The Empire Windrush: if the people who arrived on it to help the UK rebuild after World War Two had known how they and their descendants would be treated after 2010, would they have bothered?
If at first you don’t succeed (in persecuting and killing people), try, try and try again seems to be the Conservative motto.
The Windrush scandal was a national outrage. Now we learn that the Home Office could have avoided harming people – but deliberately chose not to.
Where is the fury over this?
the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration (ICIBI) said the department had failed to implement a series of recommendations he has made since 2016 calling for better monitoring of the impact of the hostile environment.
“Had they been, some of the harms suffered by the Windrush generation and others may have been avoided,” said the chief inspector, David Bolt.
The Windrush Lessons Learned review, published in March last year, demanded a “full review and evaluation” of the hostile environment policy devised while Theresa May was Home Secretary – and current incumbent Priti Patel accepted the recommendation in July.
But Mr Bolt said ministers had done little to evaluate the measures, both in terms of the efficiency of the processes underpinning them, including the costs to third parties carrying them out, and their effectiveness in delivering the hoped-for outcomes.
Chai Patel, legal policy director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said the hostile environment must be scrapped before “more lives are lost or destroyed”.
“Even the government’s own immigration inspectorate no longer has any faith that Ms Patel’s Home Office intends to fix the mess it has made of the immigration system,” he said.
Does anyone?
But this story seems to have been buried.
Do thousands more people have to be harmed, deliberately, by Priti Patel before we all wake up again, or are we going to let her get away with it next time?
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The Empire Windrush brought many people to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War II. As I never tire of pointing out, if it had still been in service a couple of years ago, the Tories would have been trying to use it to deport them all again.
People are reacting to this announcement with scepticism – and who can blame them?
Here’s what the government has said:
The government is to give more money to victims of the Windrush scandal, which saw hundreds of people wrongly threatened with deportation.
Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that the minimum payment will rise from £250 to £10,000, and the maximum from £10,000 to £100,000.
The figure will be higher still in “exceptional” circumstances, with money coming through quicker than before.
In the analysis inset by Westminster Hour‘s Jack Fenwick, though, he said
One person [told] me they won’t believe it until a cheque is in the post.
Who can blame them?
The big scandal of the Windrush compensation scheme so far is that people have died before receiving compensation. Did their descendants get the cash? That would have been reasonable, in the circumstances. Taking it back would not.
And what about people who were wrongly deported. Has the Home Office made any effort to contact them, apologise, and ask them to come back? Many of Priti Patel’s deportation victims have suffered terrible ill-treatment since deportation, so that is a can of worms that needs to be opened.
So it’s a nice announcement. But we need to action, not just pretty words.
Dr Allin-Khan is referring to a letter by Holly Lynch, signed by more than 60 Labour MPs, deploring Priti Patel’s decision to deport more people including, it was said, at least one person who was of the Windrush generation or descended from it.
I've written an urgent letter to the Immigration Minister. There are serious concerns that the injustices of Windrush could be repeated. We've asked for answers to a series of urgent questions. pic.twitter.com/5QDNln0y3U
“As a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet, my role is to intervene in matters related to mental health (because I am the Shadow Minister for Mental Health). Members of the Shadow Cabinet do not speak in debates, sign letters, sign EDMs or intervene in matters which are not related to their role. This rule has been in place for as long as I know, it was the same when Jeremy Corbyn was leader.
“I have noticed that my name was put on a list along with 12 colleagues, suggesting we were the only people not to sign this letter. No member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet signed the letter, indeed, almost three quarters of Labour MPs didn’t sign the letter. Does that mean that they don’t care? No, of course not. Sometimes they miss the deadline to sign, sometimes they can’t sign, sometimes they make representations in different ways. It’s very disappointing that some would single out me and 12 other colleagues, suggesting we were the only ones not to sign – simply to fit their political agenda.
“My background has seen me work in war torn countries, disaster zones and refugee camps helping the world’s most marginalised and vulnerable people. I always care deeply about these issues and to suggest otherwise is incorrect. I’ll continue to liaise with my colleagues in the Home Affairs team with regards to this, and other important issues.”
