, which the Home Office has done. Those rights will be established early on rather than waiting 47 years beyond the point when people’s rights were naturally given but not documented in all cases. The noble Baroness asked about Home Office staff in the contact centre. There will be Home Office staff, and they are trained to a sufficient degree to deal with the cases that come forward.

I reiterate the words of my right honourable friend yesterday. These cases are being dealt with very sympathetically, and I hope that anyone who should come forward or knows of anyone who should come forward will be encouraged to do so.

[Lord Kerslake]

My Lords, third time lucky—my apologies. I should first like to declare an interest. I am chair of Peabody, and if noble Lords have read the newspapers recently, they will have read of one case, reported in the Guardian, involving a well-regarded caretaker, Hubert Howard, who was forced to be dismissed from his job with Peabody in 2014 under these rules. He came to this country at the age of three. His only crime, if you can call it that, was to seek to return home because one of his parents was ill. This is a practical example of how organisations have contributed to the misfortune of these individuals.

The Minister has rightly said that the state has let these people down. In my career I cannot think of many examples where we have seen such a shameful and terrible miscarriage of justice. It makes me personally feel ashamed that this has happened in my country. I think we must acknowledge that, without the work of Amelia Gentleman in the Guardian, and indeed the work of David Lammy, we would not be having this debate today. Those cases would have carried on as injustices.

After what has been a painfully long period—even two or three weeks ago, the Government were still saying that this was a process where people have to go through the normal applications—the Government have recognised the wrong that has been done and have taken steps to address this. I think this is very welcome and we should acknowledge the scale of change in the Government’s position, but I fear there is a risk of further injustices happening. If we are to deal rightly with the Windrush generation, and with similar situations from other communities—this is the thing we must not lose sight of—there are some important questions to answer.

First, there is much talk of a change in culture and practice, but very little talk about a change in policy. Unless that happens, the practice will always be trumped by the policy. We know that the restrictions on illegal immigrants grew over time, but the dial was turned up very considerably with the 2014 and 2016 Acts. The environment was changed very considerably, too. My first question is: do we really stick with a very hostile environment in circumstances where we cannot be confident, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has said, that we have got the answer right on individuals? They suffer the injustice of us getting the proof wrong, or their proof not being clarified, and then we apply draconian policies. I ask the Minister: in the light of what we have learned here, should we not be seriously be revisiting the existing policies?

My second question is: how will Parliament know it has made progress on the Windrush generation? Where will we get that information from? Are the Government willing to consider an independent third party verifying the progress in tackling those cases? Given the scale of the injustice, that is something the Government should sign up to.

Thirdly, are the Government going to take a proactive approach to tackling those families identified in the Guardian and other newspapers, rather than just waiting for them to come to the call centre? I would personally like the opportunity to speak to Mr Howard to see whether we can offer him his job back.