Windrush scandal victims suffered 'double whammy' of racial prejudice, Doreen Lawrence says

Victims of the Windrush scandal have faced a "double whammy" of racial prejudice since arriving in Britain, Doreen Lawrence has said.

The Labour peer said the same people who had suffered discrimination then over jobs and housing were now being threatened with deportation seven decades later.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, also argued the role of the Windrush generation had not been properly explained at the time.

Ministers have faced a furious backlash after it emerged long-term residents who settled in the UK from the late 1940s to the early 1970s had wrongly been identified as illegal immigrants.

A raft of cases have been highlighted of people facing deportation or being denied access to healthcare over UK paperwork issues.

Urgent steps are being taken by the Home Office in a bid to tackle the crisis and compensation is to be offered to those affected.

Responding to a ministerial statement on the fiasco, Lady Lawrence pointed to the hostile reception that had greeted the Windrush generation, named after the first ship that brought them to Britain in 1948.

"And now here we are again almost 70 years later we are talking about the same people facing deportation. It's like a double whammy," she said.

The peer added: "They should never have been in this position because they came here as British citizens. They were invited here.

"I think what the country never did in the first place was to tell the country that these people were invited, they didn't just come here, they came here to build the country up.

"I think the residents of this country never understood the reason why the Windrush people came here in the first place."

Home Office Minister Baroness Williams of Trafford said: "It is a double whammy."

Former civil service chief Lord Kerslake, who is an adviser to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, branded it a "shameful and terrible miscarriage of justice".

"It makes me personally feel ashamed that this has happened in my country," he said.

Warning over the "risk of further injustices", he said: "There is much talk of a change in culture and a change in practice, but very little talk about a change in policy.

"And unless that happens I think the practice will always be trumped by the policy."

He questioned continuing the "hostile environment" approach towards illegal immigration.

Lady Williams said successive governments had sought to make the UK a hostile environment for people who should not be in the country.

She said: "We do want this country to be a friendly environment for people who are here legally."

But Lady Williams made clear the Government "will not back down...on tackling the pernicious practice of illegal migration to this country."

Additional reporting from the Press Association.