Rudd offers apology to Windrush generation
HOME Secretary Amber Rudd has offered an apology in the House of Commons to members of the so-called Windrush generation who have been subjected to what she described as “appalling” treatment by the Government.
Ms Rudd announced the creation of a new task force in the Home Office to speed up the regularisation of the immigration status of people who arrived in the UK as long ago as the 1940s. Her announcement came after Downing Street said Prime Minister Theresa May wanted to ensure that “no-one with the right to be here will be made to leave”.
And Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said he was “deeply concerned” at challenges to the immigration status of people who were “long-standing pillars of our community”.
Immigration minister Caroline Nokes appeared to suggest that some individuals may already have been deported in error.
But Ms Rudd told the House of Commons that she would not know whether this had happened until she meets high commissioners from Caribbean nations later this week.
Mrs May is to meet her counterparts from Caribbean states in the margins of the Commonwealth summit in London today amid growing anger about individuals facing the threat of deportation and being denied access to healthcare due to UK paperwork issues.
Ms Rudd was challenged in the Commons over an interview in which Ms Nokes appeared to confirm that some Windrush migrants had been wrongly deported.
“There have been some horrendous situations which as a minister have appalled me,” the immigration minister told ITV News in response to a question about deportations.
“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.”
The Home Secretary said high commissioners would have an opportunity to raise any such cases with her at their meeting later this week.
And she said: “I do not want any of the Commonwealth citizens who are here legally to be impacted in the way they have.
“Frankly, some of the ways they have been treated has been wrong, has been appalling and I am sorry.
“That’s why I am setting up a new area in my department to ensure that we have a completely new approach to how their situation is regularised.”
Mrs May’s official spokesman said the Prime Minister “deeply values” the contribution made by Commonwealth citizens in the UK, and was “clear that no-one with the right to be here will be made to leave.”