The Windrush scandal was ‘foreseeable and avoidable’ according to a damning and long-awaited independent report into the Home Office’s handling of the crisis.
The official Windrush Lessons Learned Review concluded that victims had been badly let down because of ‘systemic operational failings’ at the government department.
It emerged in 2018 that the Home Office had branded thousands of legal UK citizens as illegal immigrants – at least 83 of whom were deported.
The review was formally submitted to the government yesterday and the Home Office published it this morning.
Wendy Williams, Independent Adviser for the Windrush Lessons Learned Review, said: ‘The Windrush Generation has been poorly served by this country, a country to which they contributed so much and in which they had every right to make their lives.
‘The many stories of injustice and hardship are heartbreaking, with jobs lost, lives uprooted and untold damage done to so many individuals and families.
‘My report sets out how and why this happened and makes recommendations for change to ensure that the injustices this group of people suffered can never happen again. I urge Ministers and officials to implement my recommendations in full.’
The report has made 30 recommendations to ‘change and improve’ the Home Office.
The recommendations include that the Home Office must ‘acknowledge its failings’ and ‘open itself up to greater external scrutiny’.
It must also ‘change its culture’ to put people at the heart of migration policy decisions.
The Empire Windrush was most famous for trips from the West Indies which brought people to work in the UK in the middle of the 20th Century
The Windrush Lessons Learned Review was submitted to Home Secretary Priti Patel yesterday
Ms Patel set out the review’s findings to MPs during a statement in the House of Commons as she said people from the Windrush generation had been subjected to ‘insensitive treatment by the very country they called home’.
‘As this review makes clear, some members of this generation suffered terrible injustices spurred by institutional failings spanning successive governments over several decades – including ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the race and history of the Windrush generation,’ she said.
The Home Secretary said the Home Office is on an ‘ongoing mission’ to put things right.
She said: ‘Lives were ruined and families were torn apart, and now an independent review has suggested that the Home Office’s institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness to the issue of race and the history of the Windrush generation contributed to this. This is simply unacceptable.’
Ms Patel added: ‘There are lessons to learn for the Home Office but also society as a whole.’
Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, said the review showed there needed to be a ‘root and branch overhaul’ of the way the Home Office operates.
‘The review into the lessons of Windrush and some genuine contrition from the government are long overdue,’ she said.
‘The verdict that there are elements of institutional racism at the Home Office is damning, and means there must be a root and branch overhaul and change of culture.
‘But there must also be an end to the government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy, or there will never be an end to new cases in this scandal.’
The publication of the report comes after it was claimed in February that the final draft had been altered to remove some of the worst criticism of the Home Office.
The review had reportedly concluded the department was ‘institutionally racist’ over its ‘hostile environment’ policy.
The review was commissioned in 2018 after Caribbean migrants were detained or deported despite having the right to remain in Britain.
The report was expected to be published at the end of March last year but has been repeatedly delayed.
Sources told The Times last month that the phrase ‘institutionally racist’ was included in an early draft of the report but no longer appeared in more recent versions.
The fallout from the Windrush scandal led to the resignation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd in April 2018.
Amber Rudd, pictured in Downing Street in February 2019, resigned as Home Secretary in April 2018 in the wake of the Windrush scandal
The government faced intense criticism over the ‘hostile environment’ policy championed by then Prime Minister Theresa May.
The term ‘institutional racism’ was famously used in February 1999 to describe Scotland Yard and its response to the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
The official review, by Sir William Macpherson, defined the term as ‘discriminating through unwitting prejudice, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping’.