My recollection is that Dr Allin-Khan is distorting the issue. Shadow Cabinet members weren’t criticised for being the only Labour MPs not to sign and it seems to me that she was deliberately creating a “straw man” argument with a ready-made response (that other Labour MPs also failed to sign).
As for her claim about Shadow Cabinet members:
Maybe that is true.
Perhaps it should change.
It seems Shadow Cabinet members are using their position to avoid expressing opinions on the most important matters of the day – the actions of the Tory government – abrogating their responsibilities as members of Her Majesty’s Opposition.
Meanwhile they line up to vilify members of their own party when they are accused – falsely, as we learned in the case of Jeremy Corbyn – of breaking party rules that are so badly-written that they can be made to mean whatever the current leader desires.
Isn’t that, you know… wrong?
Some people seem to think so:
“As a Shadow Cabinet member, I wasn't able to sign it…”
Oh, and it seems Shad Cab members like Dr Allin-Khan can’t even face the responses their protests attract:
Cowards in the shadow cabinet now avoiding all accountability by muting replies. These people are living in an amoral bubble, and they know it. All Labour MPs should have signed this, as all should have opposed this legislation. How do they sleep at night? @DrRosenahttps://t.co/IV9BwRLrz7
Meanwhile, Home Secretary Priti Patel has taken the opportunity provided by this failure of opposition to attack critics of the flight, saying it involved the deportation of “vile criminals” and was nothing to do with the Windrush scandal.
In that case, why did the flight contain only 13 people after last-minute legal challenges succeeded in gaining a reprieve for 23 others?
Oh, that’s right. As Ms Patel said, it was all the fault of “do-gooders” and “lefty lawyers”.
She comes across as a bad Scooby-Doo villain, after the mask has come off: “I would have got away with it too, if it hadn’t been for you pesky lefty lawyers!”
Sadly, in her case, the significance of the mask is reversed. In Scooby-Doo it was always a fright mask being replaced by the villain’s rather ordinary face. With Ms Patel, it is the genuine, hate-filled, face that is the horror.
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The Empire Windrush brought many people to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War II. If it had still been in service a couple of years ago, the Tories would have been trying to use it to deport them all again.
It is ironic that the Conservative government’s own review of its behaviour in the Windrush Scandal was called Lessons Learned, considering its plan for a mass deportation to Jamaica tomorrow (December 2) shows that the Tories have learned nothing.
The Home Office failed to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) under the Equality Act 2010 when implementing Theresa May’s “hostile environment” strategy, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Why is this not headlined "Conservatives in unlawful breach of racial discrimination laws, says EHRC"? https://t.co/mv4qxysvqq
— CrémantCommunarde#ActivistLawyer ⚖️ 🌻 ✋ (@0Calamity) November 25, 2020
May’s plan, which commenced in 2012, was originally intended to make staying in the UK as difficult as possible for illegal immigrants – people who do not have leave to remain, in the hope that they would leave of their own accord.
But the policy’s severe harm to members of the so-called Windrush generation – whose documents showing that they were allowed to stay in the UK were destroyed by May’s Home Office shortly after she took over responsibility for it in 2010 – was ignored, dismissed and disregarded, despite the fact that the Home Office was warned about it repeatedly.
Perhaps part of the responsibility for this lies in the fact that the Tory government, obsessed with outsourcing work to private, profit-making firms, told landlords, banks, doctors and employers to carry out ID checks and report people who lacked adequate documentation.
As a result, thousands of people – yes, thousands – were denied access to health care, benefits and housing, before being deported illegally.
Engagement with representatives of the Windrush generation – people who came to the UK, mostly from Jamaica, to help rebuild the country after World War Two, after the government of the day promised to allow them to settle here (see the 1948 Nationality Act) – was limited.
The EHRC report said the consequences – which have included several deaths – were “foreseeable and avoidable” and the organisation’s interim chair, Caroline Waters, said the treatment of the Windrush Generation was “a shameful stain on British history”.
