Patel faces calls to ditch May’s immigration policy after Windrush criticism
PRITI PATEL is under pressure to ditch Theresa May’s “hostile environment” policy after a review blamed it for behaviour by the Home Office in the Windrush scandal that bore hallmarks of “institutional racism”.
The review, by Wendy Williams, an inspector of constabulary, singled out the hostile environment for inspiring a “culture of disbelief and carelessness” that meant officials wrongly designated thousands of legal UK residents from the Windrush generation as being in the country illegally.
Some who had come to Britain as children 50 years earlier were subjected to “appalling injustices” by the Home Office that meant they lost jobs, their homes, access to healthcare and in “extreme cases” were deported, at least one of whom subsequently died.
These “operational, structural and cultural” failings were “borne out of a resolute conviction that the hostile environment would be effective, was effective and should be pursued at all costs”, said Ms Williams.
She recommended a full review of the policy to establish that it was not discriminatory, while the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants called for it to be scrapped. As revealed in The Telegraph yesterday, the review concluded the Home Office had demonstrated “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race”.
These were consistent with “some elements of institutional racism”, the term coined by Sir William Macpherson in his report on the Met Police’s Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry.
The 275-page report said the “root cause“of the scandal could be traced back to laws in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, some of which had “racial motivations”. “Race clearly played a part in what occurred,” said Ms Williams, adding that some failings could be indicators of “indirect discrimination”.
She dismissed claims that senior officials were caught by “surprise” by the scandal, saying: “A range of warning signs from inside and outside the Home Office were simply not heeded by officials and ministers.”
She noted that even from 2017 – when Sir Philip Rutnam took over as the Home Office’s permanent secretary – the department was “too slow to react”.
Ms Williams said some unnamed senior civil servants and former ministers still showed “some ignorance and a lack of understanding of the root causes and a lack of acceptance of the full extent of the injustice done”.
Her review also found the Home Office was fragmented, “siloed” decision making, had a target-dominated work environment within visas and immigration enforcement sections, and had a lack of empathy in some cases along with dehumanising jargon and clichés.
It recommended ministers should make an unqualified apology to Britain’s black Afro-caribbean population on behalf of the Home Office for the “serious harm” inflicted on people.
Responding in the Commons, Ms Patel said it was “simply unacceptable” and she added: “I am sorry that people’s trust has been betrayed.”