Windrush

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Onasanya]

I advise the hon. Gentleman that the activist is not actually a Labour member, but I hear what he says. I disagree with any form of racism, especially racism pointed towards or coming from Members of this House, such as Conservative Members using the N word.

The Home Secretary must confirm that full compensation will be paid—compensation not limited to but including: loss of income, loss of benefits, legal fees, Home Office application fees, air fares, emotional distress and unlawful detention. Will the Home Secretary factor in such considerations as I heard when I went to a Committee room? I heard members of the Windrush generation talking about how being held in a detention centre for nine months left them unable to pay their mortgage and that as result their home was repossessed? When will things of that sort be talked about and explained to us in the context of compensation?

This crisis was foreseeable and foreseen when legislation was being introduced. We have heard from both sides of the House that warnings were given to Home Secretaries but that nothing was done, no action was taken. In respect of action being taken, I also heard from a member of the Windrush generation in that Committee room that they had a biometrics card due to expire in 2024. Why would a British citizen not be given a British passport? This is not about targets; it is about justice for the Windrush generation. Until we have answers to these questions, we will continue to seek transparency.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I wish a happy 40th birthday to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), but I am afraid he does not get any longer than four minutes.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Your good wishes, Mr Speaker, and those of other hon. Members have certainly made facing up to middle age that little bit easier today, so thank you very much indeed.

I start, as I did in Monday’s debate, by paying tribute to the Windrush generation. They battled against hostility when they arrived, and it is a tragedy that they have to battle against hostility 70 years later. We have heard lots of thoughtful speeches today, but I am troubled by the emerging argument that this horrendous episode can be seen as a one-off administrative mistake. I am concerned by the argument that the world can be neatly and easily divided into good “compliant migrants” on the one hand and wicked and nasty “illegal immigrants” on the other, and by the argument that the hostile environment will affect only the latter while everyone else carries on utterly unharmed. Those arguments are at best naive and at worst disingenuous, as the Windrush scandal has shown.

The key point that I want to make in the limited time available is that the disastrous impact of the hostile environment—which is, essentially, a half-baked, back-door ID card—does not start or end with Windrush. Others have fallen victim to it, and will continue to do so. Some are legally here and some are undocumented, but they are as far from the desperate stereotype of the wicked illegal immigrant as it is possible to get. Hostility is not the answer.

Among the victims of the hostile environment—as we heard earlier from my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford)—are the tens of thousands of undocumented children in this country. Many were born here, and many of those have led most of their lives here. They are entitled to British citizenship under the British Nationality Act 1981 if they register, but few are registering. Indeed, few will be aware that they need to register until they are refused jobs, education, social security, housing or NHS treatment in exactly the same way as the Windrush victims. Then, despite their not being allowed to work or claim benefits, the Home Office will refuse to register them unless they can scrape together more than £1,000, more than £600 of which is pure Home Office profit. Why should those children be subject to a hostile environment?

Also among those cast adrift in the hostile environment will almost certainly be tens if not hundreds of thousands of EU nationals who, for whatever reason, do not manage to secure settled status by whatever cut-off time the Home Office imposes.

There are further victims of that hostile environment. One is the Afghan interpreter who was in the news again last week. He worked with the British armed forces in Helmand province for two years, but his asylum claim has been turned down. Does he deserve to be in a hostile environment? Also forced to face that environment are the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Eritreans who were wrongly refused asylum on the basis of the Home Office’s dodgy country guidance. Many of them are now street homeless and destitute.

As was pointed out earlier by the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), among the victims of the hostile environment are several thousands of students who were wrongly caught up in the English testing scandal. They were presumed guilty on the basis of a spreadsheet from the company that had messed up the testing in the first place, and were then rounded up and deported without even being allowed to see or hear the evidence against them, let alone challenge it in a tribunal in this country. Thousands of careers were ruined before they had even started. All those people might be caught up in the broad and pejorative term “illegal migrants”, but they deserve a humane rather than a hostile response.

Also caught up in the hostile environment are those who—just like the Windrush generation, and just like every Member in the House—are perfectly entitled to be here. Among them will be 9 million British citizens without passports, because 43% of landlords and landladies say that they are less likely to let to such citizens now that the hostile environment has made them petrified of getting “right to rent” checks wrong. That applies particularly to those who are foreign, look foreign, or have a foreign-sounding name.

The hostile environment has brought no gain, but so much pain. We must not pretend that this starts and stops with Windrush, because otherwise it will run and run.