IT’S important to understand that the crisis around Home Office treatment of the Windrush generation didn’t fall out of the sky.

For years Theresa May has been promoting a “hostile environment” for migrants, first as home secretary and then as prime minister. Then she ignored warning after warning that her policies could ruin lives. 

As one part of this, we saw the Immigration Act of 2014, which removed protections for Commonwealth citizens, who had up until then been exempt from deportation. 

At the time, I spoke about that and explained the situation to ministers, and the current leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn also voted against it, but ministers paid no attention.

Ministerial maladministration sometimes occurs because officials act in error, and sometimes it is a question of unforeseen circumstances, but the problem with the plight of the Windrush generation is that it was foreseeable and it was foreseen. 

Indeed, people inside the department and members of this House tried to draw the government’s attention to it, but to no avail. MPs have been raising cases of constituents affected for some time.

In terms of the problems with the “hostile environment” more generally, four years ago, an internal Home Office memo found that the “hostile environment” could make it harder for foreign nationals to find homes and could provoke widespread discrimination. 

Furthermore, the Tory then secretary of state for communities and local government said: “The costs and risks considerably outweigh the benefits.”

How right these warnings proved. We’ve seen people who’ve lived here for decades, worked hard and played by the rules now being denied NHS treatment, losing their jobs or their home, or being torn away from their families.

It is an absolute outrage that it took extensive media coverage, 140 MPs signing a letter to the Prime Minister and the threat of an urgent question in the House of Commons for the government to take any action at all. It is yet another example of May’s heartless policies that consistently leave our society worse off.

Amber Rudd made a statement to the House of Commons this week where the government changed both its tone and made some welcome policy announcements, but it’s important to understand more needs to be done and that similar issues will come up again if the government doesn’t change approach. 

There are elements of the Home Secretary’s statement this week that are welcome, including the waiving of the citizenship fee; the waiving of the requirement to carry out the knowledge of language and life in the British citizenship test — some of these people, having been in Britain all their life, would almost certainly pass that test with flying colours — and the waiving of the naturalisation fee for children. 

In particular, I welcome allowing people who have retired from this country to return, with the cost of their fees waived.

Yet, while the Home Secretary talked about the problems of legislation, she is not suggesting changes in legislation. 
It would be easy to restore the protections for Commonwealth citizens that existed prior to 2014 but the government has not committed to do this. 

Furthermore, there is no detail on compensation — Labour believes it is important that the compensation is not a token sum of money but properly reflects the actual costs and the damage to family life caused by this policy.

The Home Secretary needs to also understand that this does not end here. Coming up behind the Windrush cohort is a slightly later cohort of persons from south Asia. 

In the next few years, even though they have lived here all their life, even though their children are British and even though they have worked all their lives, they will be asked for four pieces of data for every year they have been here, and they will be subjected to the same humiliation as the Windrush generation.

Labour is clear that we will fight for the members of the Windrush generation and their families every step of the way. We will do whatever it takes for them.

But this is not the only area where the Tories are failing.
With local elections approaching this week, wherever we look the Tories are holding our country back. Our NHS is in crisis, the housing crisis is deepening and we face more cuts to our policing and other essential community services, plus further squeezes on the budgets of local authorities.

On all these issues, including the national scandal that has been the treatment of the Windrush generation, May and Rudd point fingers everywhere but at themselves.

I am more determined than ever to see May’s cruel and callous Tories defeated — now is the time to stand up for those she and her party have let down so drastically. 

It’s time to defeat the Tories. It's time to have more Labour councillors all across this country. But that doesn’t happen without you. Please help us throw everything at these last days of campaigning for the local elections. We are determined to transform this country in the interests of the many, not the few.

Diane Abbott is shadow home secretary. This column appears fortnightly.