Windrush

Tom Pursglove Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

What is shocking is the way that the Windrush generation have been treated.

We want information as soon as possible about the independent means of establishing fair compensation. Has the Home Office issued written instructions to the call handlers of the helpline that they should not report cases for deportation enforcement where they believe that people are here legally? Did the Home Secretary’s Department issue advice to the immigration tribunals and judges on the changes in the Immigration Act 2014?

The new Home Secretary demurs from the term “hostile environment”. We appreciate that, but of course he was not the architect of this policy: it was the Prime Minister, and she has not resiled from that policy. In May 2012, she told readers of The Daily Telegraph—

[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

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[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), my fellow marathon runner. My remarks will share in the sentiment of the early part of hers, because I come at this debate considering myself very lucky to have grown up in a diverse community. In Wellingborough, I grew up with Afro-Caribbean families. I grew up with Asian families. They have played a huge part in our community; they have contributed so much. They are absolutely British, and they are here legally; let us be in no doubt about that.

I take great offence at any suggestion that not all Members of the House are concerned about this issue or that not all Members take the matter incredibly seriously or want it resolved as quickly as possible. I do not think that anybody would say that something has not gone seriously wrong here—it is impossible to deny that something has gone seriously wrong—but I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) that nobody has set about deliberately targeting the Windrush generation. Again, it is wrong to give the impression that that is the case, and I take issue with it.

It is right, therefore, that a full and frank apology is made, and we have seen a full and frank apology made on numerous occasions. What matters more than any of that, though, is action. This is about speedy action being taken, which is why I welcome the package of measures announced by Ministers in recent days, because they are comprehensive.

Having had constituents contact me who are concerned that they have been affected by this issue, my experience as a constituency MP is that they have been dealt with thoroughly and speedily to reach a resolution in their case. I have seen a system that has been put in place being responsive to dealing with these cases. Of course, this should never have happened, but these cases have been dealt with in a way that I would like them to be dealt with, and dealt with properly. I do not want anybody to be worrying about this for any longer than is necessary.

When the statement was made last week, I pushed the former Home Secretary on the two-week target. She was confident that it would hold, which is really important. I will certainly be monitoring progress against that.

I also welcome what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary had to say today about the new measures around transparency that he is going to introduce. I welcome the fact that the Home Affairs Committee is going to be getting the information that it has requested, and when we look at my right hon. Friend’s record, certainly in dealing with the Grenfell issue, we can see that he has been incredibly sympathetic, incredibly thorough and always incredibly forthcoming in dealing with the issues—not just those raised by Members of the House, but those raised by the survivors. That is absolutely right, and I know that he will pursue this with vigour, robustly and thoroughly.

The truth is that the motion will do absolutely nothing to help any of that. This is a procedural motion. I wanted to intervene on the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), the shadow Home Secretary, to make the point that if we are serious about this, why refer to the date May 2010? The fact that certain policies were enacted under the last Labour Government has been well documented in the media, so why are Labour Members not interested in getting to grips with the information from before that date? It would have been a much more genuine attempt had that been the case.

[Mrs Main]

That is exactly the point that I was trying to make. This is quite obviously a fishing exercise between certain chosen dates, and I have to say that if Labour Members were honestly trying to get to the truth, they would be looking at the whole number of dates covered by this policy.

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[Tom Pursglove]

I agree with that analysis, and the approach that has been adopted is disappointing. It seems to me that Ministers are thoroughly engaging with the Home Affairs Committee anyway, and were engaging properly with the Committee before the motion was even tabled.

I want to touch on immigration policy and will start by saying that, of course—I have made this point previously and I make it again—the Windrush generation and members of that generation should never, ever have been caught up in the measures that have, in the end, affected them. I come at the issue of immigration policy as someone who campaigned in the referendum to leave and as someone who, yes, wants to see control, but also wants fairness in our immigration policy. I think fairness is the more important point.

If we asked my constituents in Corby and east Northamptonshire, they would say that a common-sense immigration policy is one that treats people equally, regardless of where they come from in the world, and treats people the same whether they come from the Caribbean, the subcontinent or the European Union. That is where I would like to get to at the end of this Brexit process. That is the immigration policy that I would like to see, obviously with a big consideration of the skills that are required in our economy as part of it.

But let me also say that we have to deal with illegal immigration robustly and properly. Of course we have to deal with it humanely and speedily, but the main reason we have to deal with it thoroughly, properly and robustly is that if we do not do so, it penalises those who come here legally, follow the rules and go through the right route.

To my mind, we must, first and foremost, put right what has gone wrong—no ifs, no buts. As one House, we should all be united in that resolve.