Ministers, not Home Office officials, have created the Windrush scandal

While ministers collectively scratch their heads over the Windrush scandal and how we got here, the only thing that’s surprising is that they are surprised at all.

When the home secretary, Amber Rudd, finally came to Parliament on 16 April to address the issue, she said her department had “become too concerned with policy and strategy and lost sight of the individual”. The Home Office is not a sentient being, so this was implicitly a criticism of her staff. If she’s serious about understanding why this might be the case, she would do better to consider the political strategy and rhetoric adopted by her government over many years, rather than suggesting it is individual civil servants who have lost their focus.

Since 2010, the net migration target of fewer than 100,000 a year has acted as a lightning rod for a series of legislative attempts to cut migration and a crackdown on illegal immigrants. Add to that the competitive rhetoric of who would be the toughest on immigration as the Conservatives felt the electoral pressure from Ukip and it was clear there were few medals to be awarded in the Home Office for anyone trying to advise on a more cautious approach. Indeed, May’s “hostile environment” existed long before her speech on the subject.

The Home Office, like the rest of government, has also had to cope with cuts in resources of about 20%, while the demands, from immigration to terrorism, have multiplied. The Windrush scandal is an almost inevitable consequence of this toxic mix in a complicated area of public policy that can have devastating consequences for the individuals involved and their families if mistakes are made.

Proving residency may be straightforward for some, but for others it is less so, and a presumption of guilt, which many feel summarises the government’s overall policy, has led to the heartbreaking stories that are now emerging. Add in difficulties with language, age and evidence in a system that politicians designed to be demanding and it’s easy to see why this quickly becomes a nightmare with unintended consequences.

Who are the Windrush generation?

They are people who arrived in the UK after the second world war from Caribbean countries at the invitation of the British government. The first group arrived on the ship MV Empire Windrush in June 1948.

What is happening to them?

An estimated 50,000 people face the risk of deportation if they never formalised their residency status and do not have the required documentation to prove it.

Why is this happening now?

It stems from a policy, set out by Theresa May when she was home secretary, to make the UK 'a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants'. It requires employers, NHS staff, private landlords and other bodies to demand evidence of people’s citizenship or immigration status.

Why do they not have the correct paperwork and status?

Some children, often travelling on their parents’ passports, were never formally naturalised and many moved to the UK before the countries in which they were born became independent, so they assumed they were British. In some cases, they did not apply for passports. The Home Office did not keep a record of people entering the country and granted leave to remain, which was conferred on anyone living continuously in the country since before 1 