Windrush

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I was in Croydon today to see for myself the members of the taskforce and to talk to them about the speed at which this matter is being addressed. Although I made a statement last week that said that, from the point of getting information, we hope to deliver the outcome within two weeks, I am reassured that most of the cases—small numbers for now—are being turned round very quickly indeed. The approach that I have asked for, which is for the people who are working on this taskforce to lean in and to assist with the problem, has absolutely been acted on.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Of course the Home Office should be waiving citizenship fees and providing compensation for Windrush families, but I have been contacted today by someone from Kenya who says that they were turned away from the helpline because they were not part of the Windrush. There are many other people who came as here children with their families who are still having their legal rights denied.

The Home Secretary is also not addressing the wider problems. The Home Affairs Committee has warned repeatedly about failures and errors in decision making, about people being pursued who are legally here and about the fact that half of appeals, not just in Windrush cases, are being upheld because the Home Office is getting things wrong. There is a real and widespread concern that there is a culture of disbelief in the Home Office and that changes to the burden of proof have been created by the Government’s net migration target and the desire to get as many people to leave as possible. Will she remove all of that concern by saying now that she will get rid of the net migration target, as the Select Committee has advised?

[Amber Rudd]

Let me answer the first part of the right hon. Lady’s question. On engagement with high commissions internationally, that is exactly what I am doing. I recognise that it has not been completed yet, but I have met, for instance, the high commissioners from all the Caribbean countries to find out how we can work more closely with them. UK Visas and Immigration has offices internationally, and I will make sure that they all have the information that they need so that we can ensure that citizens who are in different former Commonwealth countries can engage satisfactorily with us.

The vast majority of children who were born here to people of the Windrush generation will have birth certificates and will be eligible, but we have a system in place to make sure that they are assisted as well. I encourage any MPs who have constituents who fall into that group to phone the taskforce as well.

The right hon. Lady asks me to talk more widely about net migration targets, but I will resist that at the moment. The key thing here—[Interruption.] Even though some Opposition Members would like to broaden this, the key thing is to make the careful distinction between legal and illegal. This has gone wrong where people who should be legal have not been treated as such, and that is why I am putting it right.