Mr David Lammy
MP for Tottenham · Labour · United Kingdom
“I am delighted to welcome the shadow Housing Secretary to the Dispatch Box. He, of course, could have been doing that job every week if he were better with numbers.”
“The right hon. Gentleman has not proposed what the Conservatives would do if they were in office. They released 10,000 under four different schemes, with no impact assessment when they released them, no victim contact when they released them, and no warning. They did it on the sly.”
“This is a very serious issue and the right hon. Gentleman is experienced in this House. He knows that while he was Home Secretary, the Conservative Government had an early release scheme that let out 10,000 offenders—10,000. They had six schemes within a year.”
“I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Prime Minister, who is attending the NATO summit. Working with our allies, we are strengthening Europe’s role in the alliance, which remains the cornerstone of our national security.”
“The right hon. Gentleman insists on proving that he cannot count. We lost 16,000 police officers when the Conservatives were in power. The British people have not forgotten what they did to our country. After two years of this Labour Government, I will compare our record with theirs every day of the week.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have the honour to say that His Majesty the King has accepted our advice to grant Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom, a conditional pardon. [Hon.”
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“It is because the police are not close to the intelligence, and there is a culture of “no snitching” and not telling tales. Therefore we round them all up. To put it bluntly, because we are mainly talking about black lives, no one really cares. There are different groups of young people, and then, of course, there are the victims. All of that is largely driven by drugs, which are prolific. The price of cocaine has dropped, the purity has risen, and it is estimated that 875,000 people used cocaine in England and Wales last year, a rise of 15%—it just gets worse—with an 8% rise among 16 to 24-year-olds and 432 deaths related to it. All that is driving the gang activity, serving markets across the country. That struck me when I was in Highbury Corner youth court.”
“We have failed those young people living on estates who do not feel safe and who pick up knives and bury them before and after school and at the weekends, to protect themselves—and then find themselves using them. There is another group of young people. I care a lot about them. They are the kind who might be in a park after school, following the crowd. Often they have special needs such as dyslexia, ADHD, mild Asperger’s or autism. They are just following the crowd, in the park, but they are another group who get rounded up. We could be having a debate about joint enterprise. Why do we have a law that throws young people into prison, even though they did not commit the murder, because they happened to be in the same place? They are vulnerable and impressionable—like most teenagers—and some of them are in jail as I speak. Why?”
“There are many different types of young people in the urban communities affected by the problems we are debating, but I will give Members a picture of some of them. Of course, there is the young man or woman who has fallen into a gang. We talk about them a lot; but there is also the young man or woman growing up on one of the great housing estates. They are not in a gang. They do not know anything about gangs, really. They are just seriously scared. I think about those young people a lot, because that was me once—scared. They are picking up knives and burying them in bushes, because they do not feel safe in the communities where they live. I must tell the House that if they do not feel safe in the communities where they live it is the responsibility of this place, of the Met Commissioner, of Government—the Home Secretary—and of the Mayor.”
“Behind much of the knife crime lies a huge industry, which reaches all over the world. It begins in countries such as Colombia. I have spoken to quite a lot of young urban people aged 12, 13 and 14 and many of them cannot even tell me where Colombia is. They certainly could not organise the trans-shipment of cocaine across the Atlantic and through Spain and Amsterdam to this country. They are not the men in suits—often anonymous—who deal with that traffic. Those men are not sufficiently made the subject of debate in this House. Yes, such organised crime traffics huge amounts of drugs. However, it also traffics people—women—and guns, which is why there is an increase in gun crime.”
“I also reflect on the loss, on Easter Monday last year, of a beautiful young woman, Tanesha Melbourne-Blake, who was shot and killed leaving a newsagent in Tottenham. That led to the current debate, which is currently overwhelming us. Things have got worse. We have heard that there were 40,147 offences in the year ending in March 2018. Today we found out that violent crime has gone up by 19%. Homicide and knife crime are up. It is all up. The problem is, in a sense, not new: we just have to read Dickens’s description of Fagin and the gangs that populated London in 1839. However, it is a problem that grips us hugely at this time. An important issue has been touched on, in relation to county lines, and that is drug use. What we are talking about is not just kids knifing each other because they happen to be violent.”
