Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a point of reflection, not just for the Home Office but for the whole of Government, when it comes to treating individuals not just with compassion, but with the respect that they deserve. As we are all honourable Members of this House and Members of Parliament, we are all familiar with people engagement—casework. It is important that in the Home Office, casework is not seen through the lens of process—that we understand the situation of individual people, that we understand their circumstances, that we treat them with respect, and listen to them, especially, and we support them. That is absolutely my aim and determination—that caseworkers in the Department who are working now to turn around compensation schemes and claims, spend time with individuals, learn of their backgrounds and give them the respect and the service that they deserve.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Callton Young was the first black senior civil servant in the Home Office and is a Croydon councillor; he contributed to the Wendy Williams review. Twenty years on from his appointment, the Home Office still does not have senior black civil servants helping to better inform policy development. Can the Home Secretary tell us more about how she will rapidly address that failure?

Lunar House and many of the Home Office buildings are in my constituency and a lot of my constituents work there. I welcome what the Home Secretary said about seeing a face behind the case. Some of the staff have told me that it is not just a cultural issue—that it is very difficult when they have so many cases to deal with. Is the Home Secretary confident that she has enough people to do the job properly?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady has raised some important points. She first acknowledged the lack of senior leadership, and diversity in senior leadership, particularly in the Home Office. If I may say so, that is a feature, sadly, across Government—across the civil service; it is something that the Government are collectively trying to change. As the leader of the Home Office, it is my responsibility to look at what more we can do to support diversity, even by mentoring—something that I feel very strongly about, from my previous career—individuals from across all backgrounds. Specifically, it is absolutely wrong—I have raised this at a senior management level in my Department—that our own staff members from black and Asian minority ethnic communities are stuck at certain grades in my Department. That is really not acceptable. We should find mentoring schemes to grow them and develop them and their careers. I absolutely believe in that and I want to achieve much more on that front.

The hon. Lady specifically references Lunar House and the remarkable work that individuals and colleagues from the Home Office undertake there. If I may say so, even in Wendy’s report, references to Lunar House were not necessarily made in a positive light. There are a lot of cases. We deal with people. The Home Office is a caseworking Department, dealing with thousands of people day in, day out. In terms of staffing, it is not just about numbers; it is about training and support around our personnel. That is really important, and that is why I need to do more, and my Department—my permanent secretary—needs to do more as well, in terms of investing in people. I fundamentally believe in that, and I think that is the right approach for the future. We will grow and develop our staff, so that we can work in a fundamentally different way with people who come to us.