The Tories have been guilty of stupidity and incompetence. But racism? Look in the mirror, Mr Corbyn

WHAT HAS been done to some former Windrush immigrants by Home Office officials is a great scandal. But who is really responsible? And is what happened proof of racism?

According to Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Theresa May should carry the can. He blamed her for — as Home Secretary — pushing through changes to immigration rules in 2014 designed to foster a ‘ hostile environment’ for migrants which have directly led to ‘such pain for a whole generation’.

This is the cry of many on the Left. The Tories are accused of being so obsessed with immigration that they deliberately created a climate in which people of the Windrush generation could be threatened with deportation and deprived of rights to which they were entitled as British citizens.

Exploited

If this were true, the Prime Minister would indeed be guilty of the most abhorrent racism. But of course she is not. The Government — by which I mean the Home Office — can justly be indicted for carelessness, incompetence and stupidity. But not for racism. Let me explain.

Her comment back in 2013 that she would usher in a ‘really hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants could perhaps have been more felicitously phrased. But she was right to tackle the problem of so-called ‘illegals’.

There are probably almost a million of them in the country, with 70,000 or 80,000 more being added every year. Illegals either overstay their visas, or ignore deportation orders having being refused asylum, or sneak into the country in the back of lorries.

This is obviously undesirable. Illegal immigrants place an extra strain on public services that can’t be anticipated. They often undercut the labour rates of indigenous workers. And they are easily exploited by unscrupulous bosses. Moreover, in 2014 (when Mrs May’s new Act became law), net legal immigration was running at nearly an all-time high of more than 300,000 a year, and rising. This was causing resentment in some quarters — resentment which illegals were likely to exacerbate.

So the Government was absolutely right to address the problem. Unfortunately, before the Act was passed, it did not consider the possible repercussions — namely that people who had been legally here for 50 or even 60 years might be caught in the net cast by boneheaded Home Office officials.

Does anyone genuinely believe that Mrs May is racist? Look at her record. She launched the Race Disparity Audit, which examines how people of different backgrounds are treated across areas including health, education, employment and the criminal justice system.

As Home Secretary she urged greater sensitivity on ‘stop and search’ by the police, which some in the black community believed was being used in a racist way. Arguably she has deprived the police of a valuable weapon in the fight against knife crime, but at least her heart was in the right place.

No, Mrs May is no racist. Nor, I hope, are officials in the Home Office. But they have nevertheless acted with astounding idiocy in treating long-standing British citizens in the same way as recently arrived illegal immigrants.

Richard Stewart, who is 73, arrived in Britain at the age of ten, and went on to play cricket for Middlesex. Yet he still can’t get a British passport.

Anthony Bryan, 60, came to this country from Jamaica when he was eight. He lost his job after a letter informing him he had no right to stay in the UK. He was twice held in a detention centre for nearly three weeks last year.

We have heard of countless instances of established residents of this country being arbitrarily detained or deprived of their diving licences or being denied healthcare — for which they have as much right as any other British citizen. Their only ‘crime’ was that they were deemed to lack the necessary paperwork, though their long residence in this country should not be hard to establish.

In one appalling case Nick Broderick, who came to the UK as a baby in 1962, was required to prove he had lived here. After he had sent papers to the authorities, he was told they had been lost and he would be deported. He had to report to the police every month, and wasn’t allowed to work or use his driving licence.

Yesterday the family of a 57year- old who died suddenly after collapsing in the street blamed the pressure of his being labelled an illegal immigrant.

Dexter Bristol, who moved to Britain from Grenada in 1968 when he was eight to join his mother, an NHS nurse, was sacked from his job as a cleaner last year because he had no passport. He was then denied benefits. He died three weeks ago after a year spent struggling to gather the documentation needed to prove his right to live and work here.

It’s shameful that the Home Office has treated British citizens in this way. We all know officials can be narrow-minded, but what was done to these people has been cruel, degrading, inhuman and completely at odds with our traditions of decency and fair play.

Heartless

Of course, we can’t exclusively blame the bureaucrats, however heartless and foolish they have been. While I am happy to exonerate ministers of racism, there’s no doubt they have conspired in a terrible injustice.

It’s possible they were in the dark. We should never underestimate how ill-informed they can be. Home Office minister Victoria Atkins was recently obliged to admit on a radio programme that she didn’t know the number of police officers in England and Wales. Yet the Mail reports today that in 2015 — a year after the Act targeting illegal immigrants had been implemented — an internal Home Office document expressed concern that ‘lawful and settled migrants’ might inadvertently be caught up in the crackdown.

It’s hard to believe ministers were unaware of this document. It also seems unlikely that in recent weeks the Home Secretary Amber Rudd was so inattentive that she didn’t hear stories of over-zealous officials treating people who have been here half a century as if they had been found hiding in a lorry in the port of Dover.

But I still think that Ms Rudd, like Mrs May, should be acquitted of the charge of racism, though her department has behaved in an inexcusably incompetent and overbearing manner.

Evidence

As for Jeremy Corbyn, we know from his past statements that he is against imposing any restrictions on immigration, illegal or otherwise. In this belief he is at odds with the majority of British people and some in his party.

His insinuation that the Prime Minister was some sort of sponsor for racism was disgraceful. He was equally wide of the mark in claiming she was responsible as Home Secretary for destroying the landing cards of Windrush migrants.

These cards could have served as useful evidence of when they arrived in this country. In fact — as Mrs May was able to show to Mr Corbyn’s discomfiture — the decision to get rid of them was taken in 2009 under Labour.

Incompetence is one thing. Mrs May, and even more Amber Rudd, have got further apologies to make. But there was an obvious irony in the Labour leader making accusations of racism. Didn’t we learn as recently as Tuesday from two female Jewish Labour MPs that they have been subjected to revolting anti-Semitic abuse from Mr Corbyn’s far-Left supporters? They have since suffered a fresh tirade of invective from the same quarter.

When it comes to hate-filled racism, it is Jeremy Corbyn and his extreme supporters — not Theresa May and an admittedly blundering Home Office — who have by far the most serious explaining to do.