Thread by @ZoeJardiniere

OK. Which of you massive geeks is looking forward to Priti Patel giving evidence to the HASC this morning? 😑😑😑

LOL at the first question put to the Home Secretary about her commitment to creating a "fairer and more compassionate" Home Office.

Patel says there has been a "number of changes" to put people first...
She says there has been training to improve quality of HO communications.

That's it. That's literally the only concrete thing she mentions in terms of the Home Office's response to the Windrush Lessons Learned Review so far.
Other than that it's ALL just incoherent babble with a few key words sprinkled through seemingly at random.

Diane Abbott asks how many Windrush victims have actually received fasttrack payments of compensation.

Patel: 4.1 million has been paid out through the scheme so far. More babble. No number of those who have received it.

Diane repeats the question. She doesn't have the numbers.

Stuart McDonald asking about barracks asylum accommodation. Asks for documents the Home Office is relying on to refute claims that barracks accommodation is disgracefully inadequate.
Asks for numerous specific docs. This will need to be decided "case by case" (that's a no).

"Problem is we have an abundance of evidence from lots of reliable organisations telling us that there are huge problems in these barracks. The Home Office says no it's all fine but offers nothing to us in terms of how it has been reassured that is the case."
@Stuart_McDonald

It's incredible though. He asks her whether she intends to move away from the use of military barracks to accommodate asylum seekers and she literally replies "This isn't about military barracks accommodation"

Stuart is heroic, "If you would house military personnel in these barracks now then it is you who would be insulting our servicepeople"

Moving on to EU Settled Status scheme, Stuart asks whether a care home manager who discovers on the 5th of July (i.e. after the deadline) that there are EU citizens who are working as carers who have not applied to the Settlement Scheme, should they be sacked?

They actually are having such a mare here. They have no answer whatsoever to whether or not an employer in those circumstances is obliged to fire their employee. Because according to the law, they would then be working illegally. Patel is mad defensive but she has no answer.

Cooper asks Patel "did you agree to 28 people sharing a dormitory in Napier Barracks in the height of the pandemic"

Once again, she literally cannot answer. Her answer, I swear to you, includes the sentence "The dormitory area is where people sleep". She has not one answer.

Every member of the Committee so far taking a really strong line on cutting off and ignoring ridiculous non-answers and really drilling down.

197 confirmed cases of Covid in Napier barracks in January & February this year.

In accommodation where residents were sleeping 28-people to a room.

Cooper is absolutely furious about this. Apparently they were "following the guidance".

Yet another disastrous line of questioning on the 40,000 digital records lost by the Home Office last month. She doesn't even have any idea what impact the loss of has had.

This is the department that wants a digital-only immigration system, by the way. What could go wrong?

They've moved on to policing now, which is not my area & she's rly given me a headache already so I'm tapping out.
But I ask you to note how few concrete answers were given today.

The HO has no idea what it's doing & this govt has a deep contempt for accountability & it shows.

Oh hang on, Laura Farris (Tory) asking about migrant women with No Recourse to Public Funds victims of domestic violence unable to access support services.

Framed in terms of risk of abuse of immigration system, because who cares about the risk of abuse to migrant women 🙄

It's quite honestly amazing that even when a question is framed in such a deeply hostile way towards the rights of migrants that she is still COMPLETELY unable to answer.

She says they need to look at the evidence. Diverting to other unrelated issues. Just a joke, really.

The evidence that victims of domestic abuse who have NRPF are routinely turned away from women's shelters and other support services has been presented to the Home Secretary over years and years.
This is an issue she has NO EXCUSE for not being on top of but she has got NOTHING.

Priti Patel is entirely, universally, all-encompassingly clueless. She is not on top of her brief, she is not competent to run a compassionate Home Office. She is a disaster.