Windrush: The new betrayal
THE Home Office was accused of ‘systemic incompetence’ over the Windrush scandal last night after officials admitted destroying thousands of vital documents.
The department said landing cards that recorded when migrants arrived in Britain had been shredded.
The documents could have helped to resolve the status of those wrongly threatened with deportation.
As the crisis intensified, it emerged that at least 49 callers have already used a helpline set up to try to get
the situation under control. However, ministers were forced to admit again yesterday that they still do not know whether anyone has been kicked out of the country in error.
They also had to intervene to halt the removal of the son of a 74-year-old Windrush citizen who has cancer.
Theresa May has issued a grovelling apology to Caribbean leaders and the row has completely overshadowed the Commonwealth summit in London this week.
There is growing fury that many who came to Britain decades ago as children are now being wrongly identified as illegal immigrants. Some have lost their right to work, pensions, NHS care, rent property or access bank accounts. Others have been told they risk detention and deportation. As the scandal widened: Foreign leaders said Mrs May had been unable to tell them how many people had been wrongly deported;
Jamaica’s PM warned that ‘hundreds’ of Windrush citizens had been affected;
Officials began trawling through Home Office files to establish whether anyone had been deported by mistake;
A Cabinet minister said: ‘It’s clear it’s been badly handled.’
Under the 1971 Immigration Act, all Commonwealth citizens already living in the UK were given indefinite leave to remain. But the Home Office did not keep records of those given permission to stay or issue any documents confirming this.
Many people never applied for passports or became naturalised, so it is difficult for them to prove they are in the UK legally.
Changes to immigration law – introduced under Labour in 200 , then toughened by the Coalition in 2014 – to weed out visa over-stayers and others made documentation necessary to access services. But last night it emerged that thousands of landing card slips recording the arrival of migrants, including those of the Windrush generation, were destroyed in 2010.
A former Home Office employee told the Guardian the decision was taken despite warnings the cards might prove important in establishing citizenship. The source said: ‘People would be sent a standard letter that would state: “We have searched our records, we can find no trace of you”.’
David Lammy, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on race and community, said: ‘This reveals that the problems being faced by the Windrush generation are not down to one-off bureaucratic errors but as a direct result of systemic incompetence, callousness and cruelty.’ During talks with West Indian leaders at No 10, Mrs May said she was ‘genuinely sorry’. Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness said Mrs May had been unable to say how many people had been deported.
The Home Office said the Border Agency decided to destroy the landing cards on data protection grounds.
A spokesman said the slips did not provide reliable evidence relating to ongoing residence in the UK or immigration status. Asked if Mrs May had been aware of the disposal when home secretary, he said: ‘It was an operational decision taken by the Border Agency.’
Cabinet Office minister David Lidington told Sky News: ‘It’s clear it’s been badly handled. This should not have happened.’
The man given a deportation reprieve yesterday is Mozi Haynes, 35, whose mother Ruth Williams, 74, left the Caribbean after the Second World War. His bid to regularise his status in 201 was rejected. He is here illegally because he was born in the West Indies and had been using student visas.