“Almost two decades later, we might view the situation we have got to with knife and gun crime and gang activity in the UK—in London and England, overwhelmingly—as if it were a patient, being assessed by a doctor. The patient’s condition could be getting worse, stable or improving. Sadly, it has clearly got a lot worse. Something has gone drastically wrong. I agree with everything said in the debate so far, and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), who secured the debate. I send love, humility and respect to the family of Jaden, aged just 14, who lost his life recently. When I think of him, I cannot but think of my eldest son, who is just a year younger. It breaks your heart.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, but I have to acknowledge that after 19 years in this place I am weary, depressed and upset. Here we are again: colleagues—often the same ones—coming to use our words in debates such as this. Hansard will record the issues we explore, and the tremendous number of ideas conveyed. When I began my career in this place, Operation Trident was just getting going in London. At that stage the discussion was about whether we could get over the gun violence then happening in London, associated with gangs often described as Yardie gangs. There was a sense that we would be able to get on top of the problem, and that it would go—that the issue was really to be associated with downtown America.”
“I hope that the Minister might say something about serious organised crime and about cocaine—about drugs. I hope that she understands that the thrust of much of what has been said here is entirely about the resources available for the police, local authorities, youth services and families themselves to grip and deal with this problem so that we are seeing a reduction and not—as we are seeing now, month on month and year on year—a rise.”
“Let me put it on the record that my hon. Friend is entirely right; if my comments came out the wrong way, they were not what I meant. However, there are issues about what it is acceptable to put on social media—what it says and what it is driving—and there is a real question about regulation. That is absolutely clear. France has just banned smartphones for under-14s in school, I think. We have heard nothing from the chief medical officer in this country—nothing. Nothing has been said. But we know that there are issues of mental health. We know that self-harm is up and anorexia is up. In a way, knife crime is a different sort of self-harm in the community, is it not? So there are some ingredients here, but we need to be careful about focusing on one particular group when actually this is an issue across the board.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. In pressing the point about PRUs and alternative provision, will she also recognise—I am sure that she sees this in Croydon—the very real concerns about the disproportionality in the number of black and minority ethnic children who are excluded from schools and find themselves in alternative provision, and, frankly, the seeming scarcity of public concern about that escalation in school exclusion rates?”
“On that excellent point, does my hon. Friend agree that we need to hear from the Government not about bringing back grammar schools, but about funding night schools? If, indeed, we exit from the European Union, should we not be giving people in our seaside towns, northern industrial areas and parts of London the skills to compete in the economy that we are going to have?”
“My right hon. Friend is right to put on record the concerns about uncertainty in the country, and he is absolutely right to talk about poverty. Can he confirm that it is the position of the British Labour party to rule out a no-deal Brexit? Can he understand why the party that claims to be the traditional party of business will not do the same?”
“We must not let down our young supporters by failing to stand with them on the biggest issue of our lives. If we remain in the EU we can reform it from the top table: share the load of mass migration, address the excesses of the bureaucracy and fix inequalities between creditor and debtor states. We can recharge the economy. We can refuel the NHS. We can build the houses we need after years of hurt. Hope is what we need: remain in the EU; give Britain a second opportunity to decide.”
“As Martin Luther King said long ago: “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” So just as I speak plainly to the Government this time around, let me speak to the Opposition about some home truths. There is no left-wing justification for Brexit. Ditching workers’ rights and social protections and ending environmental co-operation is not progressive. This is a project about neoliberal deregulation; it is Thatcherism on steroids, pushed by her modern-day disciples. Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism; it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US. Socialism confined to one country will not work. Whether we like it or not, the world we live in is global. We can fix the rigged system only if we co-operate across border lines. The party of Keir Hardie has always been international.”
