argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Seema Malhotra-Saluja (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Is she as surprised as I am that, despite the national debate over the last two weeks, when my office called the Home Office MP helpline yesterday to support a Windrush-affected constituent and inquire about the process, we were told that the helpline staff had been given no guidance on citizenship applications? My constituent, who has to prove that he has been here since 1965 with two forms of ID for every year, is in despair.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): It does not seem that we have moved away from the Windrush situation altogether if somebody is being asked for two pieces of documentation for every year they have been here, as that was the problem for the Windrush generation—excessively rigid demands for documentation and no proper guidance.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): No So the children of people who came here before 1973 have to be considered, and as my hon. Friends have said, the scandal also includes those who came from many other Commonwealth countries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and countries in west Africa. It is not just about the Caribbean; these cases arise now only because many of those people came here—were invited here—earlier than the others In speaking about the Commonwealth, I made this point in my urgent question earlier in the week: this is an issue that has resonated around the Commonwealth—it is front-page news not just in the Caribbean, but in a range of Commonwealth countries. The point I was trying to put over to the Home Secretary is that, when we are trying to build our relationships with the Commonwealth for trade and other reasons—post-Brexit certainly, but I would support it in any event—what has been revealed about the way Commonwealth citizens have been treated is extremely damaging. That is not the most important reason to clear up this mess, but it is a reason to clear it up. I hope that the Home Secretary understands that.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for winding up Government Members even further by giving way to me. If passed, this Humble Address is binding on the Government to publish all the documents relating to this matter and to provide those documents to the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I understand that the Government have issued a three-line Whip to vote against the motion. Can she explain what possible reason they might have for doing so?
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Order. Can we please have a little less noise from the Back Benches? The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) will be called to speak early in the debate and we want to hear her contribution, so I do not want her to waste her voice by shouting too much.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Dr Murrison, you and I both know that that is definitely not a point of order. I will repeat what I said at the beginning, which is that it is up to each individual whether they wish to give way. That is how the House works and it is how the House will continue.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Other
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): I said at the beginning of my speech that we should focus on the Windrush generation. It will not look well to them or any of our constituents if Government Members seek to go off on some kind of tangent.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): I really have to continue We need to know the number of deportations and removals. We also need information about Windrush generation persons who are in immigration detention. The Government must know the number of people who are held in detention and why they are there. I have met Windrush generation persons in Yarl’s Wood detention centre, so I will continue to press the Government to provide that information. We also want information on the number of people who have been refused re-entry—people who perhaps went back to their country for a funeral or some such event, but were refused re-entry at the airport. These people have to face humiliation and separation from their family. We need to know the number of people in that situation. We cannot just brush it aside. Imagine what it is like for an elderly woman who has been home for a funeral to be stopped at the airport on her return and told that she cannot come home. We want to know the number of British people who have been refused re-entry.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): What is shocking is the way that the Windrush generation have been treated We want information as soon as possible about the independent means of establishing fair compensation. Has the Home Office issued written instructions to the call handlers of the helpline that they should not report cases for deportation enforcement where they believe that people are here legally? Did the Home Secretary’s Department issue advice to the immigration tribunals and judges on the changes in the Immigration Act 2014 The new Home Secretary demurs from the term "hostile environment". We appreciate that, but of course he was not the architect of this policy: it was the Prime Minister, and she has not resiled from that policy. In May 2012, she told readers of The Daily Telegraph—
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): I have to make progress 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, 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.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): I am coming to an end now One of the important things about the Windrush scandal is that it is an opportunity to review immigration policy and the administration of immigration policy. We now have a situation where, because of the way that immigration is currently administered, this Government are preventing doctors from coming to take up jobs that they have been offered by the NHS. The NHS is in crisis. There is a shortage of 10,000 doctors, and the total number of NHS vacancies is in the tens of thousands. We therefore need to review immigration policy so that it is not only more humane but actually works in the interests of this country. We have seen a similar grotesque policy of wrongly removing overseas students from courses they have paid for, as this morning’s Financial Times reports. The NHS is suffering, our education system is suffering, and many others sectors are suffering: all because of a narrative on immigration that deems immigration to be toxic Finally, let me say this. The Windrush generation played an important role after the war. The Windrush generation are very meaningful to many of us who were brought up by that generation. They did not deserve to be treated in the way that they were. Ministers say they did not know, but there was a pattern in what was going on; they chose not know. As I said at the beginning, this issue is not going to go away. Opposition Members will not stop until we get not promises and not spin, but justice for the Windrush generation.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Other
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker—and this is a genuine point of order. The hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) just asked for the publication of documents that go back before 2010. If you were willing to accept a manuscript amendment to the motion, would the Government then support the motion?
