Windrush Scheme

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on the operation of the Windrush scheme.

Righting the wrongs done to the Windrush generation has been at the forefront of my priorities as Home Secretary. That is why I apologised on behalf of this Government and our predecessors. History shows that members of the Windrush generation, who have done so much to enrich our country, were wrongly caught up in measures designed to tackle illegal migration long before 2010. We all bear some responsibility for that. This Government are acting to right that wrong. Our Windrush taskforce is helping those who have been affected. We are making it easier for those affected to stay and we have waived all fees. By the end of last year, some 2,450 individuals had been given documentation confirming their status. They were all helped by the taskforce which we set up in April. At least 3,400 have been granted citizenship under the Windrush scheme, which we opened on 30 May 2018.

The taskforce’s vulnerable persons team has provided support to 614 individuals, with 52 cases ongoing, and it continues to receive up to 20 new referrals each week. The taskforce has made 215 referrals to the Department for Work and Pensions to help people to restore or receive benefits, 177 individuals have been given advice and support on issues relating to housing, and 164 individuals have been identified by the historical cases review unit. Eighteen people have been identified who we consider to have suffered detriment due to their right to be in the UK not being recognised. Sadly, three of them are now deceased. I have written to the remaining 15 to apologise.

As part of putting right what has gone wrong, we are putting in place a compensation scheme to address the losses suffered by those affected. We have consulted on this to ensure we get it right, and we will bring forward more detail on the final shape of the compensation scheme as soon as possible, having carefully considered the views submitted. In December, the Home Office also published a policy for providing support in urgent and exceptional circumstances. This set out the approach and decision-making process for such cases. The policy will support those who have an urgent and exceptional need, and compelling reasons for why they cannot wait for the full compensation scheme.

Mr Speaker, I said on the day I became Home Secretary that I am determined to right the wrongs suffered by members of the Windrush generation. Let there be no doubt: my commitment remains resolute.

Home Secretary, I have asked you to make a statement to the House on the operation of the Windrush scheme. Your Department’s treatment of the Windrush generation has been nothing less than a national scandal. In November, we learned that at least 164 Windrush citizens were wrongly removed, detained or stopped at the border by our own Government. Eleven of those who were wrongly deported have died. You have announced three more today. Every single one of those cases is a shocking indictment of your Government’s pandering to far right racism, sham immigration targets and the dog whistle of the right-wing press. You have spoken about being a second—

Order. I have the highest regard for the right hon. Gentleman. Occasional descent into the use of the word “your” by accident is one thing, but a calculated repetition of the word “your” is not appropriate because a debate is conducted through the third person. I have not made any statement. I am not responsible for any scandal and I mildly resent any suggestion to the contrary. [Interruption.] Well, not this one anyway, as an hon. Lady rightly chunters from a sedentary position. But I do not want to interrupt any further the flow of the right hon. Gentleman’s eloquence, or, for that matter, the eloquence of his flow.

You are quite right, Mr Speaker.

Every single one of these cases is a shocking indictment of this Government’s pandering to far right racism, sham immigration targets and the dog whistle of the right-wing press.

The Home Secretary has spoken about being a second generation migrant himself. On taking this job he promised to do whatever it takes to put this wrong right. We are now 10 months on from when the scandal broke. Not a penny has been paid out to any Windrush victim in a compensation scheme. The independent Windrush lessons learned review has not yet reported. I say to you, Home Secretary, before the review is even complete, why, why are you deporting people? We have heard about deportation flights to Jamaica this week. You have detained up to 50 black British residents and given them open window removal notices. Why are you deporting them, given that this review has not reported and there has been no compensation?

How can you be confident that you are not making the same mistakes? Movement for Justice is working with 26 of those who are at risk of removal. Thirteen first came to the UK as children; nine came under the age of 10. Eleven people have indefinite leave to remain. Another has a British passport. Thirty-six British children will have their parents taken away by this charter flight—once enslaved, then colonised and now repatriated. Why do you say that these children should live without their parents? Why do you say, to the families of black British people who have been killed by your Department’s incompetence, that this is acceptable? That is what happens. We are now 20 years on from the Macpherson review, which found institutional racism in this country. I ask the Home Secretary: why is it that still in this country, black lives matter less?

