The Windrush Compensation Scheme

We are deeply concerned that, as of the end of September, only 20.1% of the initially estimated 15,000 eligible claimants have applied to the scheme and only 5.8% have received any compensation. The troublingly low level of applications and payments are evidence enough that the scheme has not worked as intended. It is even more distressing that twenty-three people have died before receiving any Windrush compensation payment.

Many people who have applied for compensation have yet to receive a penny and we have heard too many stories of people struggling with impossible demands for evidence, poor communication from the Home Office and a lack of understanding of the issues they faced. For some, the experience of applying for compensation from the Home Office has become a source of further trauma rather than redress. Many of the concerns raised with us about the Windrush Compensation Scheme as part of this inquiry have echoes of the same criticisms made of the Home Office by Wendy Williams in her report into how the Windrush scandal occurred. It is a damning indictment of the Home Office that the design and operation of this scheme contained the same bureaucratic insensitivities that led to the Windrush scandal in the first place, and suggests that the culture change promised in the wake of the scandal has not yet occurred. We are deeply concerned that delays and difficulties in the compensation scheme have compounded the injustices faced by members of the Windrush generation. As a result, we urge Wendy Williams to look at the compensation scheme as part of her review of the Home Office’s progress on her recommendations.

We are troubled that over four times as many people have had their status or citizenship confirmed under the Windrush Scheme as have applied for compensation, and we are concerned that the Home Office is lowering its estimates of the total number of potential claimants based on the low level of applications rather than the number of those actually eligible for the compensation scheme. We share the NAO’s concern about the Department’s lack of curiosity concerning non-Caribbean cases and its failure to identify individuals proactively who have been granted status but have not applied for compensation.

It reflects the deep and far-reaching problems with the compliant environment policy that, four years on from the emergence of the scandal, the Home Office still does not know how many people were affected and how many are eligible to apply to the Windrush Compensation Scheme.

The Home Office should provide more details of how it is identifying the assumptions underpinning its claim volume scenarios and how it is establishing its planning estimates in its response to this Report.

It is clear from the low level of claims submitted to the compensation scheme to date, and from evidence we have received, that there is considerable work to be done in order to rebuild trust and confidence in the Home Office to deliver the Windrush Compensation Scheme, and to demonstrate to people both that it is safe to seek confirmation of their lawful status and that it is worthwhile to make a claim for compensation.

It would have been far better for establishing trust if the compensation scheme had been administered independently from the Home Office from the start, as many Windrush campaigners have called for. By keeping the compensation scheme within the very Department that caused the Windrush scandal, the Government has undermined confidence in the scheme and also made it vulnerable to some of the same problems that characterised the Home Office approach to the Windrush generation in the first place.

In order to increase trust and encourage more applicants, we believe that the scheme should be transferred to an independent organisation.

The changes to the Windrush Compensation Scheme which were announced in December 2020 were long overdue and the increase in applications since then is to be welcomed. The Department’s work to understand better why eligible people have yet to apply for compensation is also to be welcomed. However, that application volumes are still much lower than expected points to deep and persistent problems. The evidence provided to us makes it plain that the delays and difficulties in applying for the scheme, together with a deep mistrust of the Home Office, form a toxic combination which may be putting off those who were caught up in the Windrush scandal from applying, for fear of being re-traumatised by the process. The Home Office’s finding that, for some individuals, the impact of the Windrush scandal was primarily about status and belonging does not absolve it of its responsibility to do all that it can to provide compensation to those eligible and entitled to receive it. The onus is on the Home Office to rebuild trust with the Windrush community and to make applying for compensation as easy a process for the claimants as it possibly can be. So far, that has patently not been the case.

Given the continued uncertainty around the number of eligible claimants and the fact that some eligible claimants currently lack the confidence, patience or trust in the Home Office to apply for a scheme administered by the Department, we strongly welcome the removal of the formal end date for the scheme. However, we implore the Home Office to be even more proactive in rebuilding trust with members of the Windrush community.

We hope that the changes since December 2020 that have increased the level of award available and made the process simpler will also help encourage more people to apply for the scheme. The Home Office could improve trust and confidence amongst claimants by being more transparent about the value of awards it is making. Greater openness about the value of compensation payments may also help to assure eligible people who are yet to apply for compensation that making a claim is worthwhile.

