Did Home Office pay victims of Windrush scandal to keep quiet?
VICTIMS of the Windrush scandal may have been asked to sign gagging clauses as part of compensation agreements. Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said the Home Office was trying to silence victims of immigration blunders.
The accusation comes after Home Secretary Sajid Javid promised not to use non-disclosure agreements in the new compensation scheme for Windrush-era migrants.
The scandal blew up earlier this year when it emerged that dozens of Caribbean migrants who were encouraged to come to the UK after the Second World War may have been wrongly deported.
Others were wrongly detained, denied legal rights or threatened with deportation – while many lost their homes and jobs.
Up to 8,000 may have been affected by the scandal, which was a result of the Government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy to oust illegal migrants, imple- mented when Theresa May was Home Secretary. Her successor, Amber Rudd, resigned from the post in April in the fallout.
It has now emerged that at least one victim has signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and another has been approached about a deal, according to The Independent.
This is despite new Home Secretary Sajid Javid telling MPs in July that ‘no one will be asked to sign any kind of non- disclosure agreement or anything like that’ under the official compensation scheme.
But just days earlier, he had written to the Commons home affairs select committee to say ‘confidentiality clauses’ could be used in fasttrack compensation cases where claimants are taking legal action against the Government.
He wrote: ‘Where we consider that the department has erred, we will seek to reduce any further distress for the claimant by making an offer of compensation, rather than continue through a lengthy legal challenge. I can confirm that Windrush generation cases are sometimes addressed through this route.
‘For clarity there has been one individual who has received compensation and we have sought to make contact proactively with another. Whilst there is no requirement, settlement offers are sometimes accompanied by confidentiality clauses, depending on individual circumstances.’
Miss Abbott said: ‘The Home Secretary promised to do right by our fellow citizens from the Windrush generation yet it appears he has gone back on his word. It is totally unacceptable for the Home Office to impose non- disclosure agreements and gag those who have suffered at the hands of the hostile environment.’
One of the Windrush migrants, Icilda Williams, cannot return to Britain to meet her greatgrandchildren, despite working as an NHS nurse for almost 30 years. She has seven children, 20 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren in the UK, but has been banned from even applying for a visiting visa.
The widow, 84, retired to Jamaica with her husband Kenneth in 1996 after coming to Britain in 1962 and had travelled to and from the Caribbean almost every year before the Home Office crackdown in 2014. ‘It is heartbreaking,’ she said. ‘I feel very lonely without being able to see my family and I find myself crying at night.’ There is no suggestion that she was asked to sign an NDA.
A spokesman for the Home Office said: ‘The case referred to in the letter to the home affairs select committee predated the Windrush compensation scheme. There will be no requirement or need to sign a non-disclosure agreement.’