Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Simon Fell Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

As I have already stated, Wendy’s review is important because she described a number of measures that evolved under Labour, coalition and Conservative Governments over decades. It is important that we all look at ourselves, because we must all be better at walking in other people’s shoes. We must all take responsibility for the failings that happened in the past. We are also one community who deserve to be treated with respect. We should therefore all learn lessons from the past.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend referred to changing the Home Office’s openness to scrutiny, which will, quite rightly, lead to the Home Office better understanding the communities and groups it serves. What steps will she put in place to ensure that a similar level of understanding can be applied to the data that the Home Office holds and the impact that changes in policy might have on the people whom the data reflects?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about data, with the type of trends and information that comes through to the Home Office. In fact, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) also touched on data and processes. On scrutiny, we need to look at all aspects—not just policy but information, trends, flows, immigration data and all the sorts of data that come into the Department. We also need the skills to do that. That is part of the change we are seeing not just in the Home Office but across Government, with data analytics and information, in how we as a Government can respond on policy while treating people with compassion and fairness.