UKC

Just caught a bit of PMQ, with Corbyn accusing the PM of being home secretary when the decision to destroy the windrush files was taken, she insists is was a labour decision in 2009. So one of the two is lying, can anyone link me to any actual evidence one way or the other?

I'm not interested in opinion BTW - one of our party leaders is lying, and I want to know which one it is

You heard it first. Can you do some frantic googling and let the rest of us know?

I'm trying but failing!

Will it not be a conglomerate of facts:

Labour may have destroyed the files after they thought that they had brought about an act that meant that these people had their status as residents protected.

Tories then removed this protected status and reintroduced the requirement to review the documents that are now destroyed. (while TM was home secretary).

That isn't what is being claimed though. Both the Tories and Labour are accusing the others of deciding to destroy the files. The added requirements is separate and came later

That is a response that could, and should, be used far more than it is.

I thank you for it.

https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2017/08/09/response-to-media-reporting-...

As far as I can see that doesn't actually say anything at all about who decided to destroy the cards...

I'm still failing to find anything online BTW. Ain't our democracy great?

It would have been part of a program to move to digitisation and modernise the way everything works. You won’t find names of people who work in the home office - for good reason. 

Which leaves us in the wonderful position where both our party leaders accuse the other of being liars, with no way to actually know the truth. I consider that a broken democracy...

The Home Office only have to carry out the Government’s wishes. They don’t have to consult the Home Secretary on every descision they make. If this was an ‘operational descision’ then it appears they would have just done it. 

That's easy.  Just look for the one whose lips are moving.

It doesn’t matter just now, what matters is that those who have been unjustly treated have restitution, those who were wrongly deported are allowed to return (at the governments cost), those who lost jobs  and houses are fully compensated, and if they have passed away then the compensation goes to those who benefitted from their will. The idea that just because an immigrants offspring was not registered makes them somehow less of a citizen than their parents beggars belief. Full some apologies from Home Secretary and Prime Minister are noted and approved, but I think if I was a child of the windrush generation who had been shabbily treated I’d be looking for the person or persons responsible to removed from any position that might impact on individuals as they are clearly unfit for that office.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/17/home-office-destroyed-windr...

This indicates the destruction took place in October 2010 (when Theresa May was Home Sec under Coalition), but doesn't say who made the decision. Coalition took office in May 2010 so its entirely feasible decision was taken by Labour prior to that date.

Farce all round really!

tell me please, as this was very personal data entrusted to the state - does it amount to a conspiracy to commit an offence under Data Protection Legislation?  Was it destroyed with the consent of the data subjects?  Were they even made aware of the threat to their data?

If so, who should face the consequences - would some kind of state immunity be claimed?

One of our party leaders has repeatedly been shown to be a pathological liar and the other is the most honest politician in a generation. Figure out which is which and you'll have your answer

Thats not good enough for me unfortunately - I want accountability not 'trust me'

The problem with pathological liars is that they keep harping on about how honest they are...

Sadly data protection legislation is mostly about ensuring that certain data held by companies is kept secure and private, and not used inappropriately. There is no issue with companies deleting the data, as then they don't hold it and therefore can't abuse it.

Presumably both could (strictly speaking) be telling the truth.  Dishonesty in politics is normally more about omission and emphasis that outright lie.  Furthermore  I doubt that decisions like this occur in isolation.

i.e. civil servants under one administration decide that in order to comply with data protection law, all data of the form 'x' must be deleted subject to conditions 'y'.  The same civil servants under the next administration have to make the decision of whether or not the data in question falls under the guidance that was previously agreed.  In each case, the minister may or may not have any involvement in the decision, but each decision could justifiably be claimed to have resulted in the deletion of the data.

This is obviously an unforeseen consequence, and the response to the problem (once it became apparent) seems much more important than squabbling about who was responsible.

Probably neither of them. Likely they're both just talking about different truths in the same conversation. One may be more clearly conveying what of consequence actually happened but we'll have to wait to see which.

Either way, looking at the news outlet headlines blaming Labour has played well for May and unfortunately has proved an effective distraction from the true cause of this debacle, her own 'hostile environment' policy.

jk

Did either of them use the word liar or are you sexing it up like a dodgy journalist

Exactly. The only reason this question I being asked is because the government has acted in an abominable and incompetent manner. These people would never have been asked to prove when they landed in the UK if we had had a Labour government and one must ask oneself why, if it was known that these documents were missing, why the matter had not been dealt with before. It's either malice or incompetence once again from the tories.

I'm disappointed no one has asked for May's resignation yet.

One interpretation is this, from today’s Guardian live blog:

(Jaqui Smith has said May lied)

"But May did not actually say that Smith or Johnson took the decision. She implied it, but she did not say it. Her actual words were:

[Corbyn] asked me if the decision to destroy the landing cards - the decision to destroy the landing cards - had been taken in my time as home secretary. The decision to destroy the landing cards was taken in 2009 and as I seem to recall in 2009 it was a Labour Home Secretary who was in office.

