Windrush compensation scheme process 'is too complex' for victims, report says

A NEW report has alleged that the Windrush generation is being failed by the UK home office as the process in the compensation scheme 'is too complex' for victims, with inadequate capacity, the Guardian reported.

The report by the parliament’s public accounts committee published on Tuesday (27) found that some people had died before their claims were dealt with.

Two years after its launch, only 412 of the 2,367 claims submitted had received their final payment, MPs said.

According to the newspaper report, the findings will intensify calls for the home office to be stripped of running the compensation scheme, which is supposed to have the capacity to handle claims from as many as 15,000 people.

The scheme was launched in April 2019 to compensate members of the Windrush generation and their families for the losses and impacts they have suffered as a result of not being able to demonstrate their lawful immigration status.

But the home office has frustrated victims waiting for compensation by refusing to set deadlines, MPs said.

Dame Meg Hillier, the cross-party committee’s chair, told the Guardian: “Let’s not lose sight of the scale of wrongs that the home office has promised to right here. Lifetimes in this country were discounted, people’s homes, families and livelihoods were interrupted and uprooted, some were forced from the country. Some were approaching the end of those lifetimes as this tragedy befell them. Some have died without ever seeing justice or receiving the compensation they deserve.

“Far from learning and applying lessons as promised, the Windrush compensation scheme is beset with the very same issues that led to the initial terrible mistakes.”

The report said that the department has set itself an internal target to conclude 90 per cent of claims submitted before the end of 2020 by the end of August 2021, and claims to be confident it will hit it. 

“It [the home office] thought that around 15,000 people might be eligible, an estimate it revised down to 11,500 in October 2019. In fact, it has only received about a fifth of even the revised estimate and is now looking to revise it again. It also thought that each case would take its caseworkers, on average, about 30 hours to process; whereas in practice it has taken them five times as long,” the MPs concluded.

Civil servants needed 125 caseworkers to implement the scheme, but only had six when it was launched, MPs said.

The report also alleged that casework had been riddled with errors and inconsistencies, with quality assurance checks often finding that cases needed revisiting and work repeated.

“The home secretary has been resolute in her determination to put right the wrongs suffered by all those affected by the Windrush scandal. Many of the issues raised in this report are already being addressed. Last week, we announced further improvements to simplify the application process, new support measures for those claiming on behalf of relatives who have passed away, and the removal of the scheme’s end date," a home office spokesperson told the Guardian.

“Since December, when the home secretary overhauled the scheme, the amount of compensation paid has risen from less than £3m to almost £27m, whilst a further £7.1m has been offered.”