We welcome the recent publication of data on full and final offers. The Home Office should publish this data at least every six months; it should also publish data on the number of full and final impact on life payments made at each level of award.

As previously stated, whilst we recognise the challenges faced by the Home Office in both estimating the number of, and identifying, people who may be eligible for the Windrush Compensation Scheme, we agree with the NAO, the Public Accounts Committee and Wendy Williams that more could be done proactively to identify affected individuals and support them in accessing the assistance available through the Windrush schemes.

All those who received help from the Windrush Scheme to get their papers and documentation resolved should have been contacted and offered help with applying for the Windrush Compensation Scheme.

The Home Office should clarify how many of those 13,800 people were proactively contacted and offered support to apply for compensation as well. It should contact them again to ensure they have full information about the changes to the compensation scheme and the help available to apply.

The Home Office should also explain clearly how it has considered and is seeking to mitigate any risks it identified when making the decision not to broaden the scope of its historical cases review, including but not limited to the risk of failing to identify non-Caribbean Commonwealth nationals who may have been wrongly detained and/ or removed, or whose data may have been proactively shared with other government departments. The Home Office has stated that widening the scope of the historical cases review would take a ‘substantial number of caseworkers around two years to review at a significant cost’. Without being provided a precise estimate of what that cost would be, we cannot accept that as a reasonable justification for not widening the scope of the review as suggested by the Public Accounts Committee and by Wendy Williams in her Lessons Learned Review. The Home Office must share its estimate of the cost and caseworkers required.

We share claimants’ and their representatives’ concerns that digital engagement events and advertising may be less effective in reaching this cohort.

As restrictions are lifted, planning and preparations must commence to ensure that the Department is ready to launch a new and extensive programme of face-to-face engagement events as soon as it is safe to do so.

We believe that a community-centred strategy is vital for building trust in the compensation scheme given the pervasive distrust of the Home Office within the affected communities.

The Home Office should look at more innovative ways of reaching communities, for instance video guides.

Whilst the Home Office’s grassroots campaign and the launch of the Windrush Community Fund are welcome, it is unacceptable that they took so long to get off the ground and didn’t even start providing funds for community projects until two years after the compensation scheme opened. As a result of those unexplained delays, nearly four years on from the Windrush scandal many people are still too fearful of the Home Office to apply for the Windrush schemes and have yet to be reassured that engaging with the Department on compensation will not leave them vulnerable to Immigration Enforcement. Rebuilding trust through community and grassroots networks should have been an urgent priority once the scheme had launched; instead, the delays that have become characteristic of the Home Office’s work on Windrush have significantly stalled progress on outreach too.

The Home Office should bolster the support and funding available to grassroots campaigns and community groups tasked with raising awareness of the Windrush schemes, ensuring that those in which the community has confidence and which have expertise in this work are adequately supported. It should look to scale up its grassroots outreach work in the coming years, instead of ending the active phase of its communications and outreach programme in 2023.

When individuals apply for the Windrush Compensation Scheme, the Department should collect data on how they heard about it. This would allow for proper evaluation of their outreach work and help decide where more resources should be targeted.

The Home Office must ensure that all communications about the Windrush schemes make clear that eligibility is not limited to the Caribbean Commonwealth, and that there is dedicated outreach and targeted communications for those from non- Caribbean Commonwealth countries. It should evaluate the community projects it is now funding in order to learn how best to ensure that its own outreach efforts are effective in reaching and engaging with all affected communities. The Government should also clarify how British High Commissions overseas are being supported to raise awareness of the Windrush schemes.

