Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Conclusion 26
Fifth Report - The Windrush Compensation Scheme
Published 24 Nov 2021
Paragraph 90
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)
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.
From: Home Affairs Committee, Fifth Report - The Windrush Compensation Scheme (HC 204), paragraph 90, 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.