Windrush Scandal A 'Shameful Stain On British History', Says Equality Commission | HuffPost UKhttps://t.co/FLxKBUHgjp
ThisCounterfire article is damning in its condemnation of the policy:
Dehumanisation and discrimination are built into the very concept of the ‘hostile environment’. For the Tories, the purpose of the policy was twofold: to divert growing anger at their austerity policies and to undercut the rise of far-right rivals like Ukip by appropriating their unabashedly dehumanising and racist ideology.
That’s right – the Tories under Theresa May adopted a deliberately racist ideology. And the policy of dehumanising victims was taken directly from the Nazi playbook, as Jews know very well from bitter experience.
Counterfire continues:
The lives of migrants and ethnic minorities are routinely exploited and endangered for the political gain of those in power in this way. This is not recognised in the EHRC report, which is only able to recommend a set of vague rectifications that rely heavily on the government’s good will, such as the recommendation for the Home Office to ‘prioritise and act early’ on its Equality Act duties.
The Home Office under current Home Secretary Priti Patel has made a public commitment to avoid any similar events occurring.
So it is strange that Ms Patel is determined to force as many as 50 more people out of the UK – including another member of the Windrush generation – in a specially-chartered flight tomorrow:
NEWS: And it's officially confirmed. The @ukhomeoffice are planning a pre-Christmas mass deportation of Black British residents to Jamaica on 2nd December. Despite #COVID19 risks they think that they have capacity to deport 50 people on the flight. #Jamaica50@DetentionActionpic.twitter.com/lC7AcxDzig
Immediately after it was revealed that the flight was taking place, no fewer than 82 BAME celebrities wrote to six airlines known to have carried out such flights, begging them to reject contracts to carry out any more. It is not known which airline has been engaged to carry out tomorrow’s flight.
Signatories included the author Bernardine Evaristo, model Naomi Campbell, historian David Olusoga and actors Naomie Harris and Thandie Newton, as well as lawyers, broadcasters and NGO chiefs. Leading Windrush campaigners including Michael Braithwaite and Elwaldo Romeo also signed.
Black public figures urge airlines not to carry out Home Office deportation | Home Office | The Guardianhttps://t.co/6xjYnWZTwN
And now – better late than never – 70 MPs and peers have also written to Patel, demanding that the flight must be cancelled:
The Government is doing little more than pay lip service to righting wrongs and correcting injustices. I’ve coordinated a letter asking @pritipatel@ukhomeoffice to #StopThePlane and stand alongside nearly 70 MPs and peers calling for Wednesday's flight to be cancelled #Jamaica50pic.twitter.com/eV2DPtMo4l
The letter, co-ordinated by Labour’s Clive Lewis, states:
You have previously committed to ‘righting the wrongs’ concerning the Windrush scandal. But eight months after the Windrush Lessons Learned Review was published, the recommendations have still not been fully implemented, it adds.
“Planning a pre-Christmas deportation flight demonstrates that the Home Office has so far failed to learn any lessons.”
The letter also highlights the threat posed by Covid-19 to anybody being forcibly deported:
“The conditions of deportation, such as shackling detainees to ushers for long journeys in potentially cramped conditions, risk exposing people to the virus,” the letter reads, adding that Black people are already at an increased risk of contracting coronavirus.
And there is the more tangible threat of deportees suffering harm or death at the hands of the authorities when they arrive at their destination:
“We know that five UK deportees were killed between 2018 and 2019. Some people in detention have scars from past abuse in Jamaica, or siblings who have been murdered.”
Strangely, Labour leader Keir Starmer has not signed the letter – nor have 12 of his front benchers. They are: Angela Rayner, Anneliese Dodds, Nick Thomas-Symonds, Lisa Nandy, Ed Miliband, Jon Ashworth, Rosena Allin-Khan, David Lammy, Jess Phillips, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper. Are we to conclude that these MPs approve of the Tories’ racism?
On the other hand, one of the signatories is former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn:
Let us not forget, as you get outraged:@JeremyCorbyn was one of the few who voted against the act that led to the Windrush Scandal – a ‘shameful stain on British history’.