This is misleading, because MPs were left with the impression that the decision was taken by the home secretary. But, in the annals of political dishonesty, this is very much at the vanilla end of things. Ministers are ultimately responsible for what their officials do, even if they do not take the decisions themselves. And nowhere is this more true than in the Home Office.”

Link here, although you’ll have to scroll a long way down to find the relevant section - 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2018/apr/18/pmqs-may-corbyn-...

Update: 

(No 10, however, later clarified that it was an “operational decision” taken by the UK Border Force, not by a Laboour home secretary. Worse for May, the specific decision was taken in October 2010, when she was in office, not 2009).

-New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/04/pmqs-review-theresa-may-s-...

Alan Johnson then it appears. JC maybe should have checked before throwing accusations around. 

Update: 

(No 10, however, later clarified that it was an “operational decision” taken by the UK Border Force, not by a Laboour home secretary. Worse for May, the specific decision was taken in October 2010, when she was in office, not 2009).

-New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/04/pmqs-review-theresa-may-s-...

From previous post by Bob Kemp.......

That’s from 2 days ago. The BBC were reporting today the descision was made in 2009. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-responsible-wind...

It has been claimed that the landing cards are of little use.  Why then were they kept so long before destruction?  Was it perhaps because they were seen to have evidential value?

So, we have the Tories accusing the labour home secretary of being in charge at the time. We then have No 10 saying no, it was 2010 when TM was Home Secretary, in response to a labour question. We now have Alan Johnston saying it was 2009.......

I think that's the incompetence question taken care of!!

Because they were used at some point.

I suspect that the process of finding the relevant card was very tortuous and labour intensive only for them to frequently find that they were illegible. These cards were 50+ years old. I know what state my birth certificate is in. 

Someone has decided that it’s very expensive to keep the cards, asked the question and someone else has said no, get rid of them, we have other, better ways of finding the information. 

As we can see government is full of bureaucracy, so getting rid of them was provably a long and drawn out process. March 2009 to October 2010? To shred a few cards? 

No. 

Labour accused May of giving the order. 

May said she didn’t, so it must have been given before. 

Alan Johnson agreed the descision was made while he was in charge.

They all agree that it was a descision made due to ‘operational requirements’ and that a minister wouldn’t have been asked for approval. Although technically the home minister could have stopped it, if they were made aware and they were able to foresee the future. 

And it seems it’s just a red herring anyway and media frenzy again. 

as someone born in the fifties in the UK who has no medical records prior to 1990, which surprised me a bit, (now I know why I should see  a doctor regularly!) I find it quite terrifying that something as important as that could be just destroyed.  From a personal point of view I would have thought these were important at least as long as the person remained alive and might be important for any children brought in with them.

Are deeds more important than people's life evidence?  They are properly looked after, presumably because they matter more economically than individual people.  The government presumably misled people in their HMRC adverts that told people to keep records for at least 6 years, implying that it wouldn't matter for older records!  Those adverts should have carried a health warning.

I don’t keep anything older than 5 years. Except maybe anything long running like a mortgage, in which case I keep the anual statement and the original paperwork. 

It’s completely unrealistic in this modern age to require anything like this. Something that the government have now realised and understood. 

It’s a classic case of red tape tying everyone in knots. Isn’t this why we’re trying to get out of Europe?

They're not really important. Its a smokescreen and a distraction as people keep saying. 

Ooo. Thanks for clearing that up...I think....

But yes, i agree this card thing is just a red herring. There is much more to it than some cards.

It's about people who (previously) had legitimate cause to be here, being made to leave via different means, or being made to feel unwelcome and leaving, as part of a political goal to reduce immigration, imho.

Generalising from your paper records to government archives is ridiculous. The same standards don't apply. You don't have legal obligations to keep extensive records for any length of time. It's useful to keep some things, that's all. The Government has extensive legal obligations to preserve all kinds of records. 

Shut down the National Archive then?

I'm surprised you're digging out the old red tape smear after  Cameron's bonfire of the building regulations and Grenfell Tower. 

But it’s not that simple. The press would like you to believe that it was a single law that was changed deliberately, when in fact it was just one small part of another larger set of laws and the specific part that we are referring to was at the time irrelevant.

No one deliberately changed a specific law to affect these people. 

There was and is nothing wrong with the regulations that affected Grenfell, unless you know something  no one else does as the enquiry hasn’t even started. 

If fact it looks at the moment that it’s very good example of red tape box ticking where the boxes weren’t even ticked.

There's loads wrong with the regulations. Try this: https://www.ft.com/content/80c884d4-51af-11e7-a1f2-db19572361bb

Look up 'regulatory austerity' too. The regulations do need revision - as in Dame Judith Hackett's interim report. But they also need enforcing properly. 

By the way, this has nothing to do with the EU.

That’s an opinion piece. Talk to firemen and people in the fire protection industry rather than journalists for a better understanding of what went wrong at Grenfell.