Windrush: 70th Anniversary

Debate between John Hayes and Diane Abbott

Thursday 14th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

At one and the same time, the Windrush generation were both anti-colonialist but deeply respectful of a range of British institutions, including royalty. It may surprise some Government Members, but if someone meets a West Indian who was educated in the West Indies between the war and asks them to recite some poetry, they will promptly and with enthusiasm recite a piece of Keats or Shelley. That was the nature of the education.

[Mr John Hayes]

I am in an embarrassing position because I am having, for the second time in a week, to wholeheartedly and enthusiastically agree with everything that the right hon. Lady says—it is doing me no favours on these Benches, I can tell you. She is absolutely perfectly right about that combination. What she just described is one of the most profound things I have heard in this debate, leaving aside what my great friend, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), said. The right hon. Lady and I will perhaps disagree about this, but that is why it is so important to discuss the Windrush issue for its own sake. One of the risks of conflating it with the wider debate about EU migrants and so on is to miss the subtlety of the points that she is making.

[Ms Abbott]

The Windrush generation were both anti-colonialist and devoted to the royal family. As the years turned into decades of their settlement in the UK, their relatives all over the Caribbean had treasured photographs, in pride of place on their mantelpiece, of that generation together with their children in their Sunday best, posed against a country house background in an inner-city photographic studio. These photographs, treasured wherever people find them, were testimony to the growing prosperity of the Windrush generation.

As the House has heard, over 1,000 passengers arrived that day. They included a group of 66 Poles whose last country of residence was Mexico. The Poles had been granted permission to settle in this country under the terms of the Polish Resettlement Act 1947, which reflected the Polish contribution to the allied war effort. I will return to that point later, but the Polish settlement shows that there was a time when we were very clear, as a political class, who our true friends are, a time when we recognised our obligations of friendship, and a time when we recognised the valuable contribution that people from other countries make to our society and economy.





I stress that “the Windrush generation” refers not only to the 1,000 people who came off the Windrush but to all the people from the Commonwealth who entered this country between 1948 and 1973. However, the original Windrush generation are passing. Every week I hear of the death of a member of that generation who was a pillar of the community in my younger years. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood referred to Len Garrison, but there were many others who were so active and offered such leadership in the 1960s and 1970s.

Let us talk briefly about what the Windrush generation did and contributed. As the House has heard, they came to address a labour shortage. Very many came to work in the national health service, and they helped to build our national health service in its earliest years. My own mother was a pupil nurse, recruited in Jamaica. It was hard, back-breaking work. The nurses often found themselves working the night shift, or the early shift. Very occasionally, patients would refuse to be tended by a black person, but many more appreciated their care and nursing skills. Those women were so proud of their service in the NHS.

Many Windrush-era persons, whether from the Caribbean or elsewhere in the Commonwealth, came to work in transport. There was, for instance, Bill Morris, who rose to lead one of our largest trade unions—the Transport and General Workers Union, as it was then—but who had begun as a bus driver. It is no coincidence that Britain now has both a London Mayor and a Home Secretary whose fathers were bus drivers. Many other members of the Windrush generation worked in manufacturing and light engineering. Some of the most well-established Caribbean communities in London are in parts of London where, after the war, there were ample jobs in light engineering and in factories: areas such as Park Royal, Willesden and Brent, and Hackney Marshes, where the Metal Box factory was.

I must touch on the contribution of the Windrush generation to culture and music. Most people know about the Notting Hill carnival, but if there is a kind of music that I associate with my childhood, it is not just my mother’s beloved Harry Belafonte records, but ska, rocksteady, and the output of Trojan Records. I cannot end this section of my speech about the Windrush contribution without reminding the House of the earliest Members of the Houses of Parliament from the Caribbean: Sir Learie Constantine and Lord David Pitt.

