‘Lives were ruined’ by hounding of families with right to be in UK
PRITI Patel yesterday apologised for the way the Home Office treated theWindrush generation.
The Home Secretary said she was “truly sorry” for the “pain, suffering and the misery” suffered by thousands of victims.
The apology came after a scathing report into the scandal accused the department of “a profound institutional failure” spanning decades.
It found “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race” at the Home Office had contributed to the shame.
Ms Patel said the review demonstrated “lives were ruined and families were torn apart” which was “simply unacceptable”.
The Windrush scandal erupted in 2018 after it emerged that Caribbean nationals who had been granted the right to stay in the UK and had been here for years, were deported or lost access to public services under an immigration clampdown.
The long-awaited review from
Wendy Williams said successive governments had failed to provide the documents needed to allow those granted the right to stay in the UK by the 1971 Immigration Act to prove their status – a move that “set the trap for theWindrush generation”.
And it took aim at governments throughout the 1990s and 2000s for creating a “hostile environment” in immigration policy.
That “aimed to make life as difficult as possible for people with no legal status in the UK” and therefore “trapped members of the Windrush generation”.
Ms Williams’ team combed 69,000 documents and interviewed 450 government staff, officials and politicians as well as 270 people affected by the scandal, for a report that has been nearly two years in the making.
The Home Office, the report finds, “lost sight of people the department had a duty to protect”, with an over-emphasis on meeting targets.
It said the department had demanded “an unreasonable level of proof” for the Windrush generation to be able to prove their status, and repeatedly failed to see how its policies would hit those who came to the UK from Caribbean nations. “This was evident, from how it developed, implemented and
evaluated policy, to how it dealt with individual people.”
Responding to the report in the House of Commons, Ms Patel said its findings would be “all too relatable” to many people across the country.
She said: “There are lessons to learn for the Home Office but also society as a whole.
“Despite the diverse and open nature of our country, too many people still feel that they may be treated differently because of who they are or where their parents came from.
“We must all take responsibility for the failings that led to the unimaginable suffering of this generation.
“And let me be clear – there is nothing that I can say today which will undo the pain, the suffering and the misery inflicted upon the Windrush generation.
“What I can do is say that on behalf of this and successive governments, I am truly sorry for the actions that spanned decades.”
Among its recommendations, the Williams review called on the Government to be more proactive in identifying those hit by the scandal.
It also demanded that the Home Office’s Historical Cases Review broaden its scope beyond people from the Caribbean to take the wider Commonwealth into account.
Since the scandal emerged, more than 8,000 have been given “some form of documentation” and the immigration status has been confirmed for almost 2,500, according to latest figures from the Home Office.
The department identified 164 people who had been deported or put in detention since 2002. A compensation scheme with an estimated £200million budget has been set up.
But last month, campaigners hit out at the “paltry” number of people who have so far received payments and said the process was “slow and onerous”. A total of £62,198 was paid out up until the end of last year and shared between just 36 people, despite the department receiving more than 1,000 claims so far.
An estimated 500,000 people now living in the UK who arrived between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries have been called the Windrush generation.
That is in reference to the Empire Windrush, a ship which brought one of the first large groups of Caribbean workers to the UK in 1948.
They were granted indefinite leave to stay in 1971 but thousands were children travelling on their parents’ passports without their own papers.
Changes to immigration law in 2012 meant those without documents were asked for evidence to continue working, access services or even to remain in the UK.
Some were held in detention or removed despite living here for decades, resulting in a furious backlash.