Windrush scandal still a stain on society, Floella Benjamin tells Lords event | Windrush scandal
The Windrush scandal remains a “stain on British society”, Floella Benjamin told an emotional House of Lords event where campaigners called on the government to launch a statutory inquiry into the Home Office’s ongoing failings.
Despite ministers’ seven-year promises to fix mistakes caused by the Home Office scandal, Lady Benjamin said injustices remained unresolved and many of those affected were still in an ongoing nightmare.
Several people gave strong testimonies describing how their lives were devastated by Home Office errors that led to thousands of people from the Caribbean and Commonwealth being wrongly classified as illegal immigrants. Some of those who attended the event said they were subjected to a second wave of traumatic treatment after their compensation claims were rejected by Interior Ministry employees.
Campaigners have highlighted the relatively rapid pace of compensation payments to victims of the Post Office scandal and called for urgent reform of the Windrush compensation scheme. They expressed growing frustration at the refusal of successive governments to launch a formal Hillsborough-style investigation into the causes of the Home scandal.
Campaigners have said that unless official action is taken, they plan to launch a “public inquiry” early next year, arguing that the need to examine the Home Office culture and ongoing failures in the compensation scheme has become so urgent that those affected cannot wait for a formal inquiry.
Martin Forde, the architect of the Windrush compensation scheme in 2018, has announced he is ready to help campaigners propose a radical redesign of the way compensation payments are made, saying he feels authorities have shown a “pathetic lack of commitment” to his scheme.
“We have been too passive for too long,” he said, adding that it was time to “embarrass” the Home Office into paying those affected the compensation they are owed.
Windrush commissioner Clive Foster, who started working earlier this year, said he had met more than 700 affected people in church halls and community centers across the UK in his first 100 days in office and heard their experiences.
“I also had the opportunity to address thousands of Home Office staff directly with a simple message: every policy and casework decision should be guided by compassion and humanity,” he said.
“Seven years on, unfortunately the Home Office Windrush scandal is not in the rearview mirror. Every speech I have had since taking up this role reinforces the need for urgency. Survivors must not be re-traumatized by the process that exists to deliver justice to them.”
A Londoner has told how he fought for 13 years to convince the Home Office that it had wrongly classified him as an illegal immigrant. He had moved from Nigeria as a young child in 1978, attended primary school, boarding school, earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA in the UK, and embarked on a successful career as a software engineer before being told he was at risk of deportation.
“It’s very difficult to live when you’re trying to tell the truth and no one believes you,” he said, requesting that his name not be published.
As a young child, Hetticia McIntosh came from Barbados to join her mother in England, where she worked as a nurse, having been recruited as part of Enoch Powell’s NHS recruitment campaign. He was serving in the British army in the 1970s when his UK status was revoked due to an error by the Home Office. Her husband, Vanderbilt McIntosh, who went on a similar journey, lost his British status as a result of similar mistakes.
Even though they had both gone to school in the UK, worked in Britain for years and raised their three children there, they were classed as immigration offenders and forced to move to St Lucia, far from their parents and siblings in the UK, where they were stranded for decades.
“We lived here, grew up here, worked here. We got no answers,” he said. She and her husband were denied compensation three times between 2021 and this year. “There is no humanity in this process,” he said. Calling for legal aid to be provided to the applicants, he said, “We need systemic change.”
Home Secretary David Hanson was unable to attend the meeting but sent a letter saying: “The Government is committed to ensuring justice for the Windrush generation and the defendants.” He said Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood was determined to embed “cultural change in the Home Office”.