Given that the Windrush Compensation Scheme was set up to right the wrongs done by the Home Office to a predominantly older generation, many of whom had suffered considerable hardship as a result, there should have been a clear focus from the start on ensuring that compensation could be paid as swiftly and smoothly as The Windrush Compensation Scheme 91 possible. It is therefore staggering that the Home Office first failed adequately to prepare for, resource and staff the Windrush Compensation Scheme before opening it for applications, and then failed again to monitor the performance of the scheme sufficiently and to identify the cause of the delays. The complex nature of the impacts suffered by those affected was evident both in the extensive media coverage of the scandal and in responses to the Home Office’s own public consultation on the design of the scheme: that the complexity of applications it received seemingly took the Department by surprise is incomprehensible. It has taken far too long for the Department to accept that greater increases to the number of caseworkers were required. We consider that the long waits faced by claimants were not inevitable and believe the Home Office must accept responsibility for its part in causing these delays.

We welcome the reviews the Department is now undertaking to get to grips with the application and casework process and the plans to increase casework capacity further. However, we believe it has taken far too long for this to happen given the concerns—such as the evidential requirements of the scheme—which have been raised repeatedly since it opened. We are concerned that the Home Office failed to meet its August milestone and consider that it will struggle to make adequate progress unless it takes significant action and takes it very quickly.

The Home Office must build on the work of the NAO and undertake a comprehensive analysis of its current workflow system to identify precisely where and why bottlenecks, backward steps, inefficient processes and slow decisions are occurring. It must interrogate these findings rigorously and be prepared to act swiftly and boldly to address causes of delay, including updates to caseworker training and guidance and, where necessary, the scheme rules.

The Department must act urgently to improve its performance management information and clarify its casework capacity and staffing needs, ensuring that casework capacity is expanded as quickly as possible. The Department should share its findings and the actions it is taking to address them with this Committee. It should provide an initial response within two months of the publication of this report and further updates after four months and six months.

The Home Office should clarify what progress it made on processing cases submitted prior to 14 December 2020 between 14 December 2020 and 31 March 2021; additionally, going forwards, the scheme data it publishes monthly should include: the number of offers made; whether offers are interim, preliminary or final, and the number of claims that have been in the scheme for a) 6–12 months, b) 12 to 18 months, c) 18 to 24 months and d) longer than 24 months.

Whilst we strongly welcome the introduction of the preliminary payment for impact on life, we are disappointed by the Home Office’s estimate that only 40–50% of claimants will benefit from it. It is right that the Home Office created a mechanism to accelerate payments in light of unacceptable delays, but these preliminary awards 92 The Windrush Compensation Scheme clearly do not go far enough. The Windrush generation are an ageing cohort and too many individuals have already died without receiving compensation for the hardship they endured. This must not happen again.

The Home Office should provide the preliminary £10,000 impact on life award to all those the Department has previously acknowledged were wrongly subjected to immigration enforcement measures or were wrongly denied proof of their lawful status as a result of the Windrush scandal. The award should be issued irrespective of whether the claimant can evidence harm or financial losses caused by the Home Office’s failure to ensure that individuals could demonstrate their lawful status; it should be made in recognition of the Department’s appalling treatment of the Windrush generation when it lost sight of this cohort and in recognition of the fact that many of those affected are part of an ageing generation that has contributed heavily to this country, but that cannot wait many years for compensation to be calculated. The £10,000 should be paid within two months and any further calculated compensation entitlement must follow.

We also strongly welcome the increased payments for impact on life. However, we are troubled that one of the reasons identified by the NAO for this change was, effectively, to supplement other categories of loss where compensation is either insufficient or inaccessible due to the evidential requirements. We are saddened to hear that some individuals have accepted an offer which does not reflect their losses because they could no longer face the process.

The changes made to the scheme in December do not go far enough to address the delays and the unreasonable demands for evidence which claimants are facing.

Given the very apparent delays in processing estate claims and the clear reason for this, it is unacceptable that the Home Office has only recently provided a solution.

The Home Office should monitor the impact of its package of support carefully to ensure that it is meeting the needs of people who are claiming on behalf of an estate.

Claimants facing long delays deserve to know where their claim is in the process and to understand what progress has been and is currently being made on their claim. Updates should be substantive and all communications must maximise opportunities to make further progress.

We welcome the improvements that have been made to the claim forms and accompanying guidance. However, we are disappointed that the Home Office did The Windrush Compensation Scheme 93 not act upon the advice of its then independent adviser and that it took more than two years to make these changes, during which time the scheme has significantly underperformed.