Such a bastard, eh? Or, maybe, not the man the MSM & anti-Corbyn mob have led you to believe him to be. pic.twitter.com/7tqZVYRCb6
— Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush (@WarmongerHodges) November 25, 2020
There is absolutely no doubt that the Conservative government’s racist deportations of people who have every right to remain in the UK should stop. This Writer also has absolutely no doubt that they won’t.
Priti Patel’s record marks her out as a vicious racist who delights in dehumanising and tormenting others.
It is sad to see that she faces no opposition from the so-called Opposition front bench.
But we should remember that the people who have opposed this obscenity are those who have been vilified by the Tory Establishment and their lackeys in the mainstream media. They have lied to us; they are not to be trusted.
And we need to find better ways to oppose them.
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The Empire Windrush brought many people to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War II. If it had still been in service a couple of years ago, the Tories would have been trying to use it to deport them all again.
How unfortunate for the Home Office that it should fall foul of the lawyers twice in one day.
Or is it perhaps a sign of the Johnson government’s disregard for the law?
The Tory government’s much-maligned Windrush Compensation Scheme has been trashed by – one would expect – activist lawyers from no fewer than nine separate firms.
They say it is failing to provide access to justice – a claim that can only have gained validity after it was revealed that the HO tried to rush-deport 23 people illegally, because it had not allowed them their right to appeal.
The – activist – lawyers also said that while the Windrush scandal traumatised its victims, the compensation scheme is only worsening the trauma.
The HO has already confirmed that at least five people who applied for compensation died before receiving it.
Lawyers say they have experienced significant delays and difficulties filing claims for clients who were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants and lost their jobs, housing or pensions as a result.
The letter says many applications appear to be “appear to be lost in a kind of bureaucratic limbo”, with some people forced to wait more than a year for decisions.
Look at this:
The decision to put the Home Office in charge of processing of claims was particularly problematic, they write, given the criticisms of the department made in Wendy Williams’ official inquiry into the scandal. Williams’ report identified a “culture of disbelief and carelessness” within the Home Office and “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race”.
And now let’s all remember that the Home Office is carrying out its own inquiry into the death of refugee Mercy Baguma. What chance does justice have in a “culture of disbelief and carelessness” with “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race”?
Coincidentally (or is it?) yesterday HO permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft announced:
The @ukhomeoffice is seeking an Independent Person to oversee the operation of the #Windrush Compensation Scheme. For more information about the role + to apply: https://t.co/vUyu41pK1w
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You know when we told y’all the rich declared class warfare and you told us to stop being loony lefties. Well now your kids are collateral damage. Wake up, and fight.
— Kerry-Anne Mendoza 🏳️🌈🏴 (@TheMendozaWoman) August 14, 2020
Let’s not delude ourselves. @BorisJohnson does not care for equality & fairness.
Liberals are mistakenly framing #ToryChaos as “callous indifference” or “incompetence”.
It’s class war.
Analysis that fails to explain dynamics of class power & the systematised destruction of the working class is not just bad but dangerous.
— Kerry-Anne Mendoza 🏳️🌈🏴 (@TheMendozaWoman) August 14, 2020
Quite. This is not incompetence. There is no lack of competence In giving contracts to their rich mates or giving them honours or artificially helping the children of the affluent to boost their exam results. This is nor a problem algorithm. This is class warfare.
— Nick Matthews #keepcooperating (@NickCooperative) August 14, 2020
I’m not claiming credit for calling a thing by its name – this is “multiple discovery”, “simultaneous invention”, “synchronicity” or, if you like, an expression of the “zeitgeist”. More and more people are simply coming to realise, understand and accept that it is the policy of the UK’s Conservative government to push them down unfairly.
That is what the decision – and it was a decision, deliberately made – to punish ‘A’ level pupils who weren’t from private schools was all about. Yes, Gavin Williamson and the other Tories are saying it was down to a mechanical system, an algorithm – but that algorithm was written by a human being who intended it to give an advantage to the children of very rich people.
In this way, the Tory class war has stolen your children’s futures and given them to the undeserving rich.
