Extracts from Parliamentary proceedings - June 14

Friday, 15 June 2018 08:29

Extract from Lords debate on Immigration: Hostile Environment Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab):...The impact of these deprivations has become clear. Many Windrush workers and their children have experienced years of uncertainty, leading to ill health and mental breakdown, and some have ended up sleeping rough. But the hostile environment policies were not just visited on the Windrush generation. In April this year, the Oxford Migration Observatory estimated that some 57,000 Commonwealth...Request free trial

Extract from Lords debate on Immigration: Hostile Environment

Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab):...The impact of these deprivations has become clear. Many Windrush workers and their children have experienced years of uncertainty, leading to ill health and mental breakdown, and some have ended up sleeping rough. But the hostile environment policies were not just visited on the Windrush generation. In April this year, the Oxford Migration Observatory estimated that some 57,000 Commonwealth migrants from Pakistan, India, Kenya and South Africa might be caught by the policy. Refugee Action reports that the detention, destitution, homelessness and limbo experienced by Windrush children were the tip of the iceberg and that asylum seekers face exactly the same problems...

Baroness Flather (CB):...The Home Office has a real problem. It does not know anything about historical immigration events. Immigration has gone through different phases and people are here for different reasons. Home Office staff who have to deal with these issues should have at least an inkling of what has gone before, but they do not seem to. If they did not know about the “Empire Windrush” then they did not know about Southall, where two British Army officers went to India and recruited from the men who had served with them in the war. So, the Southall community started because they brought Sikhs back with them. Immigration did not just happen; a lot of things led to different people coming to different areas.

Initially, there were three groupings for Indians: A, B and C. Group C was for totally unqualified people. Callaghan said that he would drop group C, but he gave people between a year and two years beforehand so an awful lot of category C people, who were not qualified in any way, came here. At the time, even the Indian Government said, “If you let in all these people in one go, you will have problems because you have to find them work and housing and look after them. You shouldn’t do it”. That is very interesting to note but I know that that is what happened. A lot of people coming at once was probably not the best idea...

...As a councillor I used to get a lot of people coming to me with their problems—little problems and so on. My MP at the time was Dr Alan Glyn. He was brought up in the traditional English way and he thought that documents mattered. If you are Indian or Pakistani you do not need to spend more than £2 or £3 to get any kind of document with as many seals as you want on it. You go to the marketplace and find a man who does that. Dr Glyn would say, “But they have documents”. That is not the point. We have to realise that not everybody functions like the British do. People from other countries have other issues to worry and think about. They want to come here—why would they not?—so they do what they can to find a way to come here...

To read the full debate, CLICK HERE

Extracts from Commons debate on Windrush: 70th Anniversary

Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con):...To come back to talking about the United Kingdom, when we look around the United Kingdom, if we focus solely on the Afro-Caribbean community, important though they are, we miss the wealth that we get from so many others. I would like to highlight some of the communities that are not normally touched on when we talk about the Windrush community, but are just as much a part of that generation. I want to talk about the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and Indian communities. The subcontinent that for years—for generations—was seen as so remote brought with it, when it came to these islands, the heat, wealth and imagination of its people. It brought with it not only the spice that we now enjoy so much in our food, but the technology and imagination that its people have brought to all parts. If one looks today at Birmingham, one sees the imagination and creativity that is evident across that city. If one looks at some of those businesses that started from nothing and listens to some of the children and grandchildren of those migrants who came with £1 in their pocket, thinking that £1 might take them a little bit further than a week or two—only to realise that it would not even get them the train ticket to go to see their cousin who lived up country—one sees that the people who arrived here came with a drive and a determination that has really transformed not just us, but the world...

Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con): I apologise that I was not here for the opening of my hon. Friend’s remarks due to Parliamentary Private Secretary duties. Does he agree that there is also the entrepreneurial spirit that many brought from the Indian subcontinent? For example, I opened the National Federation of Retail Newsagents conference in Torquay on Monday, and we see the impact in that industry, in particular, of the many entrepreneurial people who came to this country from the Commonwealth...

Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab):...In Jamaica, searing unemployment ravaged society. Britain had closed sugar plantations in favour of cheaper labour elsewhere, and the consequences were devastating. Labour riots were commonplace as people became increasingly frustrated by the destitution that they faced. In Guyana, society was reeling from the Ruimveldt riots in the earlier part of the 20th century. Again, much of the economy was crippled, and people were working in bauxite mines and on sugar or rice plantations for very poor wages and in very poor conditions. People were rioting as a consequence. We cannot forget that Britain’s development was grounded in the underdevelopment of the Commonwealth. Britain’s industrial revolution relied on the de-industrial nation of India, and its profits were built on the exploitation of Caribbean plantations and on the backs of Egyptian cotton farmers and Barbadian sugar producers...

Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD):...On the 70th anniversary of Windrush, the Government must guarantee that every member of the Windrush generation will receive the support they need to claim their rightful citizenship and to live in their rightful home. The same must apply to all those who have fallen victim to discrimination, including Commonwealth citizens—the Kenyans, Australians, Indians and Pakistanis whom we have heard about today. Such people, and I include European immigrants, have established their lives here and put their trust in the UK Government to protect them. We should celebrate not bemoan the fact that many want to live in this country and call it their home. We should be proud of the open and tolerant society we have and that has welcomed so many in the past...

To read the whole debate, CLICK HERE