Reissuing the claim form guidance in plain English is a welcome first step in improving the application process, but the Department must continually be aware that the demands of this form may still represent a significant challenge to this cohort, many of whom may be vulnerable. As we were told by Garden Court Chambers, “plain language does not always equate to ease of access”. The Home Office must also address the adequacy of support available to claimants in completing their application.

We welcome the Home Office’s decision to enable individuals to contact We Are Digital directly for assistance with their application form; this recognises that some people who are eligible for compensation will not feel comfortable accessing assistance through the Department.

It is essential that claimants to the scheme have ready access to the end-to-end support they need in ways which are comfortable for them. Given the nature and the complexity of the impacts suffered, we are very concerned that support sessions are limited to three hours.

We urge the Home Office to enable We Are Digital to book as many additional support sessions for claimants as are needed and to monitor feedback from claimants carefully to ensure any gaps in support are identified. We believe that the service provided by We Are Digital should complement rather than replace specialist legal support.

There are strong arguments for facilitating access to legal advice for people who wish to seek help with their claim. Having access to funded legal representation may help more people to feel confident accessing and engaging with the scheme. It would also facilitate a greater number of comprehensive, well-ordered claims which can be processed more efficiently by caseworkers.

We do not believe that the limited service provided by We Are Digital is sufficient to obviate the need for specialist legal advice. We therefore urge the Home Office to introduce new arrangements to ensure that everyone who wishes to access legal assistance with their claim is able to do so. The Home Office should consider the following options as part of its review: • Extending the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 to include work done under the Windrush Compensation Scheme and waiving means testing for this work; • Establishing an approved panel of legal firms and professionals, with a funding scheme to provide payment for their services to claimants; 94 The Windrush Compensation Scheme • Agreeing a tariff payment for legal costs to be reimbursed to claimants. The payment should reflect the level of support the claimant required, for example whether they requested a review; • Establishing and maintaining a dedicated fund for organisations to provide free legal assistance to claimants.

We agree with Mr Forde that the higher standard of proof had no place in this scheme: its inclusion has damaged trust significantly and demonstrates a serious lack of understanding by the Home Office as to what caused the Windrush scandal in the first place. We are deeply concerned that, despite warnings from Wendy Williams and its then independent adviser, the Home Office has persisted in placing an undue burden on claimants to provide documentary evidence of the losses they suffered. This indicates a continued failure by the Department to learn the lessons from the Windrush scandal. It also reinforces our recommendation that the Windrush Compensation Scheme should be considered as part of Wendy Williams’ review of the Home Office’s progress on her recommendations (see paragraph 23).

We strongly welcome the removal of the higher standard of proof from the scheme and the revised guidance for caseworkers issued in July 2021. However, we are extremely disappointed that it has taken the Home Office so long to respond to longstanding concerns about how the standard of proof should be applied and how requests for further information from claimants are to be handled.

We are not yet convinced that the Home Office has done enough to embed a light touch approach to evidence: for example, we note that the revised caseworker guidance provides no detail as to what the changes made to the standard of proof in October 2020 mean in practice. We urge Ministers and senior officials to examine a sample of individual cases to understand how the ‘on the balance of probabilities’ standard of proof is being applied and to establish what further training and guidance is needed to ensure a fair and empathetic approach to the use of evidence. While it is encouraging that the Home Office has launched the new Ethical Decision-making Model, in its response to this report the Department must clarify how it intends to embed and monitor the performance of the new model within the compensation team. The Department should provide regular updates to this Committee on issues raised by decision-makers and how these are being resolved.

Given the concerns about the Department’s understanding of the eligible cohort and the difficulties with obtaining documentary evidence, in the interest of transparency we further recommend that the Home Office urgently publishes its equalities impact assessment for the Windrush Compensation Scheme.

We welcome the increase in compensation that is available for impact on life; however, we have not yet seen evidence that the new tariff has addressed the underlying concerns about how this category of claim operates. There is a lack of clarity as The Windrush Compensation Scheme 95 to how the level of compensation for impact on life is decided and how impacts are considered at each tariff level. We are also concerned that the determination of these awards is heavily dependent upon evidence which is difficult for claimants to obtain, such as the use of medical evidence to determine the severity of impacts suffered.

