Windrush Compensation Scheme

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Angela. I thank all those who have contributed to the debate. I pay particular tribute the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), who is doing such important work on this matter, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who spoke with such passion about these issues, which are personal for her. I also pay tribute to the other hon. Members who have spoken.

Let us be clear: the Windrush generation have been failed twice—first by the Conservative Government’s hostile environment programme, which harassed and discriminated against innocent victims, and secondly by the delays and blockages in delivering compensation to the victims of this terrible scandal.

The National Audit Office has been critical of the Windrush compensation scheme, and the report by the Home Affairs Committee has now revealed the magnitude of its failings, making it clear that the culture in the Home Office has failed miserably to change when it needed to. The report states:

“Many people who have applied for compensation have yet to receive a penny and we have heard too many stories of people struggling with impossible demands for evidence”

and

“poor communication from the Home Office…the experience of applying for compensation from the Home Office has become a source of further trauma rather than redress. Many of the concerns raised with us about the Windrush Compensation Scheme as part of this inquiry have echoes of the same criticisms made of the Home Office by Wendy Williams in her report into how the Windrush scandal occurred. It is a damning indictment of the Home Office that the design and operation of this scheme contained the same bureaucratic insensitivities that led to the Windrush scandal in the first place”.

That is a damning assessment and it further confirms the fears that the Home Office, in its current guise, is not fit for purpose and that the Home Secretary’s leadership can be characterised as a mixture of incompetence and indifference.

The failure proactively to seek out those victims to whom the Home Office had caused so much suffering has only added to the delays. Between 4,000 and 6,000 people are thought to be eligible, but at the end of January only 960 people—about 20% of those eligible for compensation —had applied, and fewer than 10% have received any compensation at all. It is no wonder that the victims of Windrush have lost faith in the Home Office to deliver this scheme. The treatment of the Windrush generation simply has not improved.

Some of the most damning criticism, from the Wendy Williams review through to this Home Affairs Committee report, has been about the culture in the Home Office. Wendy Williams found that the Home Office was characterised by

“a culture of disbelief and carelessness…a lack of empathy for individuals”

and, perhaps most tellingly, by

“institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race”.

That is why the Labour party, along with voices from across society, including of course members of the Windrush generation, is calling for the compensation scheme to be completely overhauled by placing it in the hands of an independent body, away from the Home Office. Recommendation 3 of the Home Affairs Committee report explicitly echoes Labour’s call, but the Government, shamefully and predictably, have rejected that suggestion. The Labour party believes that the body leading the compensation scheme must have the confidence of victims so as to restore faith in the process and get compensation quickly to people who have been so appallingly treated.

Adding to the lack of trust is the fact that the Home Secretary still has not implemented all the findings of the Williams independent review, despite committing in June 2020 to doing so. Where is, for instance, the migrants’ commissioner? The Opposition are also calling on Ministers to come forward with cast-iron guarantees on when each and every one of the 30 recommendations will be implemented—not just a promise that they will be, but guarantees on when.

There has been a complete failure by the Home Office to put right the damage done to the Windrush generation and to give them the compensation they deserve. In fact, the process of applying for compensation through the scheme replicates many of the issues experienced by victims initially, including long delays and excessive burdens on individuals to provide documentation that it is unrealistic to expect them to provide. It is worth noting that, tragically, 23 people who applied to the scheme have died before receiving their compensation. The Government must act, and must act at speed.

Against that backdrop, I have some questions for the Minister. In January, the Home Office was forced to apologise to hundreds of charities and community groups that were still waiting for decisions on applications for funding needed to support Windrush victims to apply to the scheme. We have seen delays with the scheme itself and now delays with that vital funding. Can the Minister set out today what he is doing to put that right? At the end of January, more than 90% of Windrush victims had yet to receive a penny, and 80% had not even applied. Can the Minister give us the updated figures and explain what the Government are doing to encourage more victims to come forward?

On that note, does the Minister agree that trust between this Home Office and the Windrush generation is irreparably damaged and that this vital compensation scheme must be handed to an independent organisation to ensure that victims come forward and get the redress they deserve? That will surely help to restore faith in the process and get compensation quickly to people who have been so appallingly treated.

As I said, 23 members of the Windrush generation have, tragically, died while waiting for the compensation they deserved from the scheme. This is an ageing group of claimants. What is the Minister doing specifically to speed up the process to ensure that the Windrush generation get the compensation they deserve?

The lack of progress on the Windrush compensation scheme is allowing the shameful failings exposed by the Wendy Williams review to continue. The reality is that the time for warm words is over. There has to be a fundamental change in the Home Office and in the compensation scheme. The Government must get on and deliver the compensation that the Windrush victims are entitled to following the dreadful miscarriages of justice brought about by the Government’s immoral and unlawful hostile environment policy. The former Home Secretary said that the Government,

“will do right by the Windrush generation.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2018; Vol. 640, c. 35.]

We are yet to see the current Home Secretary coming close to that aspiration. The time for platitudes is over. The time for action is now.