Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made in the Commons. There is, of course, a marked disparity between the speed with which this review has been published and the lack of speed with which the report on—for example —Russian interference in elections has appeared, a marked disparity for which there is no obvious explanation.

We cannot overstate how damning this review has been of the Government’s

“institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race”.

The way in which individuals and families were wrongly deported and deprived of their livelihoods caused enormous suffering. Now it can only be right that the Government pave the way for a complete change in how the Home Office operates, but apparently the Government cannot say that the recommendations of the review will be delivered in full in the most appropriate timeframe possible. That seemed to be the message of the Statement. There would at least be some satisfaction if we could say that the Government had attempted effectively to make amends.

However, I believe I am right in saying that last month, new migration statistics showed that fewer than one in 20 Windrush compensation claimants had received compensation. From that, it would seem clear that the Government are still failing the Windrush victims, at least in that regard, both in terms of the number of people the compensation is reaching and the level of payouts for lives disrupted or destroyed. Can the Government say how they will ensure that further victims receive the compensation they deserve, and receive it speedily?

On the wider issue of the hostile environment, can the Government today mark a change in direction and agree to put an end to this policy, beginning by ending deportation flights for foreign national offenders who have lived here since childhood, committing that the historic case review will include those who have committed offences, and keeping open the compensation scheme for as long as necessary?

One of the more damning lines of the report was that the scandal was “foreseeable and avoidable”. Scandals which will further arise if the Government continue with the hostile environment policy are also foreseeable and avoidable. Renaming the policy, which the Government have sought to do, does not bring about the necessary culture change. Even the executive summary of the report—I am sure that the Minister will not be entirely surprised if I say that I have not read all 275 pages of it—says that

“the Home Office … must change its culture to recognise that migration and wider Home Office policy is about people and, whatever its objective, should be rooted in humanity.”

It is a fairly damning statement on the present state of affairs for that to appear as a part of this review.

We do not want similar issues arising over citizenship rights in the light of our withdrawal from the EU, and neither will a future immigration policy based on devaluing the value and skills of many people help the situation, particularly when some of those so-called low-skilled and insufficiently paid personnel are now deemed to be vital key workers in the present crisis when it comes to continuing school provision for their children.

I hope that the Government will take very seriously the recommendations in this report and the three elements into which they have been broken down in the last paragraph of the executive summary. It is disappointing that we may well have to wait some time to hear what the Government’s response is. However, clearly there needs to be a significant change in culture, and it needs to come quickly if we are to avoid further scandals—I use that word—of the kind we have seen over the Windrush generation.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, the fact that this report has now been published is of course welcome, and I thank Wendy Williams; the timing is however less than optimal. I also thank the journalist Amelia Gentlemen, without whose brilliant and dogged investigative work the report would not have happened.

In the Government’s response, which is promised within six months, we on these Benches want the assurance of a thorough overhaul of the culture of disbelief and carelessness in the Home Office, so that its attitudes, assumptions and processes around immigration are, in the words of the report, “rooted in humanity”, which is not the case at the moment. The Home Secretary surely cannot have needed this review to become aware of what the report calls the

“ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race and the history of the Windrush generation within the department, which are consistent with some elements of the definition of institutional racism.”

That sounds like a very carefully negotiated sentence.

Surprisingly, the Statement says that

“we were all shocked to discover”

the insensitive treatment of the Windrush generation. That is not credible. The whole point of the hostile environment was to be brutal and send a harsh, intolerant message. As the report says, the consequences were foreseeable and avoidable, and warning signs were not heeded by officials or Ministers. It was a profound institutional failure. The scandal and the blighting of lives are not just down to staff mistakes and poor decisions, because the tone was set from the top. However, if retraining is needed then we need to hear what is happening on that front.

The Home Secretary failed to give my colleague in the other place, Wendy Chamberlain, the guarantee she sought that for the sake of public health during the coronavirus crisis no data would be passed from the NHS to the Home Office for immigration purposes, otherwise migrants with uncertain status could be deterred from seeking care or treatment. I now ask for clarity on such a guarantee. Will the Government also commit to scrapping the right-to-rent law, which, as has been shown by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, causes landlords to discriminate against people from the BAME communities and/or who do not have a British passport?

To avoid a budding new Windrush scandal, will the Government now commit to automatically guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens to stay? Something that the report highlighted was the lack of documentary evidence that the Windrush generation had. We have persistently and consistently asked that EU citizens should at least get documentary proof.

Lastly, my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who very much wishes she could have been here today, tells me that last week when she visited a school to talk to sixth-formers about Parliament and her work, they wanted to discuss immigration issues. She was critical of Home Office culture. A teacher who was sitting in out of interest could not contain herself: she told my noble friend and the students that, as a Canadian, it had taken her 10 years to get the right to be here and that the way she had been treated by the Home Office, especially at Lunar House, was the worst experience of her life.

I really hope that the Home Office will have a thorough transformation of its culture, so that it acts as a welcome to migrants who we wish to make part of our society, as well as exercising firm and fair immigration control.