Windrush

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I was in Croydon this morning to make sure that I could have full confidence in the timetable set out and that we have sufficient people on the casework team to turn it around as swiftly as our expectations. That remains the case. The number of calls coming in and the number of face-to-face interviews taking place are manageable. I hope that that will remain the case, but I will not stop putting resources in to ensure that this group are properly addressed and get the first-class service I want them to have.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It is estimated that 50,000 people—a relatively small number—are caught in this indignity, incompetence and “It’ll be all right on the night” policy. None of them have presented themselves at my surgery because they have instructed solicitors, so will the Home Secretary commit to reimburse in full the legal fees incurred by those people? Will she also ensure that none of the much larger group of 3 million EU citizens—13,000 of them in Ealing Central and Action alone—suffer the same demeaning treatment of being denied services or, worse still, receiving a knock at the door from deportation, as has happened to the Windrush generation?

[Amber Rudd]

I can reassure the hon. Lady on the issue of EU citizens. We have put in place a thorough, simple, effective system, which will go live later this year. We have extensively tested it with EU citizen groups and I have a team over at the European Parliament this week, engaging with European parliamentarians to make sure that it is right. It has been prepared in a way that will be very straightforward to use and it anticipates the need that was not anticipated in the case of the Windrush cohort.

On the compensation for which the hon. Lady asks, as I have said, we are launching the compensation scheme, but I need to consult on it first, appoint someone independently and make sure that it addresses the issues she raises. On the actual applications being made now to the taskforce, while I was there this morning I listened in to some calls and the way in which the callers are engaging with the border people helping them has been very constructive. They do not need to have lawyers: in this process we have put in place, there will be no need for lawyers to engage.