“That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that she will be graciously pleased to give directions that the following papers be provided to the Home Affairs Committee:
all papers, correspondence and advice including emails and text messages, from 11 May 2010 up to and including 1 May 2018, to and between Ministers, senior officials and Special Advisers relating to policy decisions including on the Immigration Acts 2014 and 2016 with regard the Windrush generation cases, including deportations, detentions and refusal of re-entry, the setting of deportation and removal targets and their effect on the Windrush generation, and action taken within Government following the concerns raised by Caribbean Governments with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office including the original decision by the Prime Minister not to meet Caribbean Heads of Government and officials, and all copies of minutes and papers relating to the Cabinet’s Immigration Implementation Taskforce.
In May 2012, the Prime Minister told readers of The Daily Telegraph:
“The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration.”
As I have said, no Opposition Member supports illegal migration, but the problem with the hostile environment that the Government set up was that it swept perfectly legally British citizens up with it. So the Home Secretary will forgive me if I wonder about his claiming now to be abandoning the “hostile environment” title. I say this with all due respect, but his predecessor never seemed to be in command of policy on this matter. She was used as a human shield by the Prime Minister. I would hate to think that he will find that he is not in charge of policy on this matter either, but the Prime Minister is. In any event, unless and until the Prime Minister announces the abandonment of the form of “hostile environment” policy that she instituted and demonstrates that that is the case, then we should all understand that the policy remains in place: the labelling and the spin do not matter. Unless the Government formally change their policies, Opposition Members will be clear, and this country will know, that their treatment of the Windrush generation was not an aberration and not a hiccup—it was the predicted consequence of a policy that they intend to continue with.”
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