Minors Entering the UK: 1948 to 1971
Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Peter Bottomley(5 years, 12 months ago)
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Sir Peter Bottomley
The hon. Ladies can sort out between themselves who I am giving way to.
Siobhain McDonagh
In the cases of Trevor, Ken and Neville, if they had had those landing cards, that would have been proof of their entry.
Sir Peter Bottomley
First, I do not know when landing cards came in. If someone arrived on the Empire Windrush in 1948 or on a ship in the next 15 or 20 years, I do not think there were landing cards. Secondly, if they were British, would they have been asked to fill in a landing card, even if they had arrived by air? I think the answer is no.
I campaigned for Krishna Maharaj, who spent 31 years wrongly imprisoned in Florida. He is British. He was born in Trinidad, but being born in Trinidad made him British, and British people do not fill in landing cards. We allow distractions to take away from the common-sense point: what on earth are we doing thinking that the landing cards would solve the problem? Even the manifests do not solve the nationality problem. When people came here, especially from the Caribbean, after the war, they were British until our laws started to change. But we are not talking about that generation; we are talking about the generation of the Sam Kings, the Arthur Torringtons and the like, who also wrote about the contribution that the people from the Caribbean made before 1948 as well as during 1948 and afterwards.
For those who want to know where targets came from, they were not new in 2010 or in 2015. They are discussed in the Will Somerville book, “Immigration under New Labour”, and I have no doubt they were probably there before new Labour as well. What we should say to those who are undocumented British nationals, subjects, citizens, is, “How soon and how easily can we give you the documents you need?” We are not talking about someone who says they are 17 when they are actually 23 and have sadly had to come across the Mediterranean from Syria or from another country in the past two or three years. We are talking about people who, just by looking at them, I can tell have been around for almost as long as I have, or as long as my children have, which is still quite some time. We should say, “Let’s get you documented in the easiest, fastest, simplest and fairest way possible.”
Those advising Ministers, whether inside a Department or outside, should always say to a Minister, “Is this fair? Is it right? Will it work?” I look to this man here, my brother, the right hon. Member for Tottenham. If we sat together for three quarters of an hour I could probably solve much of this and take away the anxiety. We could apologise for the distress that has been wrongly caused to too many for too long, but the fact is common sense normally works. Let us apply it.