Campaigners and people affected by Windrush scandal problems will scrutinise Wendy Williams’s Windrush Lessons Learned report, due to be published tomorrow, in the hope of finding answers to a number of key questions:
Why was the Home Office so slow to realise that it had mistakenly classified thousands of people as living in the UK illegally, in spite of mounting evidence (predominantly in the Guardian) that people were being wrongly detained, sacked and made homeless?
Is the government or the Home Office accused of institutionalised racism? Is this a blanket accusation or are particular ministers or advisers singled-out?
One senior civil servant in charge at the time was subsequently knighted, but no one from the Home Office appears to have been sacked. Does the report recommend any sanction of individuals who failed to take action as details of the scandal emerged?
What was the role of deportation targets in encouraging frontline Home Office staff to push on with the detention and proposed removal of people like former House of Commons chef Paulette Wilson, 63 - even when she provided copious evidence showing she had lived in the UK for over 50 years?
How did the Home Office manage to deport 83 people by mistake? How many of those people have they managed to track down and bring back to the UK? The Home Office conducted an extensive review into the circumstances under which those people were removed from the UK, but has not published its findings; does the report recommend full publication of the ‘historical review of detentions and deportations’?
The Home Office has currently only investigated the people wrongly deported to the Caribbean, but has not investigated those removed to other Commonwealth countries, and has also excluded from consideration anyone with a criminal record who was wrongly removed. Does the Williams review recommend extending this research?
How many people were wrongly sacked from their jobs, were made homeless, were denied healthcare and benefits, were prevented from travelling because the Home Office mistakenly believed they were in the UK illegally. How many people overall have been affected by this scandal?
How much blame does the report lay on Theresa May and David Cameron, and on the changing immigration legislation from 1948 onwards which gradually shifted people who arrived perfectly legally from colonies, and later Commonwealth countries, into a precarious immigration status?
How many warnings did May’s Home Office miss about the likely impact of tightened hostile environment policies? Who decided to ignore these warnings? Why was the advice of equality impact assessment ignored?
