Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 7
7
Deferred
Paragraph: 38
Home Office administration of Windrush compensation undermines public confidence and trust
Conclusion
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.
Government Response Summary
The government explains that the Historical Cases Review was not intended to identify all affected individuals and argues against extending it further due to cost and inefficiency, stating efforts are instead focused on outreach and engagement.
Paragraph Reference:
38
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
The Historical Cases Review was established to answer questions from Parliament as to the number of Windrush Generation individuals who had been removed or detained, or subject to compliant environment sanctions. It was never intended to identify all people affected in all ways by Windrush issues. Indeed, there is no way to use Home Office data to do this. The department published the results of the review in two letters to the Home Affairs Select Committee, the first in August 2018, and the second in June 2019. In line with the then Home Secretary’s commitment to have the work of the review externally assured, PWC were brought in to do this and they concluded that the review was constructed correctly and that its operation was effective. Extending the review to all nationalities would bring what is currently an unknown but large number of cases into scope, as such it is extremely difficult to give any reasonable estimate for the cost of such an exercise, as a very rough figure we would suggest in the tens of millions. Such an exercise would still not identify all people potentially eligible for the Compensation Scheme and as such is not an effective way to proceed. The Historical Case Review saw staff undertake a manual check of cases, out of which only 221 were found to be potentially impacted. Of the 221, 55 were found to be potentially unfairly subject to compliant environment sanctions. This approach is costly, inefficient and ultimately unlikely to guarantee that we will be able to locate and reach those people. We have instead focussed efforts and resource into outreach and engagement. To date we have spent approximately £1,192,979.00 on media campaigns, communication materials and outreach events. As a result of this we have had 18,516 applications to the Windrush Taskforce as of end Q2 2021, and 3,139 applications to the Windrush Compensation Scheme as of 31 October 2021. To raise awareness of both the department has conducted extensive outreach to reach the full spectrum of affected individuals and give them the help they need.