Members of the Windrush generation have been denied their rights and treated appallingly by the Home Office
People have been caught up in policy, cultural and organisational changes in the Home Office, say MPs on the Home Affairs Committee.
Members of the 'Windrush generation'—people who came to the UK from Commonwealth countries after the Second World War and before 1973—have been denied their rights.
There were no immigration restrictions on people from Commonwealth countries entering the UK during the post war period. They were known as the 'freely landed'.
However many have been treated as if they were in the country illegally despite being lawfully resident for many decades.
People have lost their homes and their jobs and been refused healthcare, pensions and access to social security.
In some cases, people have been subject to immigration enforcement measures and held in immigration detention. Others may have been removed or deported from the UK.
Some, having left the UK on holiday or for a similarly short period, have been refused re-entry and had their settled life in the UK unjustly taken away from them.
Many of their children and spouses, who joined them in the UK after 1973, or who were born here, have also been affected.
These are our recommendations
for the Home Office
We, the Home Affairs Committee, have looked at what went wrong, how many people have been affected, and the adequacy of the Government's response.
No-one with a legal right to be in the UK should still be subject to enforcement procedures and have to endure the anxiety of having to report regularly to the Home Office under threat of removal.
The Home Office must guarantee immediately that no-one from the Windrush generation or their children or grandchildren are currently subject to reporting requirements.
The Home Office must tell us how many people have been unlawfully subject to deportation, detention and reporting requirements.
It is vital that the country understands how many members of the Windrush generation and their children and grandchildren have been, or continue to be, wrongfully subject to immigration enforcement action.
Given concerns that incorrect decisions may have been made due to incomplete information, the Home Office should provide more details of what evidence is being searched for in the files and more information on the independent audit promised by the Permanent Secretary. The Home Office should not limit its checks only to those who may have arrived in the UK before 1973. It should include those who arrived later or who were born here and may also be similarly protected.
The Windrush lessons learned review needs the credibility of being externally driven.
For reasons of accountability and transparency, the review should be made public, without redactions, and available for all to see.
We support a policy which will give the Home Office a more human face, a return to face-to-face interviews which allow for the use of discretion and judgement, and a system in which processes, requirements and decisions are more clearly explained. These changes are overdue and they should be implemented as a priority.
We are concerned that a target-led approach may have led immigration enforcement officers to focus on people like the Windrush generation, who may have been easier to detain and remove than those less vulnerable.
The net migration target must be replaced. The risk that it may encourage the Home Office to increase departures, and without adequate checks on whether a person is here lawfully, is an additional reason to seek its replacement—both to avoid any perverse incentives and to rebuild credibility.
Those wrongly affected must receive the apology and compensation they deserve.
The full compensation scheme, which must recognise both financial loss and emotional distress, should be established as soon as possible and payments made by the end of the year. Where UKVI has charged fees wrongly these should be refunded. In the meantime we urge the Government to act on our previous report and immediately establish a hardship fund for those in acute financial difficulty.
Given how complex British nationality law has become, we recommend the Home Secretary establish a review and options for reform. It should pay particular attention to the impact of the British Nationality Act 1981 on descendants of the Windrush generation.
The Windrush generation, who have contributed so much to Britain, have been badly let down. The Home Office has a responsibility to make sure nothing like this can ever happen again.
In the words of Paulette Wilson, wrongly made homeless, detained and threatened with removal from the country:
"You cannot keep treating people like this."
We are giving these recommendations to the Government as the Home Affairs Committee, 11 MPs from different political parties.
The Government has two months to respond to our report. To read more depth and detail about our recommendations, read our report on The Windrush generation [PDF] or see more on our website.
If you're interested in the work of our committee, find out more about our other inquiries.