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| Amber Rudd 'deeply regrets' failure to spot scale of Windrush issue | Amber Rudd 'deeply regrets' failure to spot scale of Windrush issue |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| The home secretary, Amber Rudd, has said she deeply regrets not spotting the problem of Windrush-generation Britons being wrongly targeted by immigration authorities, vowing there would be a culture change at the Home Office. | |
| Answering questions before the Commons home affairs committee, Rudd said she hoped to give immigration staff more discretion to assess people’s cases to prevent anything similar happening again. | Answering questions before the Commons home affairs committee, Rudd said she hoped to give immigration staff more discretion to assess people’s cases to prevent anything similar happening again. |
| She also told the MPs that the government was still checking to confirm no Windrush citizens had been wrongly deported, and had not yet begun to assess how many might have been detained over their supposed immigration status. | |
| Asked by the committee chair, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, when she first learned of the issue, Rudd replied: “I became aware over the past few months, I would say, that there was a problem of individuals I was seeing. | Asked by the committee chair, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, when she first learned of the issue, Rudd replied: “I became aware over the past few months, I would say, that there was a problem of individuals I was seeing. |
| “This was covered by newspapers, and MPs bringing it forward anecdotally over the past three or four months, and I became aware that there was a potential issue.” | “This was covered by newspapers, and MPs bringing it forward anecdotally over the past three or four months, and I became aware that there was a potential issue.” |
| She continued: “I bitterly, deeply regret that I didn’t see it as more than individual cases gone wrong that needed addressing. I didn’t see it as a systemic issue until very recently.” | She continued: “I bitterly, deeply regret that I didn’t see it as more than individual cases gone wrong that needed addressing. I didn’t see it as a systemic issue until very recently.” |
| Rudd paid tribute to the “extraordinary job” done by the Guardian’s Amelia Gentleman, who had been highlighting the issue for more than six months. | |
| Rudd was accused of protecting the prime minister by refusing to say whether Theresa May, her immediate predecessor at the Home Office, was responsible for the department ending up too focused on policy, rather than on people. | |
| “I think the Home Office needs to have a more human face ... I’m trying to look forward to make those changes now. I want the Home Office to have more personal focus,” she said. | |
| Asked whether the fault stemmed from changes she had made when she took over as home secretary in 2016, Rudd said: “That would be for others to judge ... I don’t think I can give a clear answer to that.” | |
| Labour committee member John Woodcock pressed Rudd on the issue: “You could give a clear answer but you’re choosing not to because you’re choosing to protect the previous incumbent of the home department, who is the prime minister.” | |
| Rudd replied: “I’m choosing to be very honest which is that I don’t have a straightforward to answer to that.” | |
| The home secretary denied that the Tories’ pledge to bring net migration below 100,000 – which she previously had refused to say whether she would stick to – had fuelled the saga. | |
| “I don’t think that’s got anything to do with it. It’s wrong to think the net migration target is the problem here. The problem here is that people were not properly documented,” Rudd said. | |
| Rudd said she had not discussed the net migration target in the context of the whole Windrush scandal with May, but refused to be drawn on private conversations they have had more generally. | |
| Asked about cases including a man who moved to the UK in 1971 but was targeted because he could not prove he had lived in the country continually ever since, and another who was asked to show four pieces of residency proof for each year, Rudd promised a new approach. | |
| “I would expect a case worker now to be able to engage with them personally, which is the sort of changes I’m putting in place,” she said. | “I would expect a case worker now to be able to engage with them personally, which is the sort of changes I’m putting in place,” she said. |
| “What’s different now is that I’m putting in place a more personal service at UKVI [UK Visas and Immigration] to ensure that where there are situations – and that may be an example – that individuals are able to engage with the case worker so that they can explain to them why this as the case.” | |
| She added: “I hope that the changes I am putting in place will ensure that there is a culture change and that any future cohort of this type will be picked up much sooner or that we won’t get there at all.” | |
| However, Rudd did not identity the so-called hostile environment immigration policy brought in when May was home secretary, which requires people to proactively prove their status, as a specific failing. | |
| Quizzed on the issue at prime minister’s questions earlier on Wednesday, May had also denied the strategy had affected the Windrush generation, saying: “The problem at the time is that they were not documented with that right, and that is what we are now putting right.” | Quizzed on the issue at prime minister’s questions earlier on Wednesday, May had also denied the strategy had affected the Windrush generation, saying: “The problem at the time is that they were not documented with that right, and that is what we are now putting right.” |
| However, giving evidence before May, the head of the ISU immigration workers’ union, Lucy Moreton, had said changes introduced by May around 2011 had made a difference. | However, giving evidence before May, the head of the ISU immigration workers’ union, Lucy Moreton, had said changes introduced by May around 2011 had made a difference. |
| Before then, Moreton told MPs, immigration case workers dealing with a Windrush-generation person could assess their case by checking their knowledge of events such as the 1977 silver jubilee and the the 1976 drought, adding: “That level of discretion is no longer permitted.” | Before then, Moreton told MPs, immigration case workers dealing with a Windrush-generation person could assess their case by checking their knowledge of events such as the 1977 silver jubilee and the the 1976 drought, adding: “That level of discretion is no longer permitted.” |
| The home secretary appeared to be unaware of regional targets for net removals, which Moreton had said existed, prompting Cooper to suggest she may have a “lack of grip” on the system. | |
| However, Rudd said it was correct that she had asked for more removals to take place generally, adding that there was nothing wrong with trying to remove people who were here illegally. | |
| Satbir Singh, the chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, told the MPs there was now a “decision-making culture of suspicion”, based around “inflexible and unrealistic evidentiary burdens”. | |
| Singh said that even though he is a UK national born in the country, he was recently asked to prove his immigration status when renting a flat. As his passport was at an embassy to get a visa he missed out. | Singh said that even though he is a UK national born in the country, he was recently asked to prove his immigration status when renting a flat. As his passport was at an embassy to get a visa he missed out. |
| He said: “That, for me, was a clear coalface indictment of how this works.” | He said: “That, for me, was a clear coalface indictment of how this works.” |
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| Yvette Cooper | Yvette Cooper |
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