“Let us tell them, “You were sold a lie. Parts of the media used your fears to sell papers and boost viewing figures. Nigel Farage and the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) exploited the same prejudice to win votes. Shame on them. Immigrants have not taken your jobs; our schools and colleges failed to give you skills. Hospitals are crumbling not because of health tourists, but because of decades of austerity that ground them down to the bone. People cannot afford a house because both parties failed to build, not because Mohammed down the road moved in. Wealth was hoarded in London when it should have been shared across the country. Blame us; blame Westminster: do not blame Brussels for our own country’s mistakes. And do not be angry at us for telling you the truth; be angry at the chancers who sold you a lie.”
“This country’s greatest moments came when we showed courage, not when we appeased: the courage of Wilberforce to emancipate the slaves in the face of the anger of the British ruling class, the courage of Winston Churchill to declare war on Hitler in the face of the appeasers in his Cabinet and the country, and the courage of Attlee and Bevan to nationalise the health service in the face of the doctors who protested that that was not right. Today, we too must be bold, because the challenges that we face are just as extreme. We must not be afraid to tell the truth to those who disagree. Friends on this side of the House tell me to appease Labour voters in industrial towns: the former miners, the factory workers, those who feel that they have been left behind. I say that we must not patronise them with cowardice. Let us tell them the truth.”
“Impact assessments have been hidden, votes have been resisted and blocked, and simple opponents of Government policies have been bullied and threatened to get into line. Even when we forced a meaningful vote, the Prime Minister cancelled it, certain we would reject her disastrous deal—and oh, we will reject it, because it is a lose-lose compromise that offers no certainty for our future. All that it guarantees is more years of negotiation, headed by the same clowns who guided us into this farce in the first place. We are suffering from a crisis of leadership in our hour of need.”
“By now, every single campaign promise made in 2016 has come unstuck. Brexit will not enrich our NHS; it will impoverish it. Our trade deal with Donald Trump will see US corporations privatise and dismantle it, one bed at a time. Even the promises on immigration, which has so greatly enriched our country, are a lie. After Brexit, immigration will go up, not down. When we enter into negotiations with countries such as India and China, they will ask for three things—visas, visas and more visas—and they will get them, because we will be weak. Then there is the myth about restoring parliamentary sovereignty. The last two years have shown what a joke that is. The Prime Minister has hoarded power like a deluded 21st-century Henry VIII.”
“Because we have a duty to tell our constituents the truth, even when they passionately disagree. We owe them not only our industry but our judgment. We are trusted representatives, not unthinking delegates, so why do many in the House continue to support Brexit when they know that it will wreck jobs, the NHS and our standing in the world? This is the fundamental dishonesty at the heart of the Brexit debate. Most Members now recognise that in private, but do not say it in public. Brexit is a con, a trick, a swindle, a fraud. It is a deception that will hurt most of the people it promised to help. It is a dangerous fantasy that will make every problem it claims to solve worse. It is a campaign won on false promises and lies. Both Vote Leave and Leave.EU broke the law. Russian interference is beyond reasonable doubt.”
“I have faced many challenges in the two decades for which I have sat in the House, but Sunday 7 August 2011, the morning after the Tottenham riots, was by far the greatest. Walking on broken glass, past burnt-out cars, homes and businesses, comforting men and women who were still in their pyjamas, I saw the place where I had lived for my whole life turned to ashes. Many members of the community were urging me to say that the killing of Mark Duggan by police, which had sparked the riots, justified that rage: that the families made homeless, the burnt-out buses and houses and the looted shops were worth it. They told me I had to say that that wrong was right. It was not easy, but I had to look members of my community in the face, tell them that the violence was a disgrace, and condemn it unequivocally. Why?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Do you agree that in all our experiences in this House, it is extremely unwise to thrust civil servants and officials, who give their advice in confidence and are neutral, into the public domain in this way? When it has happened in the past, it has often ended very badly indeed for those individuals. The House should stop that. It is extremely inappropriate for a Leader of the House to lead that charge.”
