The Daily Telegraph

Windrush Day will celebrate generation

- By Daily Telegraph Reporter

THE Government is to announce an annual Windrush Day to celebrate the Windrush generation and their descendant­s.

Lord Bourne, a housing, communitie­s and local government minister, told activists and others who had attended round-table events over the 70th anniversar­y of the beginning of the generation that he would make the announceme­nt with “great pride” today.

It comes in the run-up to Friday’s anniversar­y of around 500 Caribbeans disembarki­ng from the Empire Windrush ship at Tilbury Docks in Essex on June 22 1948.

The annual day will celebrate the generation and their descendant­s and be will be overseen by a panel with a Windrush Day grant, the minister told activists.

The announceme­nt comes after a period of turbulence for the Government over the Windrush scandal, which has seen citizens wrongly detained and deported.

Amber Rudd resigned as home secretary over the scandal, and Theresa May – her predecesso­r at the Home Office – came under fire for her “hostile environmen­t” policy towards migrants. Sajid Javid, who replaced Ms Rudd, signalled a softening of immigratio­n policy under his leadership and that the policy would be reviewed.

Last week, Mr Javid admitted that as many as 63 Windrush generation migrants may have been wrongly deported. Mr Javid revealed the number could still rise as officials trawl through more than 8,000 cases dating back to 2002, as he described the term “hostile environmen­t”, coined by Theresa May, as “un-british”.

The admission followed weeks of denials by the department that any member of the Windrush generation had been forced to leave Britain.

Under questionin­g at the home affairs select committee Mr Javid said 32 of the 63 cases involved criminals and the other 31 were people who left voluntaril­y after being sent a letter by the Home Office asking them to leave.

Asked about the 63 deportatio­ns Mr Javid told MPS: “Out of the 8,000, there’s so far a focus on 63 where there’s something on their record that indicates they could have been in the UK before 1973.”

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