HOW MAIL HIGHLIGHTED SCANDAL
to work, rent property, receive pensions, access bank accounts and have NHS care. Others have been told they risk detention and deportation.
The row turned toxic yesterday when immigration minister Caroline Nokes suggested there had been deportations. As ministers were branded ‘inhumane and cruel’:
Miss Rudd said the Home Office was ‘too concerned with policy and strategy, and sometimes lost sight of the individual’;
Commonwealth countries will be contacted to check whether anyone had been wrongly removed;
A taskforce will speed up the regularisation of immigration status for tens of thousands of citizens;
Cases will be resolved in two weeks and the £229 fee will be waived;
Theresa May performed a U-turn by agreeing to meet Caribbean leaders who have been raising concerns;
A cross-party group of 140 MPs wrote to the Prime Minister demanding ‘immediate and effective’ action.
Miss Nokes made her comments in an interview with Channel 4 News. She said: ‘Potentially they have been deported and I’m conscious that it’s very much in error and that’s an error I want to put right.’
Then she told ITV News that some people had been booted out of the UK ‘horrendously’, adding: ‘I don’t know the numbers, but what I am determined to do going forward is to say we will have no more of this.’
In the aftermath of her interviews, officials insisted no one had been deported in the immigration crackdown.
But then in the Commons, Miss Rudd said she was not aware of any cases but was investigating and conceded some members of the ‘Windrush generation’ may have been wrongly sent back to the Caribbean.
She added: ‘That is why I have asked the high commissioners if they know of any, that they should bring it to me.’
Last night, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said at least one person had wrongly been sent back to Jamaica. Satbir Singh, who is the charity’s chief executive, said: ‘It is true, but it is very difficult to know how many people have been removed. What’s shocking is that the Govwas ernment admits that it has no record of the numbers.’
Downing Street said Mrs May wanted to ensure that ‘no one with the right to be here will be made to leave’.
Barbados high commissioner Guy Hewitt told the BBC: ‘Because they came from colonies which were not independent, they thought they were British subjects. And 40, 50 years on are being told by the Home Office that they are illegal immigrants. Some have been detained, are still being detained. Others have been deported.’
Mr Lammy told the Commons: ‘This is a day of national shame and it has come about because of a hostile environment policy that begun under her Prime Minister.’ He later tweeted: ‘I am disgusted by the Home Secretary’s response. She says she is worried that the Home Office is too concerned with policy and not concerned enough about individuals. Guess what, you’re in charge of the Home Office. You should be considering your position because of this.’
Tory MP Nigel Evans said he was ‘ sickened’ by the treatment of Windrush citizens and called on the Home Secretary to carry out an ‘urgent review’ of cases where it was possible an individual had been deported.
Labour MP Lucy Powell said the Home Office was ‘going after soft targets’ rather than genuine illegal immigrants.
The new Home Office taskforce, with 20 personnel, will help individuals identify and gather evidence to confirm their right to be in the UK. It will work with HM Revenue & Customs, Department for Work and Pensions, Department of Health and Department for Education and other bodies for relevant paperwork.
Fees for sorting out the paperwork of those affected will be waived. Cases will be dealt with in two weeks once evidence is gathered.
The Migration Observatory at Oxford University estimates there are 500,000 people resident in the UK who were born in a Commonwealth country and arrived before 1971.
People born in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries are thought to be more affected than those from other Commonwealth nations, as they were more likely to arrive on their parent’s passports without their own ID documents.
Many have never applied for a passport in their own name or had their immigration status formalised, as they regarded themselves as British.
A Home Office spokesman said last night: ‘We are not aware of any specific cases of a person being removed from the UK in these circumstances and we have absolutely no intention of asking anyone to leave who has the right to remain here.’