Four people affected by the Home Office’s Windrush scandal talk about their experiences of trying to claim compensation, as the latest statistics reveal that just one in four applicants have received payments, four years after the scheme was launched. The Home Office has paid out £63m across 1,681 claims, a much lower amount than officials anticipated.
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‘I don’t want to be made to beg’
Kirkland Johnson, 68
Kirkland Johnson, a maths teacher, came to the UK from Jamaica when he was nine in 1964. He qualified as a teacher in 2000 and for the next 14 years taught at two schools in Leicester and Northampton.
After deciding to change jobs in 2014 he signed up with a teaching agency, but they told him that although he had been in the country for 50 years, he didn’t have the right immigration status to continue teaching.
“I thought it was a joke because I’d been employed in my last school for nine years. When I realised it was serious I thought it would be something that would be sorted quickly,” he said. But he struggled to secure paperwork confirming he had the right to live and work in Britain.
Under pressure to make mortgage payments on the family home, he abandoned his teaching career and became a self-employed builder, making much less than his £34,000 teaching salary.
When he applied for compensation, the scheme initially offered him £18,000, and failed to reflect the significant loss of earnings he had suffered over seven years. “My career was taken from me. It hit my confidence badly. I was worried I was going to be locked up and taken away. My children and wife were frightened.”
The award was increased on review, but still did not reflect his lost teaching earnings. He has asked for a second review. “I’ve felt humiliated by the process. I don’t want to be made to beg. I’ve felt devalued.”
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‘A sense of grave injustice’
Emunah Baht-Gavriel, 68
Emunah Baht-Gavriel arrived in the UK in 1979 from Trinidad and was granted indefinite leave to remain. She worked for decades as an NHS nurse in hospitals in London, Leicester, Bristol and Peterborough.
At some point her passport was stolen, and she lost the stamp that provided evidence of her right to remain. She was making £32,000 as a community worker in 2017 when she was made redundant. Because she had no passport, she was subsequently told she had no right to work in the UK, and without her salary she struggled to buy food or pay rent. She became near-destitute.
Her daughter, who was then a university student, used her student loan to support Baht-Gavriel. When she applied for universal credit she was told that she was “a person subject to immigration control and therefore not entitled”. Because she had no documentation, she was unable to travel to see her mother before she died in 2015.
After studying her application, compensation case workers concluded that “no award” should be made under the “loss of access to employment category” of the scheme. “Having reviewed all the available information, we are unable to link your difficulties with employment to an inability to demonstrate your lawful status in the UK,” the compensation team case worker said.
They also concluded “no award” should be made for the loss of access to benefits. The impact on her life was classified as “moderately severe” and she was offered £20,000. A pro bono lawyer with United Legal Access submitted a request for her case to be reviewed in January, but a Home Office caseworker has not yet been allocated.
“Some of the other cases are much more harrowing than mine, but I feel such indignation and a sense of grave injustice. I’m still in debt as a result of not being able to work. Because it hasn’t been resolved I can’t afford to travel to a memorial for my mother,” she said.
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‘I ran out of money. I couldn’t get benefits’
David Mitchell, 59
Arriving in Britain from Grenada in 1964, David Mitchell travelled as a 10-month-old baby on his mother’s passport to join his father who was working as a bus driver.
Mitchell worked as a lorry driver until 2011 when his employers told him he needed to upgrade his driving licence to a more modern card with a photograph; he found he was unable to renew the licence because he had no passport.
“I’d been at the firm for 10 years, but they put me under so much pressure I ended up leaving. I thought I’d find another job easily but it didn’t happen like that,” he said.
Larger fines had been introduced for employers who hired people without the correct immigration paperwork and he found it impossible to be rehired. “I ran out of money. I couldn’t get benefits. I stayed with friends and then I was evicted. I sofa-surfed for a while, lost all my belongings. My friends were putting me up, paying for me. I could only eat what I could afford, when I could afford it. It was a terrible time.”
In 2014 he had a heart attack, which he attributes to the stress. His mother (who had returned to Grenada) died, and he was unable to travel to the funeral. He approached a solicitor three years ago for help with applying for compensation, but has never heard back from her. “She took the details and told me it was a complicated scenario,” he said.
Josephine Whitaker-Yilmaz, a policy manager with Praxis, a charity that gave him some support when he was facing homelessness, said: “David’s case clearly illustrates how the shortage of free legal advice and representation for immigration matters, including compensation for victims of the Windrush scandal, is preventing people who are eligible for recompense from getting it.
“Without professional legal representation, many simply feel that they cannot submit an application on their own; even those lucky enough to access legal advice can find themselves slipping through the cracks, simply because existing services are so overstretched.”
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‘I felt supported by caseworkers’
Sandra
Sandra, who asked not to use her real name, has a more positive experience of the scheme, after claiming on behalf of her late husband of 43 years. Her husband arrived from Jamaica in 1961 aged 19, and worked and paid taxes for over half a century.
He received a letter in October 2013 from Capita, which had been contracted by the Home Office to track down potential immigration offenders. “The letter told him he had no right to be in the country – he was so embarrassed and shocked, to begin with he didn’t even tell me,” she said.
He tried to apply for naturalisation, filled in a form and paid the £700 fee to the Home Office. “It was the wrong form, but the Home Office wouldn’t give the money back,” Sandra said.
Her husband was made redundant from his job as a senior council caretaker in social housing because of his documentation difficulties. Later he received a second letter from Capita asking him what steps he was taking to leave the country.
“He’d lived here for 52 years. It was dreadful; we thought he was going to have to leave us here. We didn’t have a lot of money but we got a solicitor on to it.”
The solicitor helped them to prove to the Home Office’s satisfaction that he was legally in the UK, but shortly after getting his paperwork he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died.
Sandra claimed compensation, highlighting loss of earnings, and the negative impact that the mistake had on the whole family. She was awarded £30,000. “It was horrendous to have to go through it all again. It was very emotional reliving it all and it did take a long time, but I felt supported by caseworkers.”
