50th Anniversary of the Expulsion of Asians from Uganda

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, was absolutely right: this is an important debate, and it has been absolutely fascinating. It has been historical in nature, but I really felt a thread of current feeling—not only about diversity in our political leadership but about some of the challenges that exist within our policy-making. The nuance of the debate has been wonderful. At the outset, I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, as I think I am going to irritate her. She said that this debate made her feel old because of the Prime Minister’s age. This is the first time that the Prime Minister of my country has been younger than me, so it is not just her feeling old now. Now that I have irked her, I will irk everybody else: I was not alive in 1972 when these issues were being debated.

Now that I have successfully alienated the entire Chamber, can I perhaps recover by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Popat, on bringing this debate to us? I also read the Hansard from a decade ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading his book, which he was very kind to send me a copy of, as he has others. I was struck at the start of that book by, to some extent, the trauma of what he had witnessed first hand with his family, the journey of safety and then success. It is a real lesson, so I am grateful to him. I share his passion for the work he does in Africa. I have been fortunate enough over just the last three months to be in Sudan, Rwanda and Uganda, and to be there again briefly in September. His work and the debate we had in Grand Committee and elsewhere, arguing for an Africa strategy and consistency in our relations, I endorse entirely.

As I indicated before, I was not born at the time of the statement in 1972. I also did not have an opportunity of reading the report that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, had written, but I noticed that the final report of the Uganda Resettlement Board was published just a few days after I was born in January 1974. Of the 28,608 of those who had been settled, some came to the UK but many went directly to India. That has not been mentioned in the debate so far, but it was facilitated through the scheme, and I found that interesting.

The Home Secretary Robert Carr made a point in his statement in 1972 that also struck me. He made a point of singling out the other nations which also provided safe refuge and the way that the UK had worked with our friends and allies around the world, including Canada and others. That showed, I think, that the UK was not only leading by example but leading through our relationship with our allies.

I was also struck at the time, and in some of the debate we have heard, by another element of nuance with regards to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act. I was struck by the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I checked the voting record and it was the Liberals who put the Second Reading to the vote, as he mentioned. Ten Liberal MPs voted at the time and the vote attracted 62 others in opposition to the Second Reading. It was not necessarily a time of consensus.

In his contribution to the debate a decade ago, my former noble friend Lord Steel spoke about his experience of watching the exodus at Entebbe airport. He said:

“I sat in the airport, accompanied by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, who at that time was my assistant. We watched the exodus of the Asians: we watched their baggage being looted and dumped on the tarmac; we watched their jewellery and watches being taken off them. I wrote at the time:


‘I have never witnessed such scenes of unbridled abusive power and virtual anarchy’.


It was a terrible episode.”—[Official Report, 6/12/12; col. 809.]

I have been struck today by the comparison between that time, and the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Popat, and others, and the safe refuge that this country has provided.

However, in this debate, we heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Verma, and others that it was not an easy process. Indeed, in reading the letter from the then Lord Sainsbury regarding the experience of the settlement scheme, bemoaning that less than £5 per person was provided for support, and reading the statement in the House of Commons at the time, I was struck that there are perhaps some contemporary parallels in the support that we offer to those who seek refuge.

Robert Carr gave his statement to the House of Commons 50 years and one week ago. In response, Shirley Williams raised the lack of accommodation and the quality of temporary accommodation. Then there was a question from David Steel, who suggested it would be good to have better co-ordination between the Home Office, the Scottish Office and the Department of Health and Social Security, so that they were all engaged to ensure there was proper co-ordination with local authorities. Again, 50 years on, we see some parallels. What struck me was that the question following David Steel’s was from Enoch Powell. It was a jarring question which asked whether the Home Secretary could cite any legal authority that provided support to the Government for their actions. The struggle against racism, prejudice and obstructions was there and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said, it carried through and we still have some elements of it.

I have not yet had an opportunity to welcome the Minister to his place. He is probably far smarter than I am and will not mention his age in this debate—I have taken all the flak for that. I hope he might share with the Home Secretary the Hansard of this debate, not only so that those in the Conservative Party can perhaps take pride in it but for its contemporary nature. If this country is to be a shelter in the storm for individuals and families, perhaps we have an opportunity to look slightly beyond what the scheme in 1972 had—it applied to just those who had been issued with British passports—to those seeking shelter in the UK who do not have British passports but desperately wish to have them. We see the barriers being put up again and again. Of course, not everybody who risks drowning in the channel—I will come to just one policy point in a moment, if the House will forgive me—has bad motives; many have motives equal to those that we have heard about today.

There is another element which made me think that times have changed since that scheme. When I read the contributions and part of the report, it struck me that, if a husband in a family had a British passport, their wife and children could accompany them; if the wife had a British passport and the husband did not, they could not. The wife had to go wherever the husband was settled, but not here. The Home Secretary was asked about that. He offered a sympathetic response but no change to the policy. It struck me that he said that the family must follow “the head of household”. Perhaps there are some areas where society and government policy have rightly changed.

I will close on a point of principle. I do not want to be controversial in this debate, which is about consensus. However, I wish to put on record that on this Bench we oppose the Rwanda scheme, and will continue to raise our concerns in debates about immigration policy. I do not believe that we should have a scheme where those who are coming to this country for good motives are sent to another country, and that approach should be reviewed by the new Prime Minister. A welcome move by him would be to halt the Rwanda scheme.

In my last 15 seconds I will say that we are marking today a golden anniversary that reflects a golden contribution from a community which, through difficulty and resilience, has made our country the better. I thank them for that.