First, let me thank the right hon. Gentleman. At least he has raised this important issue of Windrush—it is good at any time to update the House on this, in many different ways—but I have to take issue with his tone. He does himself no good service—a huge disservice—in the way that he speaks and the tone that he has used to suggest that there is even an ounce of racism in this House, and to ignore the facts. He chooses to ignore—[Interruption.] He could have made this into an honourable debate by looking at the actual issues and thinking about how we can help people who have been affected.

The right hon. Gentleman chooses to ignore that, for members of the Windrush generation who have been affected in a wrong way—as I have recognised and as many Ministers have recognised at the Dispatch Box—this began under previous Governments and continued under successive Governments, including the Government that he was part of, when he voted time and time again for compliant environment restrictions. He supported those restrictions on a number of occasions and now he chooses to speak out about some of the inadvertent effects of that.

The right hon. Gentleman also rightly brought up the issue that—as I have said before, including in the House—sadly, some people who were wronged are deceased, but he should know that a number of those people died under a Labour Government. The deportations took place under a Labour Government and he makes no apology for that. The right hon. Gentleman mentions the deportations of foreign national offenders. I think the information that he referred to, if I have understood him correctly, is about a charter flight to Jamaica of foreign national offenders only—every single one of them convicted of a serious crime. The UK Borders Act 2007, which he supported, requires that the Home Secretary issues a deportation order for anyone who is a foreign national offender. It does not matter which part of the world they are from, whether it is the United States, Jamaica, Australia or Canada. That is a legal requirement. If he does not want that to happen, he is asking me to break the law, and he is also saying that a person who is convicted of a serious offence as a foreign national offender should be allowed to stay in this country, so either he has changed his mind or he does not know what he is talking about.

It was a Labour Government who in 2007 passed the UK Borders Act making it a legal requirement for Her Majesty’s Government to deport foreign national offenders who commit serious crimes in this country. May I support what the Home Secretary has said and urge him to ensure that foreign national offenders who commit crimes are sent back to the countries from where they came, because we do not want them in this country?

My hon. Friend refers to a law, which represents the will of this House, that was passed in 2007, which, I say again, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and many of his colleagues supported, and which requires the Government to deport foreign national offenders who have committed serious offences. None of those being deported is a British citizen a member of the Windrush generation, who are exempt under section 7 of the Immigration Act 1971.

This morning, the news broke that Ms Sims had been denied help from the Windrush compensation scheme because she was not from the Caribbean. Just like Windrush, this is a result of the Government ignoring credible warnings about the impact of their policies. The National Audit Office found that the Home Office showed a surprising

“lack of curiosity about individuals who may have been affected, and who are not of Caribbean heritage.”

What steps is the Home Secretary taking to ensure that, as Martin Forde QC has recommended, officials are aware that people other than those from the Caribbean are eligible? Will he commit to widening the remit of the Windrush review and compensation scheme? Can he justify Windrush victims being defined so narrowly? Some 186 people were formally refused help from the Windrush scheme. Can he guarantee that none of them was in fact eligible?

We have heard reports that the Home Office is restarting charter flights to Jamaica. Like those of many MPs, my constituency office phone has been ringing off the hook. Some 85,000 people have signed a petition. Why does the Home Secretary consider now an appropriate time to restart these flights? Victims of this scandal have not yet received compensation. The Windrush lessons learned review has not yet reported. A full year after the scandal broke, we do not know how many people have already been detained or deported. The hostile environment remains in place.

I understand that many of the detainees have been convicted of a criminal offence, but after Windrush, the Government have not proved they have the processes in place to make sure the wrong people do not end up on this flight. Will the Home Secretary urgently bring proof to this House that none of the people on the flight is a British citizen or has any other claim to be in this country? I understand the flight is due to leave from a Royal Air Force base. Does he accept that the militarisation of deportations sets a dangerous precedent of deportation happening behind closed doors?

First, I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s tone and approach of asking sensible questions, and he deserves answer to them all.