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Order. I cannot hear a word for the shouting. My problem is that if I cannot hear, I cannot make a judgment on what is being said. We have to keep in order. This is making life very difficult and does not do us any favours.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Order. The House must come to order. I want to hear this debate. We have constituents who want to hear this debate. This debate is very important to this country and the people of this country.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): I simply want to respond to the Home Secretary by saying that I have been online condemning the racist abuse against him. I know what racist abuse is. Everyone in the Opposition, without exception, condemns the names that he has been called.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Chuka Harrison Umunna (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Home Secretary for giving way. He is right about the contribution of the Windrush generation, but can he be absolutely clear that these are people who are here and always have been here lawfully? Will he also condemn the continual attempt, not just in the Chamber but in the country generally, to conflate legal immigration with illegal immigration? I am fed up, every time the Windrush generation are spoken about, of continually hearing, "Well, what about illegal immigration?" We are talking about the Windrush generation.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): The Home Secretary has announced the additional safeguards he wants to put in place for the Windrush generation, but will he apply those safeguards more widely? In evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, we have heard that about 10% of the cases passed by the Home Office to banks are incorrect, and that the banks may therefore be taking action against people who are here legally because of errors by the Home Office. Will he put in place safeguards for everybody?
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Michael John Gapes (Labour, Centre-left): Has the hon. and learned Lady seen the Financial Times today? There is an article about the test of English for international communication, which reveals that 35,000 people have had their status as students in this country revoked. In 20% of those cases, that was based on a system of voice recognition that has proved to be faulty. An estimated 7,000 Bangladeshi, Indian and other students, including my constituents, have been removed from this country, or are at the threat of removal at this moment, because of a policy introduced in 2014 by the then Home Secretary—now the Prime Minister.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the speech by the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), who raised important, detailed and thoughtful points We have heard too many heartbreaking stories and about too many deep injustices—of people told they were not legal despite being British citizens, who have been made to feel unwelcome in their own country despite having worked here, lived here and loved here, very often for most of their lives and for longer than many of us in here have been alive; of people locked up wrongfully by the British state in their own country; and of people such as the pensioner I heard from who said his experience of simply trying to renew his passport had been so painful and brought back difficult memories of racism he had experienced as a child Many from the Windrush generation have told their own stories, and we should pay tribute to them for having the bravery to do so, even when, as some told me, they felt a sense of shame as a result. The Windrush families are not the ones who should feel shame. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) rightly said, this issue has brought a sense of national shame, and we must all now be determined to put it right. I welcome the new Home Secretary’s promise "to do right" by the Windrush generation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who has been passionately pursuing this cause, is right that the Government will be judged on their actions rather than their words. We will need to see the progress of the taskforce, which the Home Affairs Committee will monitor The motion refers to documents being sent to the Select Committee. As with similar motions that have referred documents to other Committees, we have not instigated this call; nor have we had the chance to discuss or take a view on the motion, and we would of course decide how to respond. The motion itself is obviously a matter for the House, but we will continue to pursue our own questions as well.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Other
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): I am going to repeat what I said: our Select Committee has not had a chance to discuss this, but clearly we would be the recipients of the papers, if the motion were agreed to. It is for the House to debate the motion and for the Select Committee to decide how to respond, which we would do responsibly, as other Select Committees have done.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): I want to bring the right hon. Lady back to today’s debate and read to her from a message that the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has placed in my inbox: "Nothing that the government has announced today in parliament will address the root causes of the Windrush scandal—namely the ‘hostile environment’ policy. Hostility is still very much in play, the government still plans to roll Right to Rent out further to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland" I really do respect the right hon. Lady, but may I suggest to her that she should understand why we are pressing for a vote tonight and join us in the Lobby to tell her Government how she truly feels?
