We urgently need you to:

1. push for the Windrush Compensation Scheme to be taken out of the hands of the Home Office and transferred to an independent organisation; and

2. call for a statutory inquiry into the Windrush Scandal, including the creation and administration of the Windrush Compensation Scheme and ongoing efforts to narrow its scope.

The Windrush Compensation Scheme was opened in April 2019 after promises made by successive Home Secretaries to “right the wrongs” done to the Windrush generation. Those promises continue to ring hollow. As of December 2021, only 940 claims have received any payment (including part payments). The lowest estimate puts the number of victims at around 15,000. Where claims have been settled in full, claimants have been gaslighted repeatedly and pushed into accepting paltry pay-outs by their circumstances – circumstances which the Home Office created.

The Scheme has been repeatedly criticised for compounding the wrongs of the Windrush scandal. The National Audit Office reported in May 2021 that the Home Office had failed to compensate victims quickly enough, and independent reports by JUSTICE and the Home Affairs Select Committee in November 2021 recommended that the scheme be transferred to an independent body.

The Select Committee’s recommendation was based on an investigation that spanned over a year and included extensive interviews with victims, their families, and specialist organisations that support them, questioning of the Home Secretary and Scheme officials at the Home Office, and review of data. On 7 February, the Home Office brushed aside that recommendation. Its justification for doing so amounted to three short paragraphs repeating the same excuses it has used since the Scheme opened.

The Home Office did not take the recommendation seriously, because it does not take Windrush victims seriously. It does not fear any consequences because it does not think it will be held to account, and more fundamentally, Windrush victims don’t matter. Black and brown lives don't matter to this Government.  

This catalogue of failure, maladministration and misdeed is having a devastating impact on people’s lives four years after the Government first promised to right the wrongs faced by the Windrush generation. After years of being deprived of their rights and freedoms because of the Home Office’s hostile environment, many victims are still facing destitution while stuck in draining bureaucratic processes. Older victims who have faced years of hardship simply cannot wait. At the beginning of February 2022, yet another case in which compensation was awarded after the victim died came to light. The Home Office accepts that at least 23 other victims have died before receiving compensation. The true number is likely much higher.

It has become increasingly clear that the Windrush Scandal is not over. Many victims remain in exile overseas. Their stories – their entire lives – have been swept under the carpet. And on 24 January, the Home Office announced an alarming policy change that will severely curtail some of their compensation claims, and wipe out both the status and compensation claims of others altogether – in a blog post.

The Government’s contempt for the lives and rights of Black and brown people has grown and spread in the shadows. The Windrush scandal requires the disinfectant of light.

We therefore urge you to call immediately for debates of the following two motions:

(i) That the Windrush Compensation Scheme be stripped from the Home Office and placed in the custody of an independent non-governmental body; and

(ii) That Government establishes an inquiry pursuant to Sections 1 (a) and (b) of Inquiries Act 2005, to investigate:
a. the events that caused the Windrush Scandal, including changes in immigration and nationality laws;
b. evidence, including impact assessments, undertaken in creating nationality, migration and compensation scheme policy, including the policy announcement of 24 January 2022 revoking the waiver of the ‘two year-rule’ for Windrush migrants;
c. the impact of the Scandal and its effects on the physical and mental health of victims;
d. the number of people affected by the Scandal, including those who remain in exile overseas;
e. the process by which the Home Office devised the Windrush Compensation Scheme, including whether it meaningfully took on board the input of independent experts, stakeholders, and victims during the consultation phase;
f. the conduct of the Windrush Compensation Scheme, including resistance to external scrutiny, categorical rejection of calls for independence, consistently low payments, unreasonable demands for evidence, unreasonable delays at every stage, and patterns of behaviour amounting to gaslighting of victims;
g. whether the Windrush Compensation Scheme has provided justice to victims, and if so, how many; and
h. the number of people who have died before repatriation, receiving full compensation, or both.

Too many Windrush victims have died in exile, in poverty, and stripped of their basic rights and dignity. Many have died before their time because of the complex impact of systematic harassment, disenfranchisement and marginalisation on their physical and mental health. Many more will die while the Home Office continues to deny objective truths and skirt accountability.

Their deaths must not be in vain. You have the power to force the Government to account for the harrowing injustice it has perpetrated on Black and brown citizens. We implore you to use it to ensure its victims are not erased from history.

Yours sincerely,