May vows to compensate Windrush victims

Home Office warns critics not to use scandal to undermine genuine need to deport illegal migrants

Jack Maidment, Harry Yorke

Christopher Hope

THERESA MAY said last night that Windrush generation citizens who had “suffered” as a result of the recent scandal would receive compensation.

Commonwealth migrants previously assured of their right to stay in the UK had been threatened with deportation, sacked from their jobs and denied access to health services after being unable to prove their status. The Prime Minister yesterday announced the Government will compensate those adversely affected as she attempted to draw a line under a scandal which has overshadowed a week-long summit with Commonwealth leaders.

She said: “On Tuesday, I met with Caribbean leaders, where I gave an absolute commitment that the UK Government will do whatever it takes – including where appropriate payment of compensation – to resolve the anxieties and problems which some of the Windrush generation have suffered. These people are British, they are part of us, they helped to build Britain and we are all the stronger for their contributions.”

Keith Mitchell, prime minister of Grenada, said the compensation offered would have to be a “substantial sum”. It came as Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, said their plight was being used to undermine the fight against illegal immigration and she accused critics of “wilfully misleading” the British public. She hit back after a week of intense criticism of the Government’s handling of the crisis, which came under even greater scrutiny yesterday after a leaked private memo revealed she had vowed last year in a letter to Mrs May to “ruthlessly” prioritise the detention and forcible removal of illegal migrants and aimed to increase by 10 per cent the number of enforced removals.

The Home Office later issued a statement warning against conflating the issues of Windrush and the Government’s efforts to crack down on people living in Britain illegally. A spokesman said the Govenrment had set up a dedicated task force to help the Windrush generation “evidence their legal right to live in the UK”. They added: “It is wilfully misleading to conflate the situation experienced by people from the Windrush generation with measures in place to tackle illegal immigration and protect the UK taxpayer.”

Ms Rudd faced calls to resign after it emerged some people who came to the UK legally in the Fifties and Sixties and were granted the right to stay had been threatened with deportation. She used the private memo, sent in January 2017 and obtained by The Guardian, to promise to toughen policies devised by her predecessor. But within months members of the Windrush generation began to receive letters threatening deportation unless they were able to provide proof of British citizenship. The number of cases being looked into as a result of calls to the Home Office’s Windrush helpline last night approached 300, with eight people having been awarded permanent status so far.

Tens of thousands of arrival records of the Windrush generation were last night unearthed in the National Archives, giving many hope they can prove their UK citizenship. Gretel Gocan, 81, a grandmother, was unable to return to the UK from Jamaica after travelling for a funeral. Her passport was stolen and she could not get back, despite living here for 59 years.

‘It is wilfully misleading to conflate the situation with measures in place to tackle illegal immigration’

The fate of a nation is shaped by its borders. In the same week as it emerged that the EU has rejected Theresa May’s solutions for the post-brexit Irish border, the Commonwealth countries gathered in London under the cloud of the Windrush controversy. The idea that those who were invited to settle in the UK decades ago, and told they could stay, have had their right to live here questioned because they lack paperwork challenges our understanding of what it means to be British. We believe in liberty, not bureaucracy. Many men and women choose to come here precisely for that reason.

But the world is changing. When HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in 1948, carrying 492 Caribbean migrants, Britain was beginning to build a welfare state and needed workers. The scale of subsequent migration was limited and the state’s ability to keep tabs on its new citizens, along with its older ones, was slim. In the Seventies, Britain declared that migrants and their descendants could simply stay in the country – and many did so without the need for additional documentation.

All that has changed. It is now much easier to migrate and, since Tony Blair unilaterally said yes to entry for new EU nations, the numbers are far larger – a net rate of 295,000 in 2017. The border is also more porous. It is estimated that there are close to one million people living illegally in the UK, many of whom arrived quite legally: around 40,000 people per year overstay their visas and about 20,000 fail an asylum application but choose to remain. Controlling immigration is therefore no longer just a matter of managing points of entry. Governments have to keep an eye on what is happening within Britain’s borders, too, or else the welfare state is open to abuse. For instance, if Britain runs a Forties-style health system while operating a 21st-century open labour market, patients who access the NHS will not necessarily be the same people who paid for it – undermining the social contract for which it is supposed to stand. The Left, which is obsessed with potential racism, prefers to ignore that paradox. The Right has ducked some solutions, such as healthcare co-payments or a benefits system based more upon individual contributions.

The Tories have implemented a so-called hostile environment policy, which is inevitable. If the state cannot prevent people from entering the country under false pretences, one of the few tools at its disposal is to try to make it as difficult as possible to remain, say through employment or housing checks. The results for genuine citizens who have fallen foul of the bureaucracy are distressing, and the Home Office clearly needs fixing. Nevertheless, the policy’s Left-wing critics have offered no useful alternative. Instead, they are seizing upon individual, tragic cases as evidence that the state ultimately cannot manage immigration – and shouldn’t even try. This is an ideological argument that would harm the very constituencies the Left claims to represent. Illegal migration can undercut wages and working conditions.

A useful debate about immigration would talk about the technological changes necessary to ensure better checks on who is coming in and out, and why. A new system must not only represent value for money but also be 100 per cent secure. The Irish border will be a significant test of innovation: the Government should have spent the past two years preparing the infrastructure. Instead, the public is still waiting to hear what Britain’s future immigration policy will be (business-dictated or committed to lower numbers?) and how it will balance adequate policing with the maintenance of civil liberties. The Government must learn from the Windrush debacle and avoid repetition of those mistakes.

It must not, however, lose sight of the importance of a properly managed border, especially as Brexit will restore the full control previously ceded to the EU. Here is a chance to start anew. Britain will continue to welcome those who wish to work hard and contribute – and they will come because the British people have voted for it through the ballot box, not as part of some deal cooked up by politicians. There is no more sensitive issue than immigration, and Brexit could be the opportunity to build a consensus on the subject that is sensible and humane.