Windrush — House of Commons, 2018-05-02
Topic: Immigration
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): No, I will not give way. I am going to continue my point Canada, where its provinces have different immigration policies, is a shining example of what can be done in a federation. Conservative Members should leave England—if it will not turn them into a pumpkin—and go and have a wee look at what happens elsewhere in the world I am calling for the Home Secretary to do things differently from how they have been done before. He said that he does not want to use the phrase "hostile environment" any longer and I have heard people talking about a compliant environment. I would say to him that it is not the language that we need to change—although that would help—but the underlying policies. We need an immigration policy that works for the whole of the UK, taking into account national and regional differences. We need an immigration policy that works to the benefit of the economy and to the benefit of society We have heard a lot of Conservative Members challenge the Labour party, the SNP and other Opposition parties by saying, "What would you do about illegal immigration?" What I would say is that every country has to have a sensible system of immigration control, but it needs to operate in line with the law, it needs to be just and fair, it needs to be human rights compliant and it needs to take cognisance of the rule of law. We do not have a system like that in the UK at the moment Any Member who holds constituency surgeries can provide examples of constituents who have been treated unfairly by the Home Office. The auditor has pointed out that the Home Office makes an awful lot of mistakes: it is a very poor performing Government Department. We know that 50% of appeals are successful. We also know that, thanks to the Prime Minister, most people are bounced out of the country before they can actually make an appeal. To my mind, that is contrary to the rule of law The problem is that we have a system that has elided the difference between legal and illegal immigration. We have constituents who come to our surgeries whose husbands and wives are not able to remain in the United Kingdom. My constituency has a Kurdish community centre. I have numerous examples of members of the Kurdish nation—people who have stood by Britain, fought alongside the British Army, worked as interpreters and so on—who came here expecting to receive a welcome but have been treated as illegals. There is something wrong with our policy and I am not afraid to say that I think it is morally wrong United Kingdom immigration policy has gone off the tracks. We need to acknowledge our mistake and introduce an evidence-based ethical immigration policy. Conservative Members shout about evidence and examples. There is a huge weight of evidence that a devolved differential system of immigration could work across the United Kingdom. That evidence has been given to the Scottish Affairs Committee and, in very detailed submissions, by my colleagues in the Scottish Government to the Migration Advisory Committee Let us have the guts to admit that the Windrush scandal is not just a mistake or an aberration. It is the result of policies that are wrong. Let us change the names of those policies, let us change the policies and let us have an apology from the Prime Minister.