Javid: I’ll end scandal of Windrush
NEW Home Secretary Sajid Javid vowed last night to do “whatever it takes” to end the Windrush scandal.
Theresa May put the senior Tory, the son of a Pakistan-born bus driver, in charge of the Home Office in a bold move to put an end to the row over the status of thousands of migrants.
Mr Javid’s surprise promotion yesterday, following the resignation of Amber Rudd on Sunday night, made him the first ethnic minority member to hold one of Britain’s great offices of state.
Within hours, he made settling the migration status of the Windrush migrants and their descendants his personal mission, telling MPs: “I will do whatever it takes to put it right.”
Mr Javid said: “Learning about the difficulties Windrush migrants have faced over the years has impacted me greatly, particularly because I myself am a secondgeneration migrant.
“Like the Caribbean Windrush generation, my parents came to this country from the Commonwealth in the 1960s. They too came to help rebuild this country and offer all that they had.
Promotion
“So when I heard that people who were long-standing pillars of their community were being impacted for simply not having the right documents to prove their legal status in the UK, I thought that it could be my mum, my brother, my uncle, or even me.”
Mr Javid’s promotion from the Department for Communities took many MPs by surprise as Mrs May was understood to have been planning to sack him a year ago.
He survived only when the general election flop dashed her hopes of filling her Cabinet with loyal allies.
One minister said most thought the Home Secretary job “would go to one of Mrs May’s protegees”.
Mrs May brought back James Brokenshire, who quit the Government last year to concentrate on his successful battle against lung cancer, to fill Mr Javid’s former job. Ms Rudd’s extra equalities role went to International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt.
Mrs May was forced into the whirlwind changes after Ms Rudd resigned, admitting she had “inadvertently” misled MPs over targets for removing illegal migrants.
Defending her own Home Office record, the Prime Minister said: “Yes, there were targets in terms of removing people from the country who were here illegally.
“If you talk to members of the public they want to ensure that we are dealing with people who are here illegally.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Ms Rudd had been used as a “human shield” to protect Mrs May’s reputation. ON his first day as Home Secretary, Sajid Javid struck an all too familiar pose. He did his best impression of the infamous Tory “power stance”, standing awkwardly for photographers with his legs too far apart. It has become an increasingly odd tradition from leading Conservative politicians dating back to 2015. George Osborne invented the stance that year when he