ombudsman Services/BEIS/Housing, Communities and Local Government - You'll Get No Answers from This Lot Not If They Can Help It. (6)
Dear Reader,
The Campaign for justice for the victims of Lewis Shand Smith's Broken
Solution continues despite the cover-up.
To: The Leader of the House of Commons / The Business Secretary / The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and The Home Secretary,
Ombudsman Services Part 5: Saj'll Fix It? When? (6)
6) Ombudsman Services/BEIS/Housing and Local Communities - You'll Get No Answers From This Lot Not If They Can Help It.
Dear Mrs Leadsom, Mr Clark, Mr Brokenshire and Mr Javid,
The, "hostile to the basic tenets of democratic government environment" seems to have spread throughout government. The Guardian now tells us,
Windrush row: 63 people could have been wrongly removed, says Javid
Home secretary gives first official indication of number of individuals who could have been wrongfully removed or deported
Sajid Javid told MPs the figure of 63 could be subject to change ‘because the work is still ongoing’. Photograph: Parliament TV
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has revealed that more than 60 members of the Windrush generation could have been wrongfully deported or removed from the UK in the first official indication of the scale of the problem. Appearing before the home affairs select committee for the first time since his appointment to the job last month, Javid said the Home Office had identified 63 possible Windrush cases of wrongful removal and warned the number could rise. Officials identified the cases after trawling through 8,000 removal and deportation records for Caribbean nationals aged 45 or over, who could have benefited from provisions in the 1971 Immigration Act protecting their right to be in the UK. The revelation prompted further calls for a public inquiry into the Windrush scandal and drew criticism from the mayor of London and opposition MPs, among others. Q&A
What are enforced departures?
There are three layers of state-enforced or enforceable departures of immigrants from the UK: deportations, administrative removals and voluntary departures. Deportations apply to people and their children whose removal is deemed 'conducive to the public good' by the home secretary. They can also be recommended by a court. Administrative removals refer to cases involving the enforced removal of non-citizens who have either entered the country illegally, outstayed a visa, or violated the conditions of their leave to remain. Voluntary departures are people against whom enforced removal has been initiated; the term 'voluntary' simply describes how they leave. There are three sub-categories: a) Those who depart via assisted voluntary return schemes. b) Those who make their own travel arrangements and tell the authorities. c) Those who leave without notifying the government.
Javid said within the 63 people who could have been removed, 32 were labelled foreign national offenders and 31 were administrative removals – that is, enforced removals from the UK. The figure – which Javid stressed was not the final number – is the first official indication of the number of individuals who could have been wrongfully removed or deported from the country. Answering questions from the Labour MP Stephen Doughty, Javid said: “So far we have found – and I would preface these are not final numbers, they are subject to change because the work is still ongoing – we have found 63 cases where individuals could have entered the UK before 1973, so these are Caribbean Commonwealth [citizens], who could have entered before 1973. Q&A
What is the Windrush deportation crisis?
Who are the Windrush generation? They are people who arrived in the UK after the second world war from Caribbean countries at the invitation of the British government. The first group arrived on the ship MV Empire Windrush in June 1948. What is happening to them? An estimated 50,000 people face the risk of deportation if they never formalised their residency status and do not have the required documentation to prove it. Why is this happening now? It stems from a policy, set out by Theresa May when she was home secretary, to make the UK 'a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants'. It requires employers, NHS staff, private landlords and other bodies to demand evidence of people’s citizenship or immigration status. Why do they not have the correct paperwork and status? Some children, often travelling on their parents’ passports, were never formally naturalised and many moved to the UK before the countries in which they were born became independent, so they assumed they were British. In some cases, they did not apply for passports. The Home Office did not keep a record of people entering the country and granted leave to remain, which was conferred on anyone living continuously in the country since before 1 January 1973. What is the government doing to resolve the problem? On Monday, the home secretary Amber Rudd announced the creation of a new Home Office team dedicated to ensuring that Commonwealth-born long-term UK residents would no longer find themselves classified as being in the UK illegally.
Photograph: Douglas Miller/Hulton Archive
“The reason we use the word ‘could’’ – it means of the 8,000 records that came up of deportation removals there’s so far a focus on the 63 where there’s something in their records that indicates they could have been in the UK before 73 who have been removed or deported.” In cases of the administrative removals, individuals would have been sent letters telling them they had no right to be in the UK and should leave.
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Sadiq Khan said he was “shocked” at the figures given by the home secretary to the committee.
Q. Mrs Leadsom, Mr Clark, Mr Brokenshire and Mr Javid, why is this government also shocked that NO figures have been given to its monitors by Ombudsman Services?
“Govt must urgently provide answers on exactly how many have been affected, and what action is being taken to right this wrong,” he wrote on Twitter.
Q. Mrs Leadsom, Mr Clark, Mr Brokenshire and Mr Javid, surely, government must also urgently provide answers on exactly how many consumers have been affected by Lewis Shand Smith's Broken Solution and what action they are taking to right this wrong?
Satbir Singh, the chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said the figure bolstered the case for a full public inquiry. “The case for a public inquiry grows stronger every day,” he said.
Why didn't you answer these questions Mr Javid?
Q1. Mr Javid, Business Secretary, doesn't the fact that RICS Members' and (Un)Regulated Firms' fees pay for the scheme and that their Director of Professional Regulation sits on the Board, not create a conflict of interest?
Q2. Mr Javid, Business Secretary, when RICS Members' and (Un)Regulated Firms' fees pay for the salary of their ombudsman, there is a Memorandum of Understanding stating what is and isn't an effective resolution of disputes and The RICS Director of Professional Regulation sits on the Board, isn't it stretching the bounds of credibility to claim that the ombudsman is, "entirely independent?"
Q3. Mr Javid, Business Secretary, when the Director of Professional Regulation sits on the Board of Ombudsman Services and each year his Members and (Un)Regulated Firms send more and more of their dissatisfied clients to The RICS ombudsman, doesn't this just serve to confirm what the late Consumer Focus had said all along - that RICS inability to adequately regulate their Members and (Un)Regulated Firms has led to practices that do not work in the customer's interests - practices like handing their dissatisfied clients £100 for a wrecked dream?
Q4. Mr Javid, a private redress scheme that fails to answer complainants' questions is a failure and not fir for purpose. It came off any "gold standard" the minute it maladministered complaints and thereby eviscerated its "integrity" and authority to dispense "civil justice." Do you as Business Secretary still assure consumers that when they take their complaints to Ombudsman Services they will be investigated, "fairly" and "independently?"
Q5. Mr Javid, for clarity, should we now redirect our complaint about Ombudsman Services' maladministration of consumers' complaints and contempt for civil justice to HRH Prince Charles?
Q6. Mr Javid, when RICS the regulator regulates complaints brought against its Members and (Un)Regulated Firms and then determines what are satisfactory resolutions to those complaints, isn't that an example of a market operating in a vacuum where there are no rules to the game because political processes have rigged it that way?
Francis Maude's global movement towards transparency has yet to arrive at Ombudsman Services or this government. Still no Annual Report from Ombudsman Services or explanation for the near 90% consumer dissatisfaction rate from either the company or the government monitors.
The Full English Cover-Up has taken care of that.
Yours sincerely, Steve Gilbert - Workstock Number - 510458. The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign is at: www.blogger.com and www.facebook.com Ombudsmans Sixtyone-percent.
Who are the Windrush generation?
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