The children and grandchildren of the Windrush generation are also part of this issue. In fact, anyone who came here from the former colonies—from the Commonwealth—before 1973 is here legally, and, in effect, part of the Windrush generation. That applies no matter what part of the Commonwealth they came from—the Caribbean, Africa, India, Bangladesh and many more besides—and it also applies to their children and grandchildren. Many of those people, however, are experiencing difficulties because the immigration department is saying that the immigration position of their parents and grandparents was not resolved.

Now, sadly, I turn to what happened to that Windrush generation after a lifetime of working hard, paying their taxes, bringing up their families, and contributing to a strong and stable society. They were treated shamefully. What was worst for many was not just facing material issues, but being flung into uncertainty and treated like liars. I have convened meetings with them, as has my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham, and they have told us that it is being treated like liars about which they feel most bitter. The Home Secretary says that 63 people have been deported, but the final total could be much higher. Our own citizens were deported.

We also still have no information on how many of the Windrush generation have been wrongly detained at immigration detention centres. I know that some have been, because I met them when I visited Yarl’s Wood earlier this year. The Government have provided no answers on how many people have been bullied or threatened into so-called voluntary removals. They admit that some people have been excluded—prevented from returning to their homes and families when they had just been on an overseas trip, perhaps for a wedding, a funeral or a family holiday. The Home Office still cannot tell us how many of those people there are and what it is doing to address their plight.

There are also those who were made unemployed. Perhaps their employer got taken over by a bigger employer and suddenly, after years of working happily, they were asked to produce paperwork that they simply did not have. Others have lost their homes because of the effect on housing benefit, have been refused bank accounts—although I welcome the fact that the Home Secretary has moved to end the closure of bank accounts in that way—or lost their driving licences, and some, most shamefully of all, have had to pay for medical treatment and were refused treatment for conditions such as cancer. The list of outrages goes on, but the actions the Government have taken to correct them have been a little short-term.

Here I want to address an important issue. All too often when we debate the Windrush generation, Conservative Members start talking about illegal migrants, and some of us think it is wrong to talk about the Windrush generation and illegal migrants in the same breath. Let me say this very slowly for Members who refuse to accept it: the Windrush generation was not illegal. The whole problem of the Windrush scandal is that those who were legally here were treated as if they were illegal. There is a reason why they were treated as if they were illegal. It was not an accident or an aberration, and it was not incompetent officials: it flowed directly from Government policy. It is the essence of the hostile environment.

Let me stop here to make a point. Conservative Members have said that Labour Ministers and Labour Governments talked about a hostile environment. I have news for Members opposite: the Labour party is under new management, and they will not hear from the current leadership some of the things they heard in the past about migration.

A whole string of non-expert agents, landlords, employers, NHS staff and others have been asked to identify people they suspect of being illegal immigrants. The person under suspicion then has the burden of proof placed on them: they must prove otherwise, requiring a series of documents stretching back decades—four for every year. Many of us in this Chamber would struggle to provide four documents for every year we have lived in this country.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Diane Abbott

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 11th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

In 2017, as the House has heard, the UK was subject to five terrorist attacks, which killed 36 people, injured many more and terrified millions. Furthermore, this year there was the shocking assassination attempt on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. So it is reasonable that the Government should review, and if necessary update, counter-terrorism legislation and arrangements for border security.

First, I want to pay tribute to the survivors and the bereaved of the terrorist atrocities in London and Manchester last year. The young girls at the Manchester Arena who came to see their favourite singer saw sights that children of that age should never have to see. I also want to pay tribute to all the brave women and men of the emergency services, who often run into danger and step forward in dreadful times. We should not forget the NHS workers—together with support from Porton Down—who were confronted with circumstances that they could never have dreamed of, but who saved the lives of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

I turn to the Bill before us. Let me begin by saying that I agreed with the Home Secretary when he said recently that there is no binary choice between security and liberty. What makes us free is often what makes us safe. It is certainly what makes ours a country and a way of life worth serving and defending. I am not saying that just as a member of Her Majesty’s Opposition—I fought infringements of our civil liberties, together with some of his Cabinet colleagues, when a Labour Government tried to introduce them, notably ID cards and 90 days’ detention without trial. I defend civil liberties without fear or favour.

