Sajid Javid: Blackmail?

The Home Office says Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) – otherwise known as gagging orders – imposed on members of the Windrush generation who suffered discrimination from the Conservative government are no longer in use.

To This Writer, this indicates that the government has succeeded in silencing everybody it wanted to keep quiet.

Why? What were they likely to say?

Clearly it is utterly unacceptable for the Tories to have threatened to withhold payments to people they have wronged, unless those people agree to remain silent – that is blackmail, a criminal act.

So we may suggest that Mr Javid is a blackmailer.

That’s not a good look for our new Home Secretary!

He needs to go back before the Home Affairs Select Committee and explain himself.

Shame that won’t happen for several weeks, or even months – by which time this matter will be forgotten.

I wonder what Windrush citizen Aldwyn Roberts, who recorded London Is The Place For Me, would say about it?

I doubt he’d be saying “the English people are very much sociable”; still it gives me the opportunity to use the song (he was singing it as he stepped off the Empire Windrush).

Sajid Javid has been accused of trying to “buy the silence” of the Windrush generation by imposing non-disclosure agreements on citizens in return for fast-track compensation payments.

The Guardian revealed last month that several Windrush citizens had been paid some compensation by the Home Office, but then asked to sign an NDA, to the concern of others still waiting for assistance.

Over the weekend the Independent reported others had been put in similar positions in return for speedy payments.

The home secretary told MPs last month that a new compensation scheme for Windrush-era migrants would not involve gagging clauses. “No one will be asked to sign any kind of non-disclosure agreement or anything like that,” he said.

But just days earlier, on 13 July, he had written to the home affairs select committee (HASC) to say that payments had already been made through other routes in some cases and an NDA could have been used.

“I can confirm that Windrush generation cases are sometimes addressed through this route … Whilst there is no requirement, settlement offers are sometimes accompanied by confidentiality clauses, depending on individual circumstances.”

Source: Sajid Javid accused of ‘buying silence’ of Windrush citizens | UK news | The Guardian

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