Windrush Debate

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Department: Home Office

Windrush

Wes Streeting Excerpts
Monday 23rd April 2018

(6 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Amber Rudd Portrait Amber Rudd
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First let me say how sorry I am about the situation the hon. Lady’s constituent has found himself in and thank her for the work she has done for him. I suggest she engages with him to show him that we have now set up the hotline so that he can get his citizenship regularised, if that is what he is still in need of. On the timing of compensation, as I have just said, I will be setting up a compensation scheme and making sure it has independent oversight. When we have that information, I look forward to letting her know.

Wes Streeting Portrait Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
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Our casework is a litmus test of the impact of Government policy, and my casework in the last week has shown family members denied access to weddings and funerals because of arbitrary decisions by the Secretary of State’s Department; international students who are victims of the TOEIC— test of English for international communication—scandal facing deportation on the flimsiest of grounds and at an extortionate cost to the taxpayer; and, finally, victims of domestic violence with British children facing deportation for no other reason than that the mothers cannot produce evidence from the fathers who beat them. This is totally unacceptable. Windrush is the tip of the iceberg of an immigration policy that is unfair, unjust and incompetently delivered. That is what the Home Secretary ought to be taking responsibility for, and the best thing she could do by way of an apology to the Windrush generation is to ensure that they and future generations of migrants to this country no longer face the injustices of the toxic immigration policy over which she presides.

Amber Rudd Portrait Amber Rudd
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The hon. Gentleman has referred to some really tragic situations, and if he sends me the details, I will look carefully at them and make sure they are addressed. I hope that the measures I am putting in place will allow the sort of personal contact that will enable such individuals to get a more personal engagement and a faster and perhaps more satisfactory response when needed.