Windrush

[biggytitbo]

The initial decision was made independently in 2009 it seems, and actually enacted in 2010.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The initial decision was made independently in 2009 it seems, and actually enacted in 2010.

Plenty of time to back out of it. Of course she didn't think it was a shit idea; her policy as home sec was far more xenophobic than labour's.

[Fambo Number Mive]

From the BBC article

Jacqui Smith, who was Labour home secretary until replaced by Alan Johnson in June 2009, told the BBC that it was "not a policy decision she had made". Mr Johnson also said he "had absolutely no recollection at all of being involved" in the landing card decision.

[Fambo Number Mive]

https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/986583537754177537

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Labour's tenure of the Home Office was full of fiascos, remember Phil Woolass and the Gurkhas? Tone deaf. The one time they tried to appear tough on immigration it was about an almost universally admired group.


In contemporary news...Not a surprise as such, or going to lead to change, but fairly significant: the Mirror is calling for Theresa May to resign.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Docs were supposedly shredded in October 2010.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/04/generation-windrush-home-office-theresa-may-amber-rudd?amp

Uh oh :)

[imitationleather]

BBC reporting as their top story Windrush landing cards 'axed under Labour', which even though its paraphrasing what May said is a total lie, yet they reinforce it by making it their main headline.

I wanted to do the self-defeating action of pissing on my laptop when I went on the BBC News homepage and saw that. The fucking bastards.

[Norton Canes]

Changed now. Front page:

Leaders clash over Windrush landing cards

Theresa May says the decision was taken in 2009 - as Jeremy Corbyn labels her callous

Full story page:

Windrush: Theresa May hits back at Labour over landing cards

Theresa May has said the decision to destroy the landing cards of Windrush migrants was taken under Labour.

The prime minister told MPs she was not home secretary when the move was approved, saying it happened in 2009.


Of course the point is that Corbyn should have realised May would target the ambiguous timeline, and in response hammered home the fact that she enacted the policy, no matter who conceived it.

[BlodwynPig]

"hits back"? you've got nothing Theresa - your glorious reign is over.

[pancreas]

Of course the point is that Corbyn should have realised May would target the ambiguous timeline, and in response hammered home the fact that she enacted the policy, no matter who conceived it.

Yes, or to say that even if it had approved the policy, the LP never had in mind that people that had been in the country for 30+ years would, all of a sudden, need to prove that fact because they had a racist Home Sec and PM trying to bleach the skin of the country.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Labour's tenure of the Home Office was full of fiascos, remember Phil Woolass and the Gurkhas? Tone deaf. The one time they tried to appear tough on immigration it was about an almost universally admired group.


In contemporary news...Not a surprise as such, or going to lead to change, but fairly significant: the Mirror is calling for Theresa May to resign.

When did we last have a home sec that wasn't a complete fud?

[Blumf]

[Danger Man]

When did we last have a home sec that wasn't a complete fud?

Hello

[Fabian Thomsett]

^
Yeah, probably is Jenkins. Rest have been varying degrees of barbaric. Jack Straw was the New Labour Norman Tebbit.

[Sebastian Cobb]

All the new labour ones were awful. And just as dodgy with surveillance, although I guess a lot of that is just them doing what the spooks tell them.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Alan Johnson could then on a human level be described in better terms than Straw, Reid, Blunkett, Smith, Clarke, Woollas but only in an ineffective blinded by detail and authority Jimmy Carter kind of way.

It does seem as though that department is full of lifer staff who have done the job so long they are incapable of humanity and see enemies and degradation everywhere, in the same way as a police officer, or a bus driver.

All these MPs would have been steered by these folk even if they weren't already slanting that way.

Fuck sake, Jack Straw probably was the next best. And he was deliberately chosen as a sop to the press for being a hardliner.

[Sebastian Cobb]

To be fair Johnson benefitted from being a refreshing change from an ex-headteacher who never worked out the adult population of the united kingdom aren't quite the same as naughty schoolchildren and only being in the role for 11 months.

Oh and that and making me think of Johnson from Peepshow.

[Paulie Walnuts]

so; are ministers/government responsible for every decision of a department like the UKBA?

[Uncle TechTip]

What was so wrong about the decision to shred these 50-year-old bits of paper? In 2009, did anyone expect that these people would later have to PROVE they were resident here for those 50 years?