The Home Office must provide greater clarity about how impact on life awards are determined and should issue clear guidance on how different types of impact and levels of harm correspond to each tariff level.

Given that the Home Office has yet to use its capacity to seek expert medical advice to support determinations on these complex awards, it should be open to claimants to be able to request expert medical advice if they are seeking a higher level award and in particular as part of the review process if they dispute their level of award.

As the Home Secretary has acknowledged, it is not possible for some claimants to document what their earnings were or would have been when they lost access to employment because this information is not always accessible or may never have been recorded. We are concerned that too many people in these circumstances are receiving a general award which is limited to the minimum level of earnings as measured by the 2019 National Living Wage. Furthermore, we consider that the limitations on compensation for loss of future earnings and loss of pension are very problematic given that many claimants are approaching pensionable age.

We recognise that it might be possible to reflect better the losses incurred by some individuals by looking at pay levels in the sector they worked in, regardless of the direct evidence of the wages they can provide. The Government should consider this as an option in individual cases. However, given that this will not apply for many individuals, and given the risk of further delays, we recommend increasing the general award to at least next year’s National Living Wage of £9.50 per hour given that most people have still not yet received their payments and the 2019 minimum wage is an arbitrary figure to choose. Based on an average full-time working week of 37 hours, this would raise the general award to £18,278 per year, or £1,523.16 per month. Going forwards, the tariff used should be based on at least the National Living Wage being used when the payment is made. Loss of pension and loss of future earnings should be brought within scope of the scheme: a set award or general tariff would ensure all eligible individuals are compensated regardless of available evidence. The complexity of this issue should not preclude the Home Office from implementing a solution: at the very least, the Department should consider the legal minimum employer pension contribution, which is currently three per cent.

Across all categories of claim, caseworkers must consider holistically the situation the claimant was in: where an eligible claimant was unable to demonstrate their right to live, work and access services in the UK, compensation should not be declined solely on the basis that they are unable to document a causal link between their inability to evidence their lawful status and the loss they have suffered.

The Windrush Lessons Learned Review demonstrates the difficulties the Windrush generation faced when trying to navigate the immigration system. The exclusion of some immigration applications from the Windrush Compensation Scheme unfairly penalises individuals who have incurred considerable losses through making immigration applications in good faith to try and resolve the difficulty they faced with demonstrating their lawful status.

Claimants should be entitled to receive compensation for any immigration application they made whilst seeking documentation to prove their lawful status.

The Home Office should review its decision not to refund any claimants for past fees paid for successful citizenship and Indefinite Leave to Remain.

It is unfair that those who accessed legal advice should find themselves unable to receive compensation for their actual costs. The justification for limiting awards fails to recognise the particular difficulties the Windrush generation faced upon trying to confirm their lawful status with the Home Office. The reason people had to resort to legal advice was because the Home Office was not treating them fairly or according to their rights and because the Home Office was imposing a huge injustice upon them. It is a double injustice for them then to be told there is no compensation for the attempts they were forced to make to defend their rights.

The scheme rules should be amended so as to remove the £500 per application limit on compensation for past legal fees that were needed and paid because of the Windrush scandal.

The Home Office appears to be applying an unduly narrow definition of homelessness which fails to consider the circumstances in which some members of the Windrush generation found themselves.

The Home Office should clarify that awards under the category of claim for homelessness are available to individuals who lived with family and friends whilst they were unable to access housing or because their financial situation meant they lost their home.

We are concerned that the number of claims submitted under the discretionary category may indicate a disparity between the Home Office’s intention for this provision and claimants’ understanding of the purpose of this aspect of the Scheme.

The Home Office should clarify the basis upon which it drafted the rules and guidance on the discretionary award.

We are further concerned by the lack of clarity for claimants as to the circumstances in which they can apply for a discretionary award. It is also not clear why claimants appear to have been required in practice to meet different evidential requirements for this category of claim.

The Home Office should be more transparent about the types of loss it is prepared to compensate through a discretionary award and should set out what types of claim under this category have previously been accepted. The Home Office should also provide assurances as to how consistency in decision-making is maintained both within this category and across the compensation scheme.

