Windrush Day 2025

Debate between Helen Hayes and Clive Lewis

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for intervening and helping me make sense of a sentence in my notes that did not quite work.

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that the Windrush generation made an extraordinary and enduring contribution, and showed immense resilience, but they continued to endure racism and injustice. In 2018, journalist Amelia Gentleman exposed what became known as the Windrush scandal—the systematic denial of citizenship rights to British citizens who had come to the UK from across the Commonwealth in the decades after the second world war, which saw them deported or denied entry to the UK, unable to work or claim their pension, and refused healthcare and housing.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for making a fantastic speech, and for securing this debate. It does seem sometimes quite unfashionable in this day and age to look at the discrimination that that community has endured for so many decades, and not to see it as structural racism. In other words, there is a thread from colonialism, empire and slavery all the way through to Windrush and what we still experience to this day. Would she comment on that issue?

[Helen Hayes]

I will come on to the wider implications of the scandal, which I think speak to the issue my hon. Friend highlights.

The Windrush scandal was the most egregious breach of trust. The Windrush compensation scheme was poorly set up by the previous Government, justice has been far too slow and, sadly, many victims of the scandal have died still waiting for redress. It was very moving to attend, with my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), the Windrush national vigil on Windrush Square on 6 April, led by Bishop Dr Desmond Jaddoo, to remember the victims.

A comparative analysis by King’s College London of the compensation scheme compared with other redress schemes, including the Post Office Horizon scheme and the infected blood scandal scheme, has demonstrated that the Windrush compensation scheme has a much lower success rate for applicants, more complex initial eligibility requirements, a higher required standard of proof, an inaccessible application process, an absence of funding for independent legal representation for applicants, decision making that lacks independence, and a process that is inaccessible. It is vital that changes are made so that victims of the Windrush scandal can have confidence in the compensation scheme.

That is important because the impacts of the scandal are experienced not only by the victims themselves, but across the Windrush generation as a whole and for subsequent generations, who live with the emotional weight and the economic cost of what their loved ones have endured, and whose trust in British institutions and the Government has been fractured as a consequence.