New home secretary tries to get on top of problem that led to exit of his predecessor Amber Rudd

Sajid Javid has vowed to “do right” by the Windrush generation as the government tries to get to grips with the scandal that led to the departure of his predecessor.



The home secretary, who was appointed on Monday morning after Amber Rudd stood down, told MPs it “should never have been the case” that immigrants from across the Commonwealth faced problems proving their status.

Flanked by the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and the Cabinet Office minister, David Lidington, Javid said he was “personally committed” to rectifying the difficulties Commonwealth immigrants have had to deal with and would continue to resolve problems as a “matter of urgency”.

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In his first outing in the role, the home secretary acknowledged that Rudd’s departure after admitting she had “inadvertently” misled MPs over targets for the enforced removal of illegal immigrants was not enough to draw a line under the scandal.

“Of course, it’s not just about personnel change; it’s also about action, and that’s exactly what you’ll be seeing from my department,” he said. Javid said he had asked to see details of the internal targets.

Despite Downing Street saying it had no plans to diverge from current immigration policy, Javid pledged to look “very carefully” at the existing system after he was called upon to deliver a radical rethink.

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“We do need to make sure that … the immigration system behaves more humanely, in a more fair sense … rather than just asking for a piece of paper to prove everything, and I will be looking at it very carefully,” he said.

He disowned the name of the “hostile environment” strategy, as Rudd had begun to do before she stood down, although not the policy itself.

“The phrase ‘hostile’ is not a phrase I’m going to use; it’s a compliant environment. The terminology is, I think, incorrect. It’s a phrase I think is unhelpful and it doesn’t represent our values as a country,” he said.



However, Javid repeated the prime minister’s message that while dealing with all the problems thrown up by the Windrush scandal, it was right for the government to continue to focus on tackling illegal immigration.

In response to an urgent question from Labour, he told MPs: “I myself am a second generation migrant. Like the Caribbean Windrush generation, my parents came to this country from the Commonwealth in the 1960s. They too came to help rebuild this country.

“So when I heard that people who are outstanding pillars of their community were being impacted simply for not having the right documents to prove their legal status in the UK, I thought it could be my mum, my brother, my uncle – even me.

“That’s why I am so personally committed and invested to resolving the difficulties faced by the people of the Windrush generation, who have built their lives here and contributed so much.”

The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, called on the government to commit to reinstating protections for Commonwealth immigrants that were removed by May in 2014 when she was home secretary.



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“The Windrush generation was my parents generation. I believe and most British people believe that they have been treated appallingly. He will be judged not on the statements he makes this afternoon, but by what he does to make the situation right and get justice for them,” she said.

Yvette Cooper, the chairwoman of the home affairs select committee, urged Javid to look again at the broader immigration system, saying it was about the “fair type of country we want to be”.

Meanwhile, the Home Office was said to have launched at least four separate internal inquiries, including how documents relating to the Windrush scandal were leaked to the Guardian.

Earlier, Javid said his “most urgent task” was to make sure people caught up in the Windrush debacle were treated with “decency and fairness”, as he arrived at the Home Office on the first day of his new role.

Rudd, the fifth enforced departure from the cabinet since the general election last year, admitted when she stood down that she had “inadvertently” misled MPs over government targets for removing illegal immigrants. But she had also been facing intense criticism over the Windrush scandal.