It’s what the decision – and it was a decision, deliberately made – not to fight Covid-19 in any meaningful way was all about. Tens of thousands of people in care homes have died – your relatives, maybe – because Matt Hancock and the other Tories said people with Covid-19 who lived in those homes should be sent back to them – never mind the fact that they did not have isolation facilities and the virus would run through those places like wildfire and be transferred to others by part-time staff who worked in different homes run by the same – private – firm.
The Tories – and their private business collaborators – failed to source personal protective equipment, ventilators, tests and the facilities to carry out tests. The lockdown they imposed was half-hearted and failed to stop the progress of the disease. Now that they have lifted it, albeit with a few measures still in place, more people are contracting the virus again. So they have stopped reporting the daily number of infections.
And the Tories have rewarded their private business collaborators for their failures with hugely expensive contracts to continue failing us – all at the public expense. Serco’s test and trace contract has been renewed, even though we know it won’t stop any second wave (really just a resurgence of the first wave that was suppressed but never went away).
You won’t get justice against the Tories by the normal means available to civil society because the Tories have either corrupted them already or are in the process of doing so. Boris Johnson illegally terminated Parliament’s last session in the autumn of 2019 and what was the result? He called a general election, lied to us until he was purple in the face and was rewarded with an 80-seat Parliamentary majority.
Now he is using that power to ensure that the courts will not be able to stop any more of his corruption by planning a curb on judicial review of government activity. He is imposing a dictatorship – just as he told you he would, if you could have been bothered to read page 48 of his election manifesto.
The police won’t help. Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Gavin Williamson and the others are all above the law – no matter what they do. Try reporting a cabinet minister for a crime and see how far you get. They’ll tell you they’re treating it seriously, bounce the accusation around a few different departments and then say there’s no evidence. I’ve been there.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died already because it is Tory policy to kill claimants of sickness or disability claimants, who they consider to be “useless eaters”. That’s why the newspapers have been full of reports showing people with long-term illnesses and disabilities starving to death.
They wanted your homes so they imposed the Bedroom Tax and took them away from you.
The list goes on and on.
And still, too many people think they are the best choice to run the UK – even though the economy is in its deepest recession ever, and Brexit means it may never recover. You will suffer – they won’t. They have been stockpiling your cash and will simply use it to sit out any unpleasantness in the future.
But I feel sure a tipping-point will come – a flashpoint. I wonder how much we will all have to lose before that happens. I’m guessing it’ll be pretty much everything.
By then, many people may think there is nothing they can do. I am reminded yet again of Martin Niemoller’s poem about how the Nazis came for different groups who received no help from anybody else until, by the time they come for the author, there was nobody even left for him to ask.
But I am reminded of another group who were put in a similar position. When I visited Bosnia in the 1990s, I was told how – when the tanks from other countries moved in – the people, who were weaponless, left their homes and went up into the hills. They came back at night, when they took weapons – and lives – from the soldiers who had taken everything from them. And slowly, they took back their land from their oppressors.
I can see that happening here in the future.
I would rather it didn’t.
But it will, if people of good conscience don’t wake up, get up and put up a fight.
Keir Starmer won’t do it. He agrees with the Tories. That’s why he’s busy turning the Labour Party into Tory Lite Mk II (New Labour was Mk I) and accusing anybody who disagrees with him of anti-Semitism.
If you don’t want this to fall into violence, then you need to think what else you can do.
The ‘A’ level fiasco creates opportunities. Already some further education institutions have said they will take students who were downgraded, on the basis of their predicted results. Some haven’t. Clearly we should take note of the side that each University, each college, takes. Those who do the right thing should be rewarded in whatever ways we can. Those who do not should be shunned – meaning not only that we should not even try to send our children there, but that we should reject their graduates when they seek employment with our businesses. We know they won’t be any damn good anyway.
And employers who turn down applicants on the basis of the Tory algorithm’s discredited results should also be named, so we can stop buying their products.
That’s the best – non-violent – response I can conceive on the spur of the moment, and these things need to start happening now.
We’d better get to it, if we don’t want to roll over and die. And yes, that means you.
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Liz Truss: she slipped her buddy Andrew Mills £150 million for useless PPE, launching a huge corruption scandal in the process. Now the Tories have quietly dropped him from his position as an unpaid advisor to the Board of Trade.