The high number of claims made for a discretionary award suggests that there are types of loss not yet accounted for within the scheme. It may also indicate a continuing lack of clarity about the headings under which certain types of claim should be made. It is important therefore that the Home Office closely monitors this category of claim.

We call on the Home Office to conduct an analysis of all discretionary claims received to date to establish the types of loss people are claiming for. The Department must provide its findings to this Committee within two months of publication of this report and explain how it will address them.

We call on the Home Office to explain how awards across all categories of claim are determined for individuals who were unable to return to the UK, including those unable to return for multiple decades, and to introduce a tariff payment specifically to compensate individuals who were unable to return to the UK.

Whilst we welcome the changes that have been made to the mitigation policy over time, we have been unable to get clarity about how this policy is working in practice now. We agree with Mr Forde that it was not appropriate to include rules on mitigation of loss in this compensation scheme and we are disappointed that the Government chose to reject his advice. The more rigid requirements placed on individuals by the initial mitigation policy have damaged trust and confidence in the Home Office’s willingness to understand the impact of its policies on the members of the Windrush generation.

While the Home Office has said that awards for loss of access to employment are no longer capped because of a lack of mitigation action, we have been unable to clarify how the mitigation requirements are being applied to other claim categories, as appears to be allowed within the scheme rules. For each claim category, the Home Office should provide us with data for the number of times a decision to reduce or decline an award has been referred for approval because of the mitigation requirements and the number of times an award has been reduced or declined on this basis subsequently.

We believe that rules on mitigation of loss are not appropriate for a compensation scheme of this nature: the Home Office should lift any remaining mitigation requirements.

Given the concerns raised by the independent adviser on the design of the Windrush Compensation Scheme, as well as the risks of costly legal challenges, we recommend that future decisions on whether to reduce or decline an award because of previous criminality should be independently reviewed. This should be done by referring the decision to the independent review panel we recommend should be established in paragraph 273 of this Report.

The Home Office must ensure that apologies to those affected by the Windrush scandal are issued at the earliest opportunity and that the Department’s role in causing any impacts or losses suffered is fully acknowledged.

The commitment to holding reconciliation events is a particularly important one and must not get lost. In its response to this Report, the Home Office should clarify what progress it has made on implementing a programme of reconciliation events with members of the Windrush generation, including what work has taken place to identify follow-up support in addition to financial compensation.

The Urgent and Exceptional Payment Scheme was rightly, albeit belatedly, set up to help those who needed immediate financial assistance, including those facing real hardship. However, in too many cases it has failed to do so and it appears to have operated with the same bureaucratic insensitivities as those which led to the Windrush scandal in the first place. It is completely unacceptable that individuals facing hardship due to Home Office failures should continue to be let down and left destitute by the Department while they wait for compensation payments.

The Home Office and consecutive Home Secretaries have acknowledged and apologised for the losses faced by the Windrush generation as a result of failings within the Department, yet that acceptance has not translated into quick and adequate compensation, even where individuals are facing urgent or exceptional hardship. In order to rectify this, the Home Office should reduce the bureaucratic burden placed on applicants for urgent and exceptional support, in recognition of the fact that a prohibitively high standard of proof and limited interpretation of ‘urgent’ and ‘exceptional’ hardship will result in delays and rejections for those in desperate situations through no fault of their own. Caseworkers should be directed to take a broader, more sympathetic approach when interpreting whether circumstances are urgent or exceptional, with particular attention paid to those struggling with debts and arrears they have accrued because of their inability to demonstrate their lawful status.

The Department should also raise the standard payment cap of £5,000 to ensure that those who are in urgent need of greater financial support, or those who face multiple simultaneous financial challenges, are provided with adequate emergency funds to alleviate their hardship. It should ensure applicants receive a decision within ten days.

In light of the evidence we have received, we reject the Home Secretary’s assertion that it is sufficiently clear to individuals that, in most circumstances, any payment they receive under the urgent and exceptional support policy will be treated as an advance on a future compensation award.

