Windrush Day 2021 — House of Commons, 2021-07-01
Topic: Civil Rights
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): There certainly are lessons from Northern Ireland, yes. I have occasionally visited Belfast to hear from people there. The hon. Gentleman reminds me that humanity’s capacity to find reasons for hatred is almost unbounded, and it is sorrowful, particularly in Northern Ireland, that people have hated one another on the grounds of theological matters, which should be matters of academic interest and certainly not things over which anyone should hate I want to touch on the Windrush Day celebration that we had this year. Somebody on the call complained, actually, that the first item we watched was a film—I think from the ’80s; perhaps the late ’80s—that related to a moment of tension in Wycombe, when some young black men and some young white men had come into conflict over football and an event going on somewhere else. When I watched the film, there were young black men in Wycombe complaining about how they had been treated, and one of the things I noticed was how justified they were. They were clearly intelligent, articulate and well-meaning, and completely dumbfounded and bewildered that anyone had so misconstrued their intentions and misrepresented the actions that had taken place. For example, the film covered an allegation that petrol bombs had been used, when no such thing had happened. It was a fiction, an invention targeted at these men—again, racism. I can see why black people would really resent being treated in such a way. People have long memories; they remember today how others were treated in the past, and they expect us to behave differently and to show some contrition, apology and humility, and I hope that I am doing so To turn to the Windrush scandal, I think the scheme is working. I have had a limited number of cases and I therefore cannot go into them, but it worked very well in one particular case that I hold in mind. I think that was perhaps because we were involved and that should not be necessary, but clearly the scheme is being improved. I am conscious that I should probably allow the Minister to describe later how the scheme is being improved, but I note in particular that the minimum award has gone from £250 to £10,000, and the maximum award from £10,000 to £100,000. I welcome those improvements However, I just want to say to my hon. Friend the Minister—he is my hon. Friend and a great man—that it is only by engaging with people and really listening to what they say and how they experience things that we can improve matters. For example, on a recent call to raise awareness of the Windrush compensation scheme in my community in Wycombe, I listened with horror and shame to somebody explaining that their mother had had to go through multiple hoops to prove that she was entitled to be here after decades of living comfortably in the United Kingdom, quite rightly, as a British person. Worse, her British-born children with British passports were worrying and anxious about their right to remain in the United Kingdom Why should such a thing happen? Inevitably, schemes have rules. What I would say to my hon. Friend the Minister and to officials listening is that I have great faith in him and I have great faith in officials. They are doing the very best they can in the spirit of good will. Yet the experience of the public engaging with the scheme is hurdles and bureaucracy and proof. For it to have provoked—in our age, today—the anxiety in British-born people with British passports for whom this is home, is itself, while inadvertent, shaming. I do not wish to spring this on my hon. Friend. I would not expect him to apologise apropos of nothing without looking into it, but I certainly want to apologise to those people. I will certainly always stand up for people who have felt like that and raise their case with Ministers. However they vote, it is my duty to make sure that—very much a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West—we stand up for people, those of us who are, if I may say so, privileged to be middle class, in full-time employment, white and not facing these difficulties Awareness, empathy, contrition and humility—they should be our watchwords. As we go forward, as chairman of Conservatives against Racism for Equality, I really want our whole society to choose, in a radically moderate way, to be much more positively anti-racist; for all of us to be living out a life that says, "I accept the moral equality of every person and the legal equality of people in all our institutions". That speaks to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West. Of course, everybody is politically equal. From that follows equality before the law and equality of opportunity, and embracing one another, so that we can go forward in hope to live in a world in which our skin colour matters no more or less than our eye colour I really do celebrate the Wycombe Windrush generation. The community is a wonderful, gentle loving community and I am very proud that they are in Wycombe. I am very proud of them. I just say to my hon. Friend the Minister—I can see he has listened very carefully; he is a great and good man—that in time, perhaps very swiftly, we might see institutions that make sure that people never again feel undervalued.