Some might say it’s poetic justice that Andrew Mills, the man who advised Liz Truss to buy unusable face masks for the NHS, has lost his position as an advisor to the Board of Trade.
But what’s happened to all the money that she paid the firm he also (as it happens) advises, Ayanda Capital?
Was that repaid?
If not, then it seems the loss of his unpaid position – as part of a wider reshuffle and not even connected to the PPE scandal – is no punishment at all.
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Bumi Thomas: this jazz musician’s citizenship of the UK is in the balance and the government has already tried to deport her.
EU citizens living in the UK may find themselves the focus of another Windrush-style scandal if they fail to apply for “settled status” – but it seems the first Windrush scandal isn’t over and people are still being deported.
According to The Independent:
EU nationals are in danger of slipping through the cracks of the government’s Brexit registration scheme and turning into another Windrush-style scandal, citizens’ groups have warned.
MPs on the EU future relationship committee were told by community groups that there was simply no way to tell whether how many people had been left out of the scheme because there were no accurate figures for how many were eligible.
EU nationals in the UK have been expected to sign up for “settled status” because of Brexit bringing an end to free movement, but campaigners have complained that the scheme is poorly designed and will leave some people behind.
There are concerns that some EU nationals – particularly vulnerable people – may not realise they need to register, and may find themselves being removed from the UK without understanding why.
This raises uncomfortable parallels with the Windrush scandal, in which documents showing that people had emigrated to the UK and had every right to be here were destroyed by the Conservative government.
The Tories then contacted these people, demanding proof of a right to live in the UK. When they could not produce it, they were deported.
And they still are.
Yes, government representatives have apologised; yes, they said it would not happen again. Either those Tories were mistaken or they were lying.
So we see twin brothers Darren and Darrell Roberts being threatened with deportation to two different countries after completing prison sentences because – despite having been born in the UK – the Tories say they have no legal status here.
Darren, 24, is being sent to Grenada because that’s where his mother was born; brother Darrell will go to the Dominican Republic in one of the errors for which the Home Office under the Tories is justly infamous – he has no family there because his father was born in Dominica, which is a completely different nation.
All children born in the UK are eligible for citizenship but there is an application process with attached costs, which have risen enormously in recent years. Some might argue that this has happened alongside the rise of overt racism in the UK’s government.
The correspondence received by Darrell is certainly racist; it offers him a financial incentive to “return home” – implying that his home must be a foreign country because he is black. This is a young man who was born in London and has lived in the UK for his entire life, remember.
Legally, the government will undoubtedly say it is well within its rights as neither brother has citizenship. But they were still minors when they were imprisoned and their childhood has been described as “traumatic”, so it may be unsurprising that no citizenship applications were completed for them.
Windrush was about sending black people “home” because they couldn’t prove they belonged in the UK. This is no different.
And what about jazz musician Bumi Thomas, who was born in 1983, after the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher passed their British Nationality Act that stripped automatic citizenship from children born to parents from UK colonies?
Despite having been born in Glasgow in 1983 and living in the UK solidly since 2000, she found herself fighting a -crowdfunded – legal battle to remain in the country of her birth.
An immigration tribunal judge has ruled in favour of withdrawing the threat of deportation, but she must wait two years before she can apply for British citizenship. Her status is still at the mercy of a divisive immigration policy – meaning her application may be turned down and she might have to go through this process all over again.
So it seems to This Writer that we should not be discussing the EU nationals’ registration scheme as “another Windrush”. The Windrush scandal is still going on.
EU nationals are merely in danger of joining the Windrush generations as victims of a racist UK government.
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Robert Jenrick: while he was presenting press conferences about Covid-19, he has also been mired in an apparent corruption scandal.
The evidence is mounting against planning minister Robert Jenrick in the scandal over the Westferry development – and interest in the controversy has revealed further potential corruption.
It seems Robert Jenrick was induced to overturn the refusal of the Westferry planning application after property developer Richard Desmond showed him a promotional video for the £1bn development. Here’s The Guardian:
“What I did was I showed him the video,” Desmond told the Sunday Times, adding that Jenrick had watched it for “three or four minutes”, and adding: “It’s quite long, so he got the gist.”
