Tulip Siddiq

• THE treatment of Windrush children has appalled the country, and rightly so. Those who arrived as part of that generation are exemplary citizens and their contribution to British society has been immeasurable.

For one member of this generation to have been “deported in error” by the home office would be bad enough, but the scandal points to a dangerous malaise at the heart of the government’s approach to immigration.

Amber Rudd and her predecessor Theresa May have enforced a system that has been hostile to many immigrants and, in the current home secretary’s own words, has quite clearly “lost sight of individuals”.

The political context of the past eight years is critical to understanding why this is the case. Between 2010 and 2015, the Conservative party seemed more concerned with appeasing Ukip than delivering an immigration system that was compassionate and fair.

Their desperation to appear “tough” on immigration built to a crescendo in the months before the 2014 European elections. It therefore follows naturally that the infamous “Go Home” vans were touring predominately BME areas of London in 2013.

As I exposed, through my written parliamentary questions to the home office in 2016, Theresa May was fully aware of this scheme before her ministers approved it.

It’s easy to see these schemes in isolation as “misplaced” or simply “pilots” but the truth exposed by the treatment of the Windrush citizens is that they can’t be separated from a culture that dominates the home office – one of suspicion and ultimately one lacking in humanity.

Most will accept that it is no accident for Windrush children to be forced to account for every single year of their many decades in the UK.

They will instead arrive at the conclusion that it is just another example of bureaucratic harassment engineered by a department that is barely fit for purpose.

TULIP SIDDIQ MP
Labour, Hampstead & Kilburn
@tulipsiddiq
tulipsiddiq.com