More than 200 MPs urge Theresa May to make Windrush promises law
3 min read
More than 200 MPs from across the political divide have joined forces to demand protections for Windrush migrants are stamped into law.
In a letter to Theresa May they accuse ministers of making plans to kill off the scandal “on the hoof” and argue concerns over compensation, housing and legal rights have not been settled.
Meanwhile, a string of top figures have piled in to condemn the Government over the debacle. The Home Office has said Amber Rudd will make a statement in the Commons tomorrow.
The Windrush scandal exploded when it emerged a number of Caribbean migrants who arrived between the 1940s and 1970s were wrongly declared illegal as the Tories sought to crack down on unlawful immigration.
Many have been threatened with deportation and lost their rights to housing, healthcare and work.
The latest letter was coordinated by Labour MP David Lammy and signed by mostly Labour MPs. But those from the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party have also lent support - as has one Tory MP.
It says the promises made to Windrush citizens - including documented citizenship and rights to housing, healthcare and compensation - must be guaranteed by law “without delay”.
And it adds: “We are calling on you to do this by bringing a statutory instrument before Parliament to ensure that that the measures are implemented as quickly as possible."
Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable has meanwhile accused the Government of making immigration policy on the false assumption that "Joe Public, out there, is a bigot".
In an exclusive article for PoliticsHome he argued: "To be sure, a large slice of the public, still seek reassurance that borders are controlled and immigration is managed. The Brexit referendum tapped into those concerns.
"But Theresa May’s obsessive pursuit of firmness over fairness may have misjudged Joe Public, who wants to see fairness as well."
LABOUR PROBE DEMANDS
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott has also demanded a full inquiry into whether Ms Rudd breached rules over illegal immigration targets.
The Home Secretary has insisted she did not realise she was misleading parliament when she said there were no such targets. The Government has since announced they will be scrapped.
But Ms Abbott said the Cabinet minister's explanations “stretch credulity to the limit” and called for a probe into whether the ministerial code was broken.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has also piled pressure on Ms Rudd with an article in the Observer attacking her “inhumane treatment” of migrants across the country.
But Communities Secretary Sajid Javid appealed to voters not to abandon the Conservatives in the upcoming local elections as a result of the Windrush scandal.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph he promised the Government would “put things right” and noted that it could have been his family threatened with deportation, who came to the UK from Pakistan in the 1960s.
TORY CHAIRMAN PRESSURE
Separately, Labour MP Emma Reynolds has demanded an apology for Tory Chairman Brandon Lewis after he insisted in February that only illegal immigrants are held in detention centres.
She said she had already written to him about the case of a Jamaican grandmother in her constituency who came to the UK when she was 10 but was wrongly locked up in Yarl’s Wood for a week, according to the Sun on Sunday.
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