Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill

Sarah Olney Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

I am glad to have this opportunity to contribute to the debate. To my mind, the ways in which this Conservative Government have treated the immigrants of the Windrush generation are among the most scandalous actions ever undertaken by the British state. Thousands of people have been denied their lawful right to housing, employment and healthcare by a Government who prioritise their political rhetoric on immigration over the safety and welfare of their citizens. Elderly people were deported—forced to leave the country where there had been educated, worked to raise their families and hoped to retire peacefully, living off the benefits to which they had spent a life- time contributing—for no better reason than that they had spent a short part of their childhood in a different country.

There is no doubt that the Home Office hoped to meet its deportation targets, set by its political masters, by targeting a highly vulnerable group, and let us be absolutely clear about why this group were targeted. It is because they were from the Caribbean. This was an openly and unashamedly racist policy. The deliberate deprivation of the rights of a targeted group of citizens by their own Government is beyond scandalous, beyond disgraceful and beyond shameful, so I find it quite frustrating that we are here today only to discuss compensation. The question that the Government really need to answer is when are they going to abandon their hostile environment policy?

The various ways in which the everyday lives of our fellow citizens have been inhibited, infringed and made more precarious for having committed no greater crime than to be born in a different country continues to be an appalling scandal. There is no evidence that the Government have changed their fundamental attitude or approach towards deportations. They continue to deprive lawful citizens of their rights and their citizenship. We continue to hear the same political rhetoric from the Conservative Government that led to these shameful deportations, and there is no let-up in the other manifestations of the hostile environment policies. Lawful citizens are still being deprived of their right to seek housing, healthcare and employment, and there are no plans to change Government policy. I am deeply concerned that these restrictions will shortly be extended to European nationals who have not yet applied for settled status or who have had their applications turned down despite years of residence here. I urge the Government to rethink the hostile environment policy without delay, before further outrages occur.

Instead of the urgently required change of policy, we have the Windrush compensation scheme that we are here today to discuss. The Liberal Democrats do not plan to oppose the compensation scheme, and we welcome the announcement on Friday that the scheme will be available to a wider range of claimants, but it is clear from the Bill’s accompanying impact assessment that the Home Office still has no clear idea of the extent of the damage it is seeking to mitigate. The assessment estimates the total compensation payments as being somewhere between £20.5 million and £301.3 million. That is an extremely wide range, and it raises worrying questions about just how many people may have been affected by this appalling policy beyond the cases that have already been reported. Furthermore, it is clear that the scheme is failing to deliver the compensation that it is committed to distributing. Of 1,108 claims made to the scheme by 31 December 2019, only 36 awards have been made, totalling just £62,198. Is that because the scheme is poorly run, or does the hostile environment policy extend to making it difficult for citizens to claim the compensation to which they are legitimately entitled?

Further evidence that the Government are finding ways to wriggle out of their commitments is to be found in clause 1, in which they reserve the right to modify the scheme “from time to time”. Does this mean that the Government may seek to downgrade the compensation available or to limit the types of people who might be able to make a claim? It is clear that the same Home Office that allowed this appalling scandal to arise in the first place cannot be trusted to administer the compensation scheme. Friday’s announcement of an independent adviser is welcome, but it would be far better if the scheme were removed entirely from the Home Office and administered by a different Department or by an independent body.

Along with many other Members of the House, I look forward to reading the Windrush lessons learned review, whenever it is published. It is essential that everybody takes some time to reflect on how the situation was allowed to occur, and I very much hope that the Government will listen hard to the lessons of this scandal and take the opportunity to end the hostile environment.