The Windrush compensation scheme is failing claimants and violating their rights, the first international study into the government’s handling of the immigration scandal has concluded.
The Human Rights Watch report is critical of the Home Office’s slow progress towards compensating those affected by the scandal in which thousands of UK residents were wrongly categorised as immigration offenders, and called on the government to launch “urgent reform to protect the rights of claimants”.
The rights organisation has questioned the wisdom of allowing the Home Office to be in charge of the compensation programme designed to deliver justice to those affected by the department’s mistakes, and recommends handing the scheme to an independent, neutral organisation.
The report highlighted the complexity of the 44-page compensation application form, and criticises the absence of legal aid to support applicants, who have found it challenging to provide evidence demonstrating that they lost work, housing, healthcare and benefits as a direct result of the Home Office’s errors.
Anna Steiner, a solicitor and senior lecturer at the University of Westminster who co-founded the pro bono Windrush Justice Clinic that assists Windrush claimants, told researchers it took lawyers a minimum of 40 hours to prepare a claim for compensation, with much of that time dedicated to making a detailed statement about the impact the ordeal has had on those affected.
The report noted that initial offers of compensation were often very low, but were regularly later increased on appeal. All 11 claimants interviewed for the research said they had appealed against their initial compensation offer, and this was confirmed as standard practice by lawyers who assisted claimants. Steiner said in some cases where applications were resubmitted without new evidence the Home Office had doubled its first compensation offer, suggesting that the officials did not pay close attention to the evidence the first time around.
Two claimants interviewed for the study said they had been made homeless after being misclassified as immigration offenders, but had later been unable to prove to the satisfaction of compensation scheme caseworkers that their homelessness was the result of being unable to prove their lawful immigration status, because they had no paperwork stating clearly that this was the case.
“I can’t put across how tiring and traumatic the scheme is. It’s so draining,” Charlotte Tobierre, who helped her father claim compensation after he lost his job when he was stripped of his legal status, told researchers.
The Human Rights Watch study is published exactly five years after Theresa May apologised for the mistakes made by her Home Office, many of which were the direct result of the introduction of a series of hostile environment policies. “Five years after the Windrush scandal came to light, the Home Office compensation scheme is compounding its injustice by denying claimants their right to redress for the life-altering losses and negative effects it has had on their lives for years,” said Almaz Teffera, researcher on racism in Europe at Human Rights Watch.
“The failure of the Windrush compensation scheme and the scandal itself are connected to unresolved institutional racism that dates back to the British Empire. To avoid more Windrush-style scandals, the UK government should urgently reform its immigration system in response to international and national concerns about the existence of deeply rooted racism.”
A Home Office spokesperson said a series of improvements had been made to the scheme, adding: “We remain absolutely committed to righting the wrongs of Windrush and have paid or offered more than £68m in compensation to the people affected. The home secretary continues to co-host Windrush Working Group meetings to discuss how we can work together to drive further improvements.”
