Dear Supporter
We have received news that the Windrush Lessons Learned report is to be published this week, a year overdue. We are concerned that this period has been chosen by the government in the hope that it will be buried in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and that the media will give it little or no focus as a result.
There have already been concerns raised that the report has been watered down with the government removing the reference to institutional racism by the Home Office and the fact that rscism was a factor in creating the hostile environment by the government.
The report was leaked a few days before the charter flight to Jamaica last month and we and other campaigners called on the government to adhere to a recommendation within it, which said that people who came to live in the UK as children, should not be deported. The government chose to ignore this recommendation as a number of people who came to the UK as children were targeted for deportation on the flight, including a young man convicted under now defunct joint enterprise law and another young man who was groomed by gangs and found to be a victim of modern slavery.
We will make you aware when the report is published and we will be calling on your support to join us in robustly challenging any failures within it.
Labour MPs have also warned ministers not to water down the report:
We don't feel like we can trust the government to be honest and open or to act with integrity and truth or to take any meaningful action with regards to the multiple failures that occured and continue to occur.
So we are calling for an independent public inquiry into the Windrush scandal and ask that you sign our petition calling for this:
Please use the hashtags #Windrushpublicinquiry #WindrushScandal if sharing information about these issues on social media.
Thanks and Regards
Zita