The question that arises is whether the Bill is necessary, appropriate and proportionate. Although we support the Bill overall, a careful examination will show that it does not necessarily meet all those criteria. That is why we will seek to amend clauses of the Bill in Committee.

The Home Secretary will be aware that the Home Affairs Committee said in 2001:

“This country has more anti-terrorist legislation on its statute books than almost any other developed democracy.”

In 2008, Lord Lloyd of Berwick told the other place:

“No other country in the world…has had anything like the same plethora of”

anti-terrorism

“legislation that we have had.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 July 2008; Vol. 703, c. 700.]

More recently, Max Hill QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said last year that Britain

“has the laws we need. We should review them and ensure they ensure remain fit for purpose, but we should have faith in our legal structures, rather than trying to create some kind of new situation where the ordinary rules are thrown out.”

To the extent that the Bill does not throw out the ordinary rules, it has our broad support.

Finally in relation to expert opinion, I turn to the review by Dave Anderson, QC, of the terrorist incidents last year in Manchester and London. He made a series of recommendations, ranging from multi-agency working to greater intelligence sharing and more consistent handling of intelligence, but there was not a single recommendation of new laws or powers.

Nevertheless, we have the Bill before us, and the Opposition broadly support it. I will now set out our reservations. First, it will update offences in a way that will potentially criminalise information seeking, playing of videos and expressions of opinion. In relation to the playing of videos, the Home Secretary will have heard the opinion of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) about three clicks being a significant number. We will seek to clarify the point in Committee.

On the question of expressing opinion, the Home Office says in its note on the Bill that it is

“not making it unlawful to hold a private view in support of a terrorist organisation”.

The Home Office also says:

“Operational experience has shown that there is a gap around individuals who make statements expressing their own support for terrorist organisations...but who stop short of expressly inviting others to do so”.

The Home Secretary will expect that we will press that point in Committee, because we would say that gap between having an opinion and inciting others to unlawful acts is not an anomaly but an important principle in protecting freedom of speech. We are in danger in the Bill of confusing bad thoughts with bad deeds. We hope to clarify this issue as the Bill makes progress.

Another concern about the Bill is the extent to which it allows the retention of biometric data on anyone arrested, including DNA and fingerprints, even if they are mistakenly or even unlawfully arrested. There are already abuses of the national police database, which the Government have failed to correct. The state has no business keeping records on people who are not criminals. It is an essential part of our liberty that we can go about our day-to-day lives unhindered by state agencies. That is not the case if the state can retain data on all of us. It is an even greater breach of our civil liberties if the retention is done without our knowledge.

A further concern about the Bill is what it has to say about the Prevent strategy. It proposes extending the Prevent strategy by allowing local authorities, as well as the police, to refer people to the Prevent programme. Let me be clear that there will always be a need for a programme that does what Prevent purports to do. I have met Commissioner Neil Basu and other Metropolitan police leads on Prevent, and I visited Prevent-funded programmes in Birmingham and elsewhere. I have no doubt that there is some good work being done in the name of Prevent, but Prevent as a whole is a tainted brand, particularly among sections of the Muslim community. From a recent study by the Behavioural Insights Team, commissioned by the Home Office itself, we also know that more than 95% of deradicalisation programmes are ineffective. I suggest that those two facts—that Prevent is a tainted brand and that so many of the deradicalisation programmes are ineffective—are not unrelated.

Labour is committed to a thorough review of the Prevent programme, which we believe is currently not fit for purpose. In the interests of transparency and accurate evidence-based policy making, I call on the Home Secretary today to publish the research by the Behavioural Insights Team, which has been so widely reported and seems to run counter to the claims made for the success of these programmes.

[Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I did not intend to intervene—I will speak at length later—but is the right hon. Lady aware that about 75% of people referred to Prevent are, having been through the programme, of no further interest to the police or security services? That sounds like success to me.