“The Home Secretary was right to pay tribute to his parents. His father, a bus driver, and my mother, who worked at Camden Town tube station, belong to a generation that took so little and gave so much. They were like today’s careworkers, security guards and fruit pickers. He knows that they did not earn anything like £30,000 in the prices of the ’70s and ’80s. How will he look his children in the eyes and say he slammed behind him the door of opportunity that enabled him and me to sit in our seats today?”
“I am grateful to the Chief Secretary for indicating that this will have no impact on students, but she has conceded that it will have a fiscal impact. Our young people at the moment are worried about the cost of living, the broader economy and the prospect of getting jobs. They would like to see maintenance grants. Can she put in the Library, when she is aware of it, what the fiscal impact will be on young people and their parents?”
“Given the extensive nature of the measure, could the Minister outline what further resources he has made available to the FCA to deal with this? Is there some sort of impact assessment of the FCA’s capability?”
“There is no one currently in the House who has been Prime Minister. Does she appreciate that other Prime Ministers under pressure did not delay their legislation? Margaret Thatcher did not delay after the poll tax. Tony Blair did not delay the Iraq war decision. John Major did not delay Maastricht. Prime Minister— [ Interruption. ] She knows that when the politics of this place are broken, you either resign or go back to the people in a general election or a referendum. No one gets to play for extra time before the game is over.”
“It forgets that in the modern world our nation will flourish not through isolation, but through connection, co-operation and a new vision for the common good. Brexit forgets why this continent came together after two bloody wars. This country is crying out for a second chance. Seven hundred thousand people marched on the streets of London. Millions more campaigned online and wrote to their MPs. They are asking for one thing: an opportunity to right the wrong of 2016 and another shot at the imperfect but audacious European dream. As John of Gaunt says in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”: “That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.””
“The Prime Minister’s deal has emerged as a Frankenstein’s monster—an ugly beast that no one voted for or wanted. To appease hardliners, the transition period can be extended to 2022 at most. That has eradicated our leverage—it is simply not enough time to negotiate a free trade deal. We are now on course for another cliff edge. The deal does not take back control; it gives it away. It surrenders our voting rights on the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament for nothing in return. I cannot vote for any form of Brexit because every form of Brexit is worse for my constituents. Brexit is a historic mistake. It forgets the lessons of Britain’s past. It forgets the value of immigrants. It forgets that we cannot build a new empire by force.”
“Can you really vote to slash workers’ rights and protections? Can you vote to give tax avoiders a sanctuary? Can you vote to hand over more power to the clumsy hand of the market? What I am about to say is not fashionable, but our country’s story of renewal through Europe is one of immigration. We grew as a nation because of free movement. European migrants are not “citizens of nowhere” or “queue jumpers” as the Prime Minister would have us believe. Young, energetic, diverse and willing to pay taxes, EU citizens have given so much. They have done the jobs that our own would not do. Around 3.8 million now live in Britain. Over their lifetimes, they will pay in £78,000 more than they take out. The contribution of European migrants has not been just financial. Our culture, our art, our music and our food has been permanently improved.”
“It was a lie that divided friends and families, pandered to racism and xenophobia and caused an extra 638 hate crimes per month. What does it say about the United Kingdom when the UN sends rapporteurs to warn us of increased racism in our country? What does it say about Britain when our politicians play on the fear of migrants, races and religions to win votes? What did it say when Nigel Farage stood in front of a Nazi-inspired poster of refugees with the caption, “Breaking point”? The founder of the Labour party, Keir Hardie, spoke of socialism’s “promise of freedom”, its “larger hope for humanity” and of “binding the races of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood”. I honestly ask my good friends in the party who are still wavering: can you really vote for this politics of division and hate?”