Jenrick subsequently overturned a decision by a local council and the government’s planning inspectorate in order to approve a 500-apartment, 44-storey development at Westferry Printworks, a former printing plan in east London.
Viewing the video would appear to constitute lobbying by Desmond, potentially giving rise to a conflict of interest.
Labour will use the opportunity of a three-hour opposition day debate on Wednesday to discuss the controversy.
A Tory former planning minister is reportedly under investigation for failing to declare an interest in a hotel development in his constituency.
Sir Bob Neill wrote a letter to his local council in December 2018, urging them to approve the redevelopment of The Royal Bell – a neglected hotel in his Bromley Constituency.
But he failed to mention in his letter that he was on the payroll of the Substantia Group – the firm handling the planning application for the hotel.
Sir Bob has been paid £50,000 by the firm for “strategic consultancy advice” since 2016, according to the register of members’ interests.
But his links to the firm were not explicitly outlined in the letter.
Shadow Housing Minister Mike Amesbury said: “It beggars belief that a former planning minister would not be aware of the obvious conflict of interest in this case.”
And the Telegraph today reported Sir Bob had intervened in another planning application being handled by the same firm – again without mentioning his paid position.
MPs voted in 2018 for investigations by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner to remain secret. Some might suggest that this was an offence against justice, which must be seen to be done.
But it has been reported the Commissioner has launched an investigation into Sir Bob’s involvement in the project after receiving a complaint.
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The Empire Windrush brought many people to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War II. If it had still been in service a couple of years ago, the Tories would have been trying to use it to deport them all again.
If ever you needed proof that your government tells you what to do, and not the other way around, it’s this.
The Windrush Scandal – and the “hostile environment” that spawned it – was created from a desire to rid the UK of huge numbers of citizens who came to the UK from Commonwealth nations, notably in the Caribbean, to help rebuild the nation after World War II.
Their job was done, you see, so racist politicians decided to destroy any information offering them a right to UK citizenship and then deport them on the grounds that they could not show a good reason to stay.
Of course, they were caught in the act. And in fairness, the Conservative Government apologised.
Only words.
When it came to actually providing compensation to the people they attacked – make no mistake, this was a deliberate attempt by a UK government to harm its citizens – our Tory administration has spent two years dragging its heels.
Yes – a recent docu-drama on the BBC has reminded us all of the extent of the crime here.
But I see no willingness to make recompense to people who, being poor, cannot exert any influence over the politicians who had all power over them.
Watch what happens and see if I’m right.
Survivors of the Windrush scandal have delivered a petition to Downing Street signed by 130,000 people calling on the government to speed up compensation payments and implement all the recommendations in the Windrush Lessons Learned review.
Paulette Wilson and Anthony Bryan – who were wrongly held in immigration detention centres and threatened with deportation to Jamaica, a country they both left as children in the 1960s and had not visited in more than 50 years – handed the petition to police officers at the gates of Downing Street on Friday.
They both expressed their anger that so few people affected had received compensation in the two years since the government first apologised for wrongly classifying thousands of legal residents as being in the country illegally.
They were joined by Michael Braithwaite, a special needs teaching assistant, who was sacked from the primary school he had worked at for 15 years; Glenda Caesar, who was sacked from her job as a GP administrator after more than 20 years working for the NHS; and Elwaldo Romeo, who was told by the Home Office he was facing detention and should return to Antigua, a country he left 59 years earlier as a four-year-old boy.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary has been clear that the mistreatment of the Windrush generation by successive governments was completely unacceptable and she will right those wrongs.” However, they added, Williams had recommended that the Home Office consider the review carefully before responding, “and we are committed to honouring that request”. Patel had said she would update parliament before the summer recess.
Officials in charge of organising the compensation scheme stressed that claimants should not feel discouraged by the difficulties experienced by others and should persist with making claims. A spokesperson said assistance in completing the claim form was available via the free Windrush helpline on 0800 678 1925.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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