Lawyers and charity workers helping people trying toclaim Windrush compensation have expressed dismay that claimants are still struggling to secure settlements that reflect the damaging consequences of being misclassified as illegal immigrants.
Statistics released this week show that only one in four of the 6,348 applications submitted have received payments. A total of £62.7m has been paid out on 1,681 claims so far, four years after the scheme was launched.
But Home Office case workers based in the Sheffield headquarters of the compensation team say that although the scheme has previously been slow to pay out, staffing levels have recently been increased and officials are now determined to make generous settlements.
Urging potential applicants not to be put off by negative coverage of the scheme, Nigel Hills, the head of the Windrush compensation and documentation schemes, said: “We want people to get in touch with us. We all feel very passionate about doing this work. Our ethos is to pay more people the maximum amount possible.”
During a visit to the headquarters, several staff members described how disturbed they had been at reading accounts of how applicants’ lives were upended by their department’s misclassification of legal UK residents as immigration offenders.
“I have read claims that upset me to the point that I have had to leave the room to get some air,” one official said.
“It isn’t always the big, dramatic cases that have the biggest impact – not the deportations or the people who were stranded abroad. But it’s when you read about the cascade effect, how someone’s established life crumbles and falls apart – how someone loses their job, then loses their resilience, their mental health suffers, their relationships suffer, and the knock-on effect sends them and their close family into a spiral,” another official said.
“It is upsetting. That’s the motivator for a lot of us who work here. It’s what drives us to try to get the maximum payout.”
Some of the stark disconnect between the Home Office staff’s stated determination to help and the ongoing difficulties experienced by claimants lies with structural decisions made four and a half years ago when the scheme was launched, and officials chose to give responsibility for the scheme to the Home Office (rather than to an independent organisation). Some people remain anxious about making an application to the same department responsible for their initial difficulties.
A decision, also made at the time the scheme was designed, not to allocate funding for legal support has meant applicants often struggle to provide the required documentary evidence, and many claimants have found the 44-page application form too complex to navigate.
Pro bono legal advisers who have worked on large numbers of compensation claims remain critical of the scheme, noting that unreasonably high quantities of documentary evidence are required from applicants, that the burden of proof bar is set too high and that a culture of disbelief remains within the department.
Home Office staff say their attempts to speed up their work has recently been hampered by the need to process and reject large numbers of ineligible applications, after misinformation was spread on TikTok suggesting that everyone who arrived in the UK from the Commonwealth in the 1950s and 60s was automatically eligible for payments (regardless of whether they have had problems with housing, healthcare or employment stemming from the Home Office’s failure to give them documentation showing their right to remain here). After the TikTok video, the number of people applying doubled.
Two key people who have worked on the scheme this week expressed concern about the slow delivery of payments to those affected.
The former No 10 adviser Samuel Kasumu in his book, The Power of the Outsider, published this week, reveals that he realised in 2019 that the scheme was “plagued with challenges”. By February 2020 he concluded that it was “not fit for purpose and major changes would be necessary”.
In December that year he learned that some victims were being offered as little as £250 in compensation. He recommended that the minimum payments to those affected by the scandal should be increased to £10,000, a proposal which was accepted by then home secretary, Priti Patel. “Sadly I was not able to see through the work around the cultural reforms to the Home Office and getting the compensation scheme to deliver for the victims of the scandal,” he writes.
Staff at the Sheffield headquarters said the £10,000 initial payment had improved confidence in the scheme. “The preliminary payment changed the whole tone of engagement; previously people may have felt we didn’t believe them,” Hills said.
He recognised that there had been challenges in rolling the scheme out, but stressed it was constantly under review. “We’re here to fix and respond to problems.”
Martin Forde, the lawyer who designed the scheme, said he believed it was “fit for purpose as designed but the implementation is woeful”. He was particularly concerned by a number of cases where claimants had initially been told they were not eligible for payments, only to be granted large sums on appeal.
“I am aware of a case where an applicant for compensation was refused at the initial stage and on review a nil award was the outcome. After consulting solicitors and a further appeal to the independent adjudicator the claimant was awarded £289,000. Every case handled by the two Home Office caseworkers who made an error of nearly £300,000 needs to be re-opened,” Forde said.
Sally Daghlian, the chief executive of the charity Praxis, which has helped people made homeless by the Windrush scandal, said: “Perhaps unsurprisingly the department that shredded thousands of lives is now failing at compensating its victims for the hardship they had to endure.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The government remains absolutely committed to righting the wrongs of the Windrush scandal. We continue to make improvements so people receive the maximum award as quickly as possible, but we know there is more to do, and will work tirelessly to make sure such an injustice is never repeated.”