“In those years, GDP per head rose by 95% in France, Italy and West Germany, while Britain grew by only half that rate. Our industry and economy had fallen behind. Europe gave post-imperial Britain a chance to regain some wealth and dignity. In the 40 years since, our economy grew faster than those of France, Germany and Italy. We restored our position on the global stage, but it was not only our prosperity that increased. Our allies in the US respected us for our seat at the top table in Europe, and the rest of the world saw us become a confident nation again: a grown-up country, prepared to give and take for the greater good. The Brexiteer promise to take back control in 2016 was nothing more than a deluded fantasy.”
“When those on the other side of the debate say that they want empire 2.0, let us ask what it means. What was imperialism? What was colonialism? At its worst, the British empire was exploitation and subjugation—moral superiority that led to putting humans in shackles and the oppression of black and brown people because this country thought it knew best. Those countries once coloured pink on the globe were not won in negotiations, but taken by force. Today, we need to build a new image of Britain, which brings this country together after years of division. We have to use our imagination. Empire 2.0 is not it. After the global embarrassment of Suez, Britain became the sick man of Europe. The European Economic Community was set up in 1958, but Britain did not join until 1973.”
“Britain thrived by sharing, not stockpiling our sovereignty. NATO membership compels us to deploy soldiers when our fellow members are attacked. The Paris climate accords demonstrate how we tackle global threats together, not alone. There is also our membership of the WTO, which commits the UK to supra-national regulation and arbitration. Sovereignty is not an asset to be hoarded, but a resource, which has value only when it is spent. The hard Brexiteers in the House say that they want to take back the control that we lost because of the European Union. In reality, they are still mourning Suez, Britain’s last fling of the colonial dice. Back then, Anthony Eden failed to recognise that Britain was no longer capable of launching a solo imperial adventure. Let us not fall for the same hubris today.”
“Let me remind them that Churchill understood the European dream is to build a whole that is bigger than the sum of its parts. He understood that it is about pooling sovereignty, working together and sharing control. Let us now be honest with the country. Total independence is a fantasy. It is the same idea that motivates an angry teenager to run away from their family. Total independence means throwing a tantrum and ending up in the cold. Total independence is selfishness, individualism, arrogance, superiority, a refusal to work together and the breakdown of the common good. Total independence will lead to total isolation. Let us be honest: Britain did not become great in total isolation. Britain thrived by becoming the biggest treaty-signing power in the world, signing more than 14,000 treaties in the modern age.”
“The European Union was once just a remarkable dream—a hope that our countries which fought and murdered each other on an industrial scale twice in one century could come together, a refusal to return to extreme nationalism and a determination to prevent more bloody conflicts in which tens of millions are killed. The audacious idea of European integration was motivated by fear, but it was made possible by shared ideals—democracy, human rights, equality and freedom—and a refusal to submit to the tyranny of fascism ever again. After the second world war, Winston Churchill said in 1946: “If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the happiness, prosperity and glory”. Today, however, some Conservative colleagues talk about total independence from Europe as though it were a virtue.”
“The right hon. Lady has been a professional colleague for more than 20 years, and I personally saw how hard she worked during the 2011 riots. This whole House recognises the dedication and hard work she has put into this 585-page agreement. However, because of her huge parliamentary experience, she will recognise that this agreement does not command a majority in this House and that in the 10 days to follow before the EU signs off this agreement she is likely to face challenges within her own party. In those circumstances, in our constitutional arrangement, when politics is broken, one can only put the question back to the British people.”
“I was first stopped and searched in the wake of the Scarman report aged 12, and it was so scary that I wet myself. We got to a place where the Home Office did a review that found there was no discernible, significant decrease in crime with the use of stop and search, and the current Prime Minister reached a cross-party consensus on the issue in the House. I caution the Minister against his party breaking that consensus, which would damage relations with Britain’s ethnic minorities once again. It is finding the drug dealers and gangsters, and dealing with cocaine, that will reduce the knife crime on our streets, as the Minister knows. Why have we cut the Border Force and what are we doing about the drug market in this country?”
