Windrush Compensation Scheme

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

This has been a heartfelt debate, and I am only sorry that the system has not shown every speaker on the screen, although we have heard from them all other than my noble friend Lord Dholakia. As I have been able to see what my noble friend was going to say before the debate started, I hope he will have another opportunity to make what I know would have been a very clear and tough speech.

Let us contrast the photographs of the bright, eager faces of people arriving here in the 1940s and 1950s, looking forward to a new life and contributing to the UK, with those who later found out that not only were they not wanted, they were not recognised. The terms for what many of them did are topical: key workers, essential workers. Wendy Williams as well as parliamentary committees have used case studies that include current photographs. The experiences of individuals illuminate the whole. The media have used case studies too, and I pay tribute, as others have done, to the investigative journalists who have shone a light on the scandal. Amelia Gentleman’s book is analytical, distressing and shaming. The compensation scheme, in the words of the recent Bill, applies to

“certain categories of persons in recognition of difficulties arising out of an inability to demonstrate lawful immigration status.”

Those are weasel words. The recognition is that the Home Office was unable to recognise the law or rights. They are rights, not something that some people deserve, which is the language used too often by some Ministers, although not, I think, by the noble Baroness. It is as if they have to be earned and can be forfeited.

Victim blaming is never attractive. We are told that people should have contacted the Home Office, but it is a bit rich to have expected the Windrush generation to understand what the Home Office did not. Could any of us list all the provisions of our complex immigration legislation, any more than we could provide evidence for every year of our residence? I threw away my school reports when I cleared my mother’s house. The Home Office threw away records when it cleared an office, despite junior officials protesting about how often they referred to them.

I want to ask just a few questions beyond those asked by other noble Lords about the scheme and about the people who have been affected by what happened. What have the Government learned about outsourcing public sector work to the private sector? Have they logged the losses of jobs, of homes, of medical treatment and benefits denied? How many people were detained? I cannot let this moment go by without mentioning the detention, neither necessary nor proportionate when there is no risk of absconding, of people who were not criminals. In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, we are putting at risk, by continuing their detention, people who are not criminals or who have served their sentence.

Why do some components of the claim to the scheme have to meet the criminal standard of proof, or its equivalent? This reflects the original problem that the Home Office required standards of proof that were difficult if not impossible to meet; to quote the review,

“an environment for staff to reject rather than be proportionate or objective in each case.”

Why is there not a longer cut-off date for claims? After all, the Government, in the shape of HMRC questioning taxpayers, can go back six years. How many people are now thought to have a claim and how many died before they even received an apology?

The Minister will resist any suggestion of a read-across to the EU settled status scheme, although I will make one, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. I accept that some experience has been applied, but although the Windrush scandal may have been unforeseen, it was both foreseeable and avoidable. I would like to think that, in applying the settled status scheme, the culture of disbelief and of carelessness and ignorance has been ditched in favour of the recognition of a duty of care to applicants. The NAO referred to this too. The large proportion of grants of pre-settled, not settled, status that have been made surely raises a warning flag of problems down the line when applicants discover that what they have been granted is not what they had understood it to be.

It is right that the department should reflect on the review, but not all the recommendations require a pause. The hostile environment was designed to be read as hostile and intolerable to immigrants, and it was racist. Merely rebranding it takes political loyalties too far. Wendy Williams is measured but clear, recommending

“a full review and evaluation of the … policy and measures—individually and cumulatively … whether they are effective and proportionate in meeting their stated aim, given the risks inherent in the policy … and its impact on British citizens and migrants with status, with reference to equality law and particularly the public sector equality duty.”

Legislatively that environment can be dismantled now.

When the previous Home Secretary responded to a report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I was a member, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, on the detention of members of the Windrush generation, he referred to establishing a casework profession with a culture that puts the customer—perhaps not the term I would have chosen—at the heart of decision-making, and ensuring better use of face-to-face engagement. I think the Minister will acknowledge that there was scarcely any such engagement.

I do not know whether the Minister has up-to-date news on work on cultural change. She has referred to some of the processes now being undertaken. These may have been the subject of her letter of 30 April, which I do not seem to have received, so I apologise if I have raised points which are covered in that letter. Ms Williams’ review was of course not of the whole of the Home Office; nevertheless, it is surely widely applicable. She is clear about the importance of diversity in the Home Office, not just at junior levels, and about engagement with citizens, applicants and staff.

Ms Williams is clear too that some of her recommendations, if implemented, will have tangible outcomes: the level of successful appeals, the quality of casework, and better informed and better evaluated policy. Other outcomes are intangible but essential: the look and feel of the department, with a values-led culture and a mission bought into by all levels of staff.

The Government as a whole should reflect on the review, because there are lessons for the whole of government. I look forward to hearing in a few months’ time what lessons have been learned, and how they are being applied, so that all that is done is, to use Ms Williams’ phrase, “rooted in humanity.”