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
John Robert Cryer (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you for the warning, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is an honour to follow a former member of the Anti-Nazi League. I have always thought that the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) was a bit of a closet pinko; she obviously needs to be looked into by the Conservative Chief Whip. I should like to congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on bringing a proper level of scrutiny to bear on this issue, including the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) In particular, I want to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who really kick-started this and brought the issue out into the public spotlight. I should like to point out that his predecessor was Bernie Grant, who was a friend of mine. He came here from Guyana—it was British Guyana when he was there—with his head held high, proud of where he came from and proud of where he was going. That is the whole point about this scandal. People like Bernie are now being threatened with deportation. I say "people like Bernie" because he cannot be threatened with deportation; sadly, he passed away some years ago I am dealing with between 30 and 40 cases in my constituency. I have a big Windrush community. As a proportion, I am dealing with a very large number of cases. These are people who have been threatened with deportation, and I will give two brief examples. The first is a woman, and she is a classic Windrush baby case. She came to Britain as a baby in the 1960s, and she cannot remember Jamaica, which is where she was born. She has a broad east London accent, and it is pretty obvious that she is as quintessentially British and a Londoner as anyone else, yet when she went to apply for a passport for the first time in her life, having brought up a family and worked here for all these years, she was told not only that she could not have a passport but that she was going to be deported back to Jamaica. As she said, it is a country that she cannot remember.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Eleanor Claire Reeves (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. A constituent of mine who came to Britain as a child in 1972 was recently detained upon his return from Jamaica after visiting his father, who has dementia. He told me about his humiliation and that he has had no recourse to public funds since then. He now cannot visit his father again for fear of being detained. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a travesty and that my constituent, along with his, should be afforded the same rights as every other British citizen without further delay?
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
John Robert Cryer (Labour, Centre-left): Of course, I agree My second example is more unusual and involves a woman who came from Jamaica when she was a baby. She was abandoned by her parents and grew up in a nunnery, which—Members can tell what is coming—was closed down and demolished after she left, and its records were lost. Again, this is somebody with a broad east London accent. She is quintessentially British and has the right to stay here, but she was told, after she had been through all that, "We’re going to deport you." That is the sort of culture that we are dealing with at the Home Office, and I suspect that it goes across Government, which I will come to in a minute.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Marsha Chantol De Cordova (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman says we are politicising the issue. It is fine for the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to apologise, but to address this they need to get rid of their hostile environment policy.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this incredibly important debate. A lot has been said today and over the past week or so about this scandal, but I still feel that there are not words strong enough to describe how awful, appalling, heartbreaking and profoundly un-British this whole scandal has been. I associate myself with all the remarks made by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary in her opening speech. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and, in particular, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on the tremendous work they have done on bringing this issue to light This is a horrendous, horrible moment, not just for the Windrush generation and their children but for all of us in our collective national life, and it will have an enduring legacy. If we choose, and if the Government listen, it could be a positive legacy that helps us to move forward in a way that is in the best of our British traditions of fairness, decency and a desire to do the right thing. In that context, I say to Home Office Ministers that they should take heed of our motion and simply release the paperwork. If there is an issue as to how extensive the wording of the motion is, they should work with either the shadow Front-Bench team or the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee to come to a wording that is acceptable and to bring forward the disinfectant that is sunlight.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
David Lindon Lammy (Labour, Centre-left): At its heart this motion is about the hostile environment, and that is why so many of us are here this afternoon. The Home Secretary has committed himself to a "fair and humane" immigration policy. In my view, it is not possible to have a fair and humane immigration policy alongside the hostile environment. That is a paradox and a total contradiction in terms. He has said that he wants to move from a hostile environment to a compliant environment. Let us think about what compliant means Compliant means to obey rules to an excessive degree. Compliant means the action or fact of complying with a command. I say to the new Home Secretary: has he forgotten our history? I remind the House that I am here because you were there. I say "you" metaphorically. The Windrush generation are here because of slavery. The Windrush story is the story of British empire. And the Windrush community and its ancestors know what hostile and compliance mean. We know what compliance means. It is written deep into our souls and passed down from our ancestors. Slaves having to nod and smile when they were being whipped in a cotton field or a sugar cane field were compliant. Watching your partner being tied to a tree, beaten or raped on a plantation is compliance. Twelve million people being transported as slaves from Africa to the colonies is a compliant environment.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Civil Rights
David Lindon Lammy (Labour, Centre-left): I will not Windrush citizens being abused, spat on and assaulted in the street but never once fighting back was a compliant environment. Black Britons being racially abused at work but never speaking up because they need to put food on the table know all about a compliant environment. Turning the other cheek when the National Front were marching through our streets was a compliant environment. Young black men being stopped and searched by the police, despite committing no crime and living in fear of the police, know what it is like to be in a compliant environment. And thank God that Doreen Lawrence defied that compliant environment.
Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Civil Rights
David Lindon Lammy (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is exactly right I want to make it absolutely clear that it is my view that this belief about a compliant environment goes all the way back to the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. This Parliament provided compensation, worth £17 billion today and paid for by the British taxpayer, to the 46,000 British slave owners for the loss of their property. The slaves got nothing. And now their descendants are being shackled and chained, dragged on to deportation flights and sent back across the same ocean that Britain took their ancestors from in slave ships centuries ago.