“Jack Adcock’s death was a tragedy, but why did the General Medical Council spend £30,000 on getting Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba struck off, even though she had already faced the consequences of her mistakes in court? Does the Minister think that the GMC needs to sort its act out and that Charlie Massey should resign?”
“We must look forward to a future with a just immigration policy, motivated by compassion, fairness and the rule of law—an immigration system where migrants are treated like human beings, not criminals. When we discuss in this House the trade deals that we will strike with the Chinese and the Indians, let us be honest: the first thing those nations will ask for is the immigration of their citizens to this country. Because of the position this country finds itself in, with no significant trade deals with the rest of the world, we will grant them that right. For all those reasons, it is time to reform cross-party our response to those controlled by immigration in this country.”
“If the Government continue to pursue Brexit, as they are minded to do, they must do so while learning the lessons of the past, not by compounding them. The opportunity to reshape our immigration system that comes with it must reflect back on the hostile environment that has routinely abused human rights and brought shame on our nation. If we are to build a truly open, global Britain that engages with the world, as the last debate demonstrated, redrawing our immigration policy is a vital part of that. We must continue to attract the talent and hard work of immigrants such as Alberta. Otherwise, our public services, our schools, our NHS and our businesses will be starved of workers and will further decline.”
“I support the latter option as the first step in cleaning up the Home Office failures of the past. I urge those who think that proposal too radical or perhaps too left-wing to consider the comments of my unlikely ally on this issue, the former Foreign Secretary. In the wake of Windrush, even the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) called for the very same measure. A one-off immigration amnesty would allow this country to start afresh and to create a new system that respects migrants’ rights and their contribution, while apologising for the mistakes of the past. Today, we must recognise that this is a crucial turning point in British history. The Government’s lurch to the hard right and their decision to leave the European Union leaves Britain alone, isolated and on track for decline.”
“The Labour party should also be ashamed of its treatment of people under immigration control during its three terms in power. With the mutual recognition of past failures, we can begin a cross-party response to heal these wounds, but to do so, we must first clean up the injuries of the past. The Home Office’s war against undocumented immigration has built a shadow economy fuelled by workplace exploitation, human trafficking, drugs and other crime. Some 600,000 people live illegally in the UK, and they will remain here regardless of their legal status. The question is whether to keep them illegal, fuelling crime and the shadow economy, or to regularise their status, allowing them to pay income tax and national insurance, live safely and become respected members of society.”
“It is a shame on our nation that it is 22 times more expensive for a child to become a citizen in this country than in Germany. The Minister for Immigration was responding in that debate, as she is today. I understand her claim that the Government need to “balance the books”, but when the Government are intent on keeping taxes low for the richest in society, can flagrant profiteering off the most vulnerable ever be justified? Much of the blame for the state of the immigration system in this country lies with this Government and this Prime Minister, who single-handedly coined the “hostile environment” policy. However, any constructive debate on immigration will recognise that no party—and that absolutely includes my own—has been innocent.”
“The average cost of detaining one person in this system is about £36,000—greater than the fees of Eton, Harrow or any of the country’s poshest boarding schools. What justifies this enormous waste of money? What justifies a system that treats the vulnerable as criminals and expects taxpayers to foot the bill? For individuals, too, the cost of being trapped under immigration control continues to spiral. The Home Office is making up to 800% profit on applications and putting profit before principles, even when it means ruining people’s lives. As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) said in Westminster Hall on Tuesday, the fees for children under immigration control in this country are a particular disgrace.”
“This lack of legal representation means that vulnerable people are sent back to their country of origin when they should have been granted the right to remain. As champions of human rights and the rule of law, MPs in this House must ask ourselves some tough questions. How can we deport migrants without granting them legal representation? How can we split migrants from their children and partners without giving them access to justice? How can we pull migrants away from their homes and livelihoods without respecting our own rule of law? Our current system is not only cruel, unjustifiable and damaging to the lives of detainees; it is a great burden on the British taxpayer. The country’s detention estate is one of the largest in Europe, costing more than £160 million a year.”
