Windrush Compensation Scheme

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, as I said, we have done extensive community outreach. Since 2018, we have held approximately 200 engagement and outreach events across the country, including approximately 120 one-to-one surgeries to help people with their documentation for the Windrush scheme. We have held 80 public engagement events to raise awareness of the scheme. I will certainly take the stakeholder engagement point back to the Home Office, because it is a good point.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I quite understand why it is necessary to be very sensitive and careful about handing out compensation money. After all, we have seen a very few awful cases of compensation claims when it came to Grenfell, for instance, which were simply criminal. However, I associate myself with every single sentiment which the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, has expressed. Windrush is an example of injustice, and at a time when there are wicked people trying to tear apart races in this country, putting one against the other, the solution to this Windrush scandal cannot come soon enough.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Well, I think I associated myself with pretty much every point that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, made. As my noble friend said, the Windrush scandal is an injustice, and for decades no one did anything about it. We will do what we can as quickly as we can to ensure that people get the compensation that they deserve as soon as possible.

Police National Computer

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Facial images have to be manually removed from the database, whereas the DNA database allows for automatic deletion. That is the answer.

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

This is an embarrassment and, sadly, not the first. My noble friend must be as frustrated as anyone about this. Does this not suggest some impenetrable and deep-rooted shortcomings in the Home Office structures, as the noble Lord, Lord Reid of Cardowan, pointed out so forcefully 15 years ago? If, after all these years, with attention from all sides, we have still not been able to make the Home Office fit for purpose, do we not need to stop kidding ourselves that our Civil Service structure is a Rolls-Royce operation that just needs a fine tune? Without entering into a blame game, do we not need to ask the really difficult questions about why it keeps breaking down—and, in the interests of Ministers, civil servants and, not least of all, the public, do more to find an updated model that works?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, we need to get to the heart of what happened here, which was human error in the coding of a programme. As I said earlier, all the best IT in the world cannot prevent human error—it will happen. I am not in any way undermining the seriousness of what happened, but it was indeed human error.