Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 16
16
Deferred
Explain risk mitigation for historical cases review and share widening costs.
Conclusion
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. (Paragraph 51) The impact of covid-19 on engagement events
Government Response Summary
The government states the Windrush Compensation Scheme is open for applications and that it is unable to directly identify individuals who have not made contact, thereby sidestepping the request to explain risk mitigation for not broadening the historical cases review and declining to provide cost estimates for such a review.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
The Windrush Compensation Scheme is open for applications to anyone who feels they have been wrongly treated and suffered losses due to an inability to prove status, where it is clear that the Home Office has wrongly enacted an immigration enforcement action we will process and offer preliminary payments of £10,000. We are unable to directly identify or make any assessment on eligibility of those individuals who have not made contact with us via the Windrush Help Team, or through network events or outreach activity.