“Instead of forcing detainees to demonstrate why they should be released, why does the Home Office not have to demonstrate why they must be detained? Access to justice is another principle that runs across every aspect of UK law. It allows people to have their voice heard, to exercise their rights, to challenge discrimination and to hold decision makers accountable. But access to justice is impossible without legal representation. So why is legal representation impossible to access for so many under immigration control? In the UN, we prescribe these standards internationally, but on our own soil, more than half the people in detention are denied access to a lawyer. These legal aid deserts have grown due to systematic cuts to legal aid. There has been a 56% fall in the total number of legal aid providers for asylum seekers since 2005.”
“Why has detention become the default, and why are alternatives never used? Bail with reporting restrictions and electronic monitoring should surely be considered before we lock migrants up and throw away the keys. The brutal treatment of immigrants such as Alberta not only denies them their freedom; it can leave emotional scars that torment them for the rest of their lives. In a fair society, only a court should have the power to detain. In a fair society, detention is not the default response—it is the last resort. In every other sphere of British life, innocence is presumed while guilt must be proven, but the legal basis of our immigration system is upside down. The burden of proof is the wrong way round. Why are people imprisoned by the Home Office without the assessment of any judge or jury?”
“It leaves our moral authority, frankly, in the gutter. Government-condoned prejudice permeates every one of an immigrant’s first encounters with the state. The Home Office imprisons tens of thousands of people every year, including survivors of torture, trafficking and rape, with no time limit. We are the only EU country that allows the indefinite detention of migrants. But it is not only this that singles Britain out. We have one of the slowest and least efficient immigration processes in the developed world. In France, the average stay for detained migrants is just one month. In the United Kingdom, the average stay in a detention centre is 19 months—yes, 19, more than double the EU average. Detention has the potential to be harmful and unlawful from the very first day to the very last.”
“The Windrush scandal revealed that thousands of British citizens were incorrectly deported, detained, made jobless, left without housing and healthcare, split from their families, left destitute and treated like strangers in their homes. But Windrush is not an isolated mistake. The Home Office has been broken by a public discourse that has got out of control—a xenophobic rhetoric that has become accepted by too many in this House, with the UKIP-ification of our newspapers, of our television and of the Government themselves. The United Kingdom has built a proud reputation for liberalism and fairness. As a member of the United Nations Security Council, we have been a world leader in the spread of human rights and justice, but our treatment of immigrants leaves us no better than the human rights abusers.”
“Because of the Home Office’s gross errors, her dream of becoming a midwife is now uncertain. Alberta’s story is one of mistreatment, cruelty and inhumanity, but sadly it is not unique. So many others echo these horrors when they recount their experiences of living under immigration control. Each year, the Government pay out more than £4 million to people as compensation for having been detained unlawfully. Half those detained between 2013 and 2018 were ultimately released back into their community. They were therefore people the state deemed had the right to remain. Alberta’s story illustrates a broken immigration system that treats humans without dignity—a system that stains the fundamental principles of our legal system and our state. Over the past year, attention has been drawn to the Government’s hostile environment.”
“Victims of rape, torture and trafficking are held inside. Almost half the women detained in Yarl’s Wood have experienced suicidal thoughts. In 2015, the chief inspector of prisons described Yarl’s Wood as a “place of national concern”. After more than three weeks of misery and detention, the Home Office released Alberta, admitting that it had acted on incorrect information. But this was not the end of her suffering at the hands of immigration control. While detained in Yarl’s Wood, Alberta missed critical deadlines and her grades dropped rapidly. With this handicap, her performance in college began to decline. To this day, bi-weekly visits to the immigration reporting centre force Alberta to revisit her trauma. For days ahead of these visits, she struggles to eat, has problems sleeping and breaks down in tears.”