‘ID cards to avoid another Windrush’

ISSUING identity cards would help avert a larger Windrushstyle scandal post-Brexit, ministers have been told.

Leading academic Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve argued that there was a need for “robust identification documents”, demonstrating a person’s entitlements during a debate in the House of Lords.

The independent crossbencher said the inability to produce documentary evidence contributed to the “sorry story” of the Windrush generation named after a ship that brought migrants to Britain from the Caribbean in 1948 - whose treatment has led to an angry backlash against the Government.

Commonwealth citizens who arrived before 1973 were automatically granted indefinite leave to remain under the 1971 Immigration Act.

But some of those who arrived in the years after the Second World War have been challenged over their status.

It led to cases of long-time UK residents being denied healthcare, unable to work or even possibly being wrongly deported.

Lady O’Neill, who was chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, told fellow peers: “I think the best protection against being misclassified as an illegal immigrant... is surely to be able to demonstrate that one is a citizen or that one is a noncitizen with specific rights such as right to travel, to live or to work in the UK.

“Ability to demonstrate entitlement I think is crucial,” she said.