Rudd tells of ‘bitter regret’ over Windrush scandal

AMBER Rudd has spoken of her “bitter regret” at failing to grasp the scale of the Windrush scandal sooner.

The Home Secretary, who has faced calls to resign over the crisis, told MPs she had become aware of there was a “potential issue” over the “past few months”.

But she said: “I bitterly, deeply regret that I didn’t see it as more than individual cases that had gone wrong that needed addressing. I didn’t see it as a systemic issue until very recently.”

Ms Rudd and her predecessor Theresa May have come under intense pressure after it emerged that Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK from the late 1940s to the early 1970s were wrongly having their immigration status challenged.

As a result of the disclosures, the Home Office launched a review to check whether any of the Windrush generation – named after the first ship that brought them to Britain in 1948 – had been incorrectly deported.

Ms Rudd told the Commons Home Affairs committee that so far 7,000 out of around 8,000 records dating back to 2002 had been checked, with no wrongful removals discovered.

A dedicated helpline set up last week has received more than 1,300 calls about potential Windrush cases, with 91 appointments booked and 23 cases resolved so far.

The revelations have prompted fresh criticism of the Government’s “hostile environment” policy to tackle illegal immigration.

Emphasising that those affected by the Windrush affair were in the country legally, Ms Rudd insisted there is “nothing wrong” in trying to remove people who were here unlawfully.

She acknowledged she had asked for more removals of individuals with no right to be in the UK, but was not familiar with suggestions that regional targets were in place.

Ms Rudd also rejected suggestions that the Tories’ target to bring net migration below 100,000 had fuelled the Windrush saga.

“I don’t think that’s got anything to do with it,” the she said. “It’s wrong to think the net migration target is the problem here. The problem here is that people were not properly documented.”

Earlier Jeremy Corbyn accused Ms Rudd of taking a “cruel and misdirected” policy which she had inherited and making it worse.

At Prime Minister’s questions, Mrs May insisted the Government was committed to ensuring those who were entitled to be in the UK were able to remain, but said it was right to tackle illegal immigration.

“People want to ensure that the Government is taking action against those people who are here in this country illegally,” she said.