[Buelligan]

It's a fair question, I think there are two issues, the first one is that these documents had obviously been retained for a reason - they'd been kept for 50 years so there must have been some sense that these documents were official records and not just random scraps of paper.  I believe that with archived material like this, the UK government has a practice of giving the files dead dates - calculated to fall years after the individuals concerned can be expected to have died.  So there's that (and the question of why it was decided not to adhere to the practice with this particular documentation).  And, of course, in this particular case, the documents could be reasonably considered to be part of Britain's history and heritage (so they didn't only have value to the individuals involved but to the Country as a whole).

Far more importantly though, the value of the material was pointed out before it was destroyed by Home Office staff according to the Guardian

The Home Office destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording Windrush immigrants' arrival dates in the UK, despite staff warnings that the move would make it harder to check the records of older Caribbean-born residents experiencing residency difficulties.

A former Home Office employee said the records, stored in the basement of a government tower block, were a vital resource for case workers when they were asked to find information about someone's arrival date in the UK from the West Indies – usually when the individual was struggling to resolve immigration status problems.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/17/home-office-destroyed-windrush-landing-cards-says-ex-staffer

So whoever signed off on their destruction appears to have been aware that the cards were still a valuable and used resource.

[Dr Rock]

May should just use the defence that the Home Office was getting all cluttered and she was doing a tidy up. And just getting rid of some unimportant old shit *wink to the racists*

[Funcrusher]

Christ, is Woy Jenkins really the best one we've had in living memory? Must admit that the only ones I can remember are all dire.

[buzby]

So whoever signed off on their destruction appears to have been aware that the cards were still a valuable and used resource.

The rumour I've heard is that the data on them was supposed to be digitised before they were destroyed, but they wouldn't pay for it to be done.

[Paulie Walnuts]

May should just use the defence that the Home Office was getting all cluttered and she was doing a tidy up. And just getting rid of some unimportant old shit *wink to the racists*

As has already been pointed out, the decision was made under Labour

So either;

- you believe minsters are responsible, in which case Labour are at fault
- or ministers aren't responsible, in which case May has nothing to do with this
- the third option is that you are going to defend the decision Labour made and claim May should've reversed it, which shows how partisan and irrational your position is

[idunnosomename]

Isn't all this landing card blame game just a distraction from the fact that they wouldn't have needed them to prove their right to remain if it wasn't forMay's horrifically belligerent spell as Home Secretary

[DrGreggles]

May claiming in PMQs that the move to destroy the documents was approved under Labour in 2009.

I'm on a fact hunt here. Approved, signed off, put into action, all under Labour? Proposed under Labour but signed off and implemented by May? Something in between?

Implemented in 2010 by the fun coalition.
The finger of blame should be pointed at the Home Secretary at that time, who was... Oh.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Home Office claims that the destruction of Windrush-era landing cards in 2010 had no impact on the rights of those individuals to stay in the UK have been dramatically undermined by the evidence of two new whistleblowers.

Staff, in fact, routinely used landing card information as part of their decision-making process, and saw the Windrush landing cards as a useful resource, according to information from two new Home Office whistleblowers.

Their accounts have been further supported by the emergence of Border Force guidance, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that appears to contradict the government's justification of a decision to destroy an archive of Windrush-era arrival slips.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/18/whistleblowers-contradict-no-10-over-destroyed-windrush-landing-cards

[Buelligan]

Personally, I think someone needs to establish a clear chain of events and decision-making.  If it's possible to say "the decision was made in 200?, then the original document(s) discussing that decision must have been located.  What that decision was, who made it and why, should be placed before the public.  Everything would be made clear at a stroke.  It really is as simple as that. 

The fact that the government appear to be dragging their feet over doing so does rather make one wonder why.

[Buelligan]

The rumour I've heard is that the data on them was supposed to be digitised before they were destroyed, but they wouldn't pay for it to be done.

I think you could well be right about that.

They had been stored in a basement for decades but Downing Street says the UK Border Agency approved a business case in June 2009 to dispose of paper records, including the cards.

The decision to destroy the cards themselves was taken in October 2010, after the coalition came to power. Mrs May was not involved in the decision, which was taken at official level, said No 10.

Sounds to me that someone was looking into the cost of archiving materials, the amount of secure space required to maintain original government documents must be phenomenal.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43818860

Lord Kerslake, who has been advising Jeremy Corbyn, said some ministers were "deeply unhappy" about the introduction of the strategy to create a "hostile environment" for illegal immigrants under then home secretary, Mrs May.

He described Mrs May's approach to illegal immigration as "almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the way it's working".

[Fambo Number Mive]

BBC seems to think that a plastic straw ban should be the lead story rather than Windrush.