Storm as Labour MP accuses May of racism over Windrush

Opponents line up to condemn policy and call for Rudd to step down

LABOUR sparked a fresh row over the Windrush scandal last night by accusing Theresa May of ‘institutionally racist’ immigration policies.

The Prime Minister was accused of presiding over ‘racist legislation that has discriminated against a whole generation of people from the Commonwealth’.

Other opposition MPs also lined up to condemn the Government’s so- called ‘ hostile environment’ strategy – introduced by Mrs May as Home Secretary in 2014 – which meant migrants could not rent homes, work, open bank accounts, access NHS treatment or hold driving licences without proof of the right to live in Britain.

And they stepped up calls for the current Home Secretary Amber Rudd to quit over the row.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, said the relatives of Caribbean migrants who settled in the UK between 1948 and 1973 had been treated as ‘second-class citizens’.

The controversy erupted last week when it emerged that many Commonwealth citizens, most around retirement age, had been wrongly identified as illegal immigrants in the Home Office crackdown.

Dozens of individuals from the West Indies, who arrived to help rebuild Britain after the Second World War, lost their jobs, homes, benefits and NHS care, and were threatened with detention and deportation, because of the blunders.

One grieving mother even blamed the Windrush scandal for the death of her son, who became ‘ very depressed’ as he fought to prove he was not in the UK unlawfully.

Both Mrs May and Miss Rudd have been under intense pressure over the row, having run the Home Office for the past eight years. Labour has been vocal in its criticism, but yesterday Dawn Butler went further, saying the Prime Minister’s policies were delivering ‘institutionalised racism’.

Asked if Mrs May could be accused of racism, the shadow women and equalities secretary told Sky News: ‘Yes, she is the leader.

‘She is presiding over legislation... discriminating against a whole group of people who came from the Commonwealth, who suffered racism when they came over – the “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs” – and now they are having to relive that trauma all over again because of Theresa May.’

‘(She) has to not only reconsider her position, but she has to reconsider her policies, and an apology is not good enough.’

Mr Corbyn, speaking at the Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno, demanded a stop to ‘disgraceful’ and ‘discriminatory’ policies which had resulted in people being ‘shut out of public life’.

He said: ‘It is not that they weren’t warned. At the time the Tories were pushing their hostile immigration policy through Parliament, some of us warned of the consequences this could have for many people and families – people’s lives ripped apart because of the personal decisions and actions of Theresa May and her government.’

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry led the calls for Miss Rudd to fall on her sword.

She said: ‘People have died, people have lost their jobs, lost their futures. People working in the National Health Service all their lives suddenly lose their jobs.

‘It could not be worse and yet the Home Secretary thinks, “I can apologise and it will be all right”.

‘Well, it won’t be. I really think she should quit.’

Migrants arriving from the Commonwealth before 1973 were given an automatic right to stay. However, the Home Office did not keep a record of those granted permission to stay or issue any documents confirming it – meaning many Windrush children lack proof of citizenship.

Last Monday, Miss Rudd raised eyebrows by laying the blame for the scandal on bureaucrats in the Home Office. She said the department was ‘too concerned with policy and strategy, and sometimes lost sight of the individual’.

Justice Secretary David Gauke was deployed yesterday to insist the Home Secretary should not quit over the scandal.

He also blamed civil servants in the Home Office for badly implementing a legitimate policy to crack down on illegal immigration.

Speaking to Nick Robinson on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, Mr Gauke insisted that the Home Secretary should not resign.

He said: ‘No, absolutely, because when it comes down to it, the central policy is right.

‘Clearly, there have been very significant failures in terms of how this has been implemented.

‘I think it is right that both the Home Secretary and Prime Minister have apologised for this.’

Ministers are expected to set out details of the compensation package promised to members of the Windrush generation who were wrongly embroiled in the immigration crackdown.

Payments which could total millions of pounds will be made to ‘resolve the anxiety and problems’ they have suffered, Mrs May said on Friday.

IN a truly nauseating display of opportunism, Jeremy Corbyn continued to twist and exploit the Windrush fiasco for political advantage yesterday, citing it as proof that the Government is institutionally and irredeemably racist.

Almost unable to contain his sanctimony, the Labour leader said the affair had exposed ‘something rotten’ at the heart of Theresa May’s administration and that the Prime Minister was personally responsible for ‘ripping people’s lives apart’.

For a man whose own party is riddled with bigotry and violent anti-Semitism – and who has signally failed to tackle it – this was breathtaking hypocrisy. It was also deeply mendacious.

Yes, the Home Office made a deplorable hash of implementing new rules aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration. And stripping Windrush generation migrants of their residency rights was an appalling injustice to people who have worked and paid their taxes here for decades. Quite rightly, they have now received formal apologies and will be compensated.

But they were the unintended victims of a blanket policy, implemented with boneheaded inflexibility. Labour’s suggestion they were deliberately targeted by racist ministers and officials is simply scurrilous.

Of course, this type of smear campaign is not without precedent. For years Labour pursued a policy of uncontrolled immigration and demonised anyone who criticised it as a knuckle-dragging racist. This was – and still is – a grotesque distortion.

Britain is one of the least racist nations on earth. This was proved by the universal sympathy for the Windrush victims and the speed with which they were offered redress.

But that doesn’t mean people don’t want immigration controls. The huge influx of migrants in recent years has placed unbearable pressures on public services, driven down wages and profoundly exacerbated the housing crisis.

As the Brexit vote demonstrated, the public has had enough of open borders. So if, as Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell hinted yesterday, Labour would rip up controls on illegal immigration, it would alienate huge swathes of the country – including its own Northern heartlands.

But Mr Corbyn is not interested in what the public wants – only in traducing the Government. In a cynical and deliberate misquote, he has repeatedly claimed that when Mrs May was Home Secretary, she said Britain should be ‘a hostile environment for migrants’.

In fact, the actual phrase was ‘a hostile environment for illegal migrants’. And it was originally coined by her Labour predecessor at the Home Office, Alan Johnson.

But why let the truth get in the way of a good smear story?