No change in Home Office culture can lead to Windrush-like events: report

A report has warned that no change in Home Office culture may lead to more Windrush-like incidents, a media report said. 

The report by Wendy Williams published on Thursday (31), who was appointed to advise the Home Office on how to make changes, has said that there was a lack of tangible progress in implementing cultural changes, reported The Guardian.

Under the Windrush scandal, the UK government erroneously classified thousands of legal residents, many of whom arrived from Caribbean countries as children in the 1950s and 60s, as immigrants living in the UK illegally.

An independent expert Williams was appointed in 2018 to investigate the causes of the scandal.

In 2020, she made 30 recommendations for Home Office improvements. Home secretary Priti Patel committed to implement them all.

According to the report, only eight of the 30 recommendations had been fully acted. She also criticised officials for exaggerating the progress made.

“Much more progress is required in policymaking and casework, which will be seen as the major indicators of improvement. I have seen limited evidence that a compassionate approach is being embedded consistently across the department," Williams was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

She was also critical of the department’s failure to review the effectiveness of the hostile environment policies, which caused many of the Windrush problems. The department has failed to appoint a migrants’ commissioner. 

Williams had found that an insufficiently diverse Home Office leadership team had “contributed to some of the errors in thinking which gave rise to the Windrush scandal itself”.

The report also pointed out the slow pace of the Windrush compensation programme.

A small poll of applicants conducted by Williams found 76 per cent said they had not been treated respectfully by Home Office staff, and 97 per cent did not trust the Home Office to deliver on its commitments.

About 386 claimants have waited more than a year for their claims to be resolved, including 179 waiting more than 18 months.

The report further said that only 163 people out of a total headcount of about 38,000 in the Home Office had visited the Windrush learning hub on its internal intranet system.

Responding to the report, Patel said: “I have laid the foundations for radical change in the department and a total transformation of culture. We have already made significant progress."

“Having said that, there is more to do and I will not falter in my commitment to everyone who was affected by the Windrush scandal. Many people suffered terrible injustices at the hands of successive governments and I will continue working hard to deliver a Home Office worthy of every community we serve," she told the newspaper.

“Their offer doesn’t reflect what I went through – it felt like an insult. I don’t think the Home Office has changed; when the spotlight is on them they make promises, but once the public attention moves away nothing happens,” Windrush victim Anthony Bryan, told The Guardian.

He was wrongly held for five weeks in immigration removal centres and was booked in 2017 on a flight back to Jamaica, the country he left when he was eight in 1965 and had not visited since. Later, officials acknowledged he was in the UK legally.

He has still not resolved his claim for compensation and is appealing against the sum offered by the Home Office.