Recommendation 8

HM Government · verbatim extract Deferred

Transferring the Compensation Scheme to another organisation would not benefit applicants. Instead, this would result in more delays in issuing payments to people and would leave individuals worse off and facing greater hardship. Additional handoffs to other Government departments would be created adding further delay to decision making due to the time taken to identify a suitable organisation to deliver the Scheme, alongside the recruitment of decision makers and necessary training required. As part of the consideration process input is required from the Home Office in establishing not only immigration status/eligibility, but also in gathering an individual’s immigration history, previous interactions with the department and any applications made within other immigration routes. This information can only be provided by the Home Office and would delay consideration and decision making further and have data protection and security implications if that data had to be shared with an external organisation. The Compensation Scheme continues to be subject to robust internal scrutiny and regular scrutiny from external stakeholders. To ensure the Scheme has an appropriate level of external scrutiny, we have an independent review process with the Adjudicator’s Office and on 21 April 2021 the Home Office announced Professor Martin Levermore MBE DL as the new Independent Person to advise on the Windrush Compensation Scheme.