UNITED KINGDOM
A review of the United Kingdom Home Office has called for it to address its “hostile environment” policy and measures, as part of an effort to completely reform the Department’s culture.
Headed by former police watchdog, Wendy Williams (pictured), the review urged Home Secretary, Priti Patel to commission Public Servants to undertake a “full review and evaluation of the hostile/compliant environment policy and measures — individually and cumulatively”.
The recommendation is one of 30 outlined in the review, which said the Home Office had displayed “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness” on race throughout its handling of the Windrush scandal.
The review findings are intended to prevent a repeat of that scandal in which members of the so-called Windrush Generation of immigrants were denied access to public services, housing and jobs, and even deported, despite being in the UK legally.
Those affected were mostly immigrants from the Caribbean who were urged to migrate to the UK after World War II to ease labour shortages.
Ms Williams said the causes could be traced through policy and legislation decisions dating back to the 1960s.
She said warning signs were “simply not heeded by officials and Ministers”.
“Even when stories of members of the Windrush Generation being affected by immigration control started to emerge in the media from 2017 onwards, the Department was too slow to react,” Ms Williams said.
“While I am unable to make a definitive finding of institutional racism within the Department, I have serious concerns that these failings demonstrate an institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race and the history of the Windrush Generation within the Department, which are consistent with some elements of the definition of institutional racism.”
She said officials must examine whether hostile environment measures were effective and proportionate in meeting their stated aim of making it difficult for immigrants to live and work in the UK illegally — and their impact on both British citizens and migrants who were in the country legally.
“This review must be carried out scrupulously, designed in partnership with external experts and published in a timely way,” Ms Williams said.
Ms Patel said the review’s publication was “part of an ongoing mission to put this right and ensure events like this can never happen again, because there were far too many victims of Windrush”.
London, 22 March 2020