The hon. Gentleman raised the case of Ms Willow Sims, who I heard on the radio this morning. It was the first time I had heard about the case, and I was very concerned. She said she had written to me, which I was interested to hear, and I checked this morning. We received the letter on 28 January, which might help to explain why I have not seen the letter yet. That said, the Department was aware of the case before that, because her Member of Parliament wrote to the Department—in October, I believe—and Ms Sims is now getting the help she deserves. We will look further at why she was turned down for help by the taskforce, because that should not have happened.

The hon. Gentleman then mentioned the compliant environment. I remind him and the House that what he refers to as the compliant environment, which is about taking action against those who are in the UK illegally—in other words, people who have broken the law—began with laws that were passed under a previous Labour Government in 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2008 and which many of his hon. Friends will have supported. If Labour’s policy is now to abolish all those rules, it should be clear about that.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the compensation scheme, which I have said a bit about already. We are determined to have it in place, and I want it to be as fair and as generous as possible, but, in the meantime, the exceptional payment scheme has begun. I set out exactly how that would work in a policy paper published and made available to the House at the end of last year.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned foreign national offenders. I want to make it very clear that the flight in question, assuming he is talking about the same flight as the right hon. Member for Tottenham, is to Jamaica and that everyone on it who is being deported is a foreign national offender from Jamaica. All of them have been convicted of serious crimes, such as rape, murder, firearms offences and drug trafficking, and we are required by law, quite correctly, to deport anyone with such a serious conviction. This law applies universally to all foreign national offenders.

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments. It is very important that we clear up these difficult cases. Can he confirm that those applying to settle under the Windrush scheme are receiving support in navigating the immigration system and that his Department continues to take a sympathetic and proactive approach when resolving applications?

I am happy to confirm that to my right hon. Friend, and he is right to raise it. From the moment the taskforce was set up, it was designed to make it as easy and simple as possible for people to use, and, as I said earlier, it has so far correctly documented almost 2,500 people.

I wish also to raise concerns about removals and deportations to Jamaica being resumed. By all accounts, we are talking about people who came as children, about parents with British children and even about Commonwealth soldiers. To all intents and purposes, therefore, we are talking about people who are British even if they are not formally citizens. The Home Secretary has mentioned foreign national offenders. Will he publish the full list of offences people are being deported for?

Even the issue of foreign national offenders is not straightforward. Stephen Shaw said in his updated report on detention that

“a significant proportion of those deemed FNOs had grown up in the UK, some having been born here but the majority having arrived in very early childhood. These detainees often had strong UK accents, had been to UK schools, and all of their close family and friends were based in the UK.”

In other words, the Home Office is often really deporting UK offenders to other countries. Has the Home Office even begun to engage with the issue Mr Shaw himself has raised? I am asking the Home Secretary not to break the law but simply to review it and change it if necessary.

What work has been done to establish how people from other countries, including Commonwealth countries, have been impacted by Windrush-type disasters? Finally, what will the Home Office do to prevent probably hundreds of thousands of EU nationals from being subject to the same hostile environment measures when they miss the cut-off date for settled status applications?

I want to be clear again about the flight to Jamaica mentioned by hon. Members: not a single person being deported is British—a person cannot be deported and be British; they are all foreign national offenders, and under the 2007 Act, where someone is given a sentence of at least one year, the Home Secretary is required to make a deportation order, and where it is four years or more, the Home Secretary is required by law to order a deportation.

The wording of the hon. Gentleman’s question seemed to suggest that he knew who was on the flight and who was not. Let me say gently to him that the flight has not happened yet, but the deportation of anyone who is on it will be carried out absolutely according to the law. Ultimately, this is about public safety, because these are individuals who have committed serious offences. I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on the fact that if we did not carry out the law, we would not only be breaking the law. Let us imagine what would happen if one of these people—someone, say, who had been convicted of murder—were allowed to stay in the UK and then committed that act again, against one of our constituents. What would the hon. Gentleman be saying to me then?

Order. Let me gently point out that approximately 30 Members are seeking to contribute. I am keen to accommodate them, but it is imperative that we have short questions and short answers.

I remember the Macpherson report, in which I was tangentially involved, and I would say that we have come a very long way since then. With that in mind, will the Secretary of State confirm that he will give a date soon for the compensation scheme?