Can Sajid Javid really change immigration policy?

When Sajid Javid became Home Secretary, he did so on the basis that he would be able to undo some of the political damage done by the ‘hostile environment policy’. Last night, he rather quietly announced that a key element of this policy would be paused, something Labour’s David Lammy immediately seized upon, hauling Javid’s junior Caroline Nokes to the Commons for an urgent question.

Noakes insisted that this pause was ‘temporary’, adding that she would not give consent to the data sharing between government departments and other organisations until she was confident ‘that we will not be impacting on further members of the Windrush generation’. Lammy was largely unhappy about the way the announcement had been made – around the same time as the football – but he was also unimpressed that there are still people who are in serious hardship as a result of the government’s policy.