The ‘Windrush scheme: support in urgent and exceptional circumstances’ guidance should be amended immediately to make clear that urgent and exceptional payments can be recovered in full from a subsequent offer of compensation; caseworkers should receive training to ensure that this is also made sufficiently clear in any direct communications with individuals.

We welcome the creation of a Vulnerable Persons Team to help claimants navigate difficult conversations with government departments and solve their cases. However, we are deeply concerned by reports that the team is failing to treat vulnerable applicants sensitively and, in some cases, further distressing vulnerable individuals through poor customer service and a lack of clarity about what it can achieve.

We are disappointed that the Home Office has yet to resume routine publication of data relating to the support in urgent and exceptional circumstances policy and the work of the Vulnerable Persons Team. This information must be published regularly. We also recommend that adequate feedback processes are put in place to ensure a good quality of service is provided by the Vulnerable Persons Team. We call on the Home Secretary and the Permanent Secretary to review the operation of the Vulnerable Persons Team, including the guidance they follow and the sensitivity of the support offered. We also call on Wendy Williams to look at the team as part of her review.

Given the significance of the Windrush Compensation Scheme in righting the wrongs done by the Home Office, and the importance of getting the scheme right, we cannot understand why the Home Office has designed a system which does not allow senior civil servants, Ministers or this Committee to monitor the outcome of reviews of compensation offers. This should be an important management tool as well as being important for accountability. We welcome the provision of this information to us on our second request; it should however be published regularly as part of the wider Windrush Compensation Scheme transparency data. In its response to this Report, the Home Office should clarify how it is monitoring the outcome of reviews and sharing any lessons learned.

Given the Home Office’s role in causing the initial harm it is extremely problematic that the Department is not only responsible for the design and administration 100 The Windrush Compensation Scheme of the Windrush Compensation Scheme, but that it also retains full control over interpretation of the scheme rules. We consider the establishment of a more robust and efficient review process to be an important step in improving confidence in the scheme.

We call on the Home Office to establish a demonstrably independent single-stage review process in which claimants have greater confidence, such as a judge-led panel. The Home Office should accept and implement decisions of the independent review. Where an initial decision is amended, the Home Office should gather feedback on the initial decision-making process to share with caseworkers and, where appropriate, use this feedback to inform and update caseworker training and guidance to improve the quality of initial decision-making. All claimants should have the right to access the new review process irrespective of whether their claim has concluded or is ongoing. This approach would be consistent with the retrospective application of changes which have been made to the scheme previously.

We are concerned to hear that some claimants may be reluctant to access the review process due to concerns about the impact of further delay on their financial situation.

The Home Office should work to establish an estimated timescale for reviews which can be shared with claimants. Wherever possible, claimants should receive preliminary or interim payments; such payments should not affect a claimant’s right to seek a review of their full and final offer. (Paragraph 274)

The treatment of the Windrush generation by successive governments and the Home Office was truly shameful. No amount of compensation could ever repay the fear, the humiliation and the hurt that was caused both to individuals and to communities affected. This was a grave betrayal; lessons must be learnt by all.

The purpose of the Windrush Compensation Scheme is to ensure that those who have suffered loss due to their inability to demonstrate their lawful status can receive the maximum amount of compensation to which they are entitled and to right some of the wrongs done by the Home Office. That is what makes it so deeply troubling that the Home Office’s handling of claims has repeated the same mistakes which lead to the Windrush scandal in the first place. Those who apply face a daunting application process without adequate support; they face unreasonable requests for evidence; they are left in limbo in the midst of inordinate delays. Too often, injustice has been compounded rather than compensated. This is unacceptable and must not continue.

We welcome the personal commitment expressed by the Home Secretary to the operation of the scheme and the improvements that have been made to the scheme over time; however, these changes have taken far too long and have not gone far enough. Our report shows that there are still fundamental problems that have yet to be addressed. The problems with the Windrush Compensation Scheme are not insurmountable. We have been humbled by the dignity and the determination of those with direct experience of the issues who have contributed to our inquiry and by The Windrush Compensation Scheme 101 their willingness to assist with the identification of areas which can be improved, for the benefit of others. To demonstrate its commitment both to helping the Windrush generation and to transforming its culture, the Home Office must act urgently to address issues with the Windrush Compensation Scheme.