Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Conclusion 75
Fifth Report - The Windrush Compensation Scheme
Published 24 Nov 2021
Paragraph 249
Addressed to Home Office
Home Affairs Committee The Windrush Compensation Scheme All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
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.
From: Home Affairs Committee, Fifth Report - The Windrush Compensation Scheme (HC 204), paragraph 249, 24 November 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 7 February 2022 (deadline 24 January 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government's response to the Committee's Windrush Compensation Scheme report sets out mixed positions, declining a transfer to an independent body while describing changes already made to the scheme and some further work it is taking forward.
- On moving the scheme to an independent organisation, it says this would bring "more delays in issuing payments", and points instead to the Adjudicator's Office review process and an Independent Person advising on the scheme.
- It does not widen the historical cases review, calling that approach "costly, inefficient" and unlikely to locate affected people, and says it has focused on outreach and engagement instead.
- On the £10,000 preliminary award, it says it will process and offer it where "it is clear that the Home Office has wrongly enacted an immigration enforcement action", and that it cannot identify those who have not made contact with it.
- On caseworker capacity, it says the team has 80 caseworkers, with 24 more due to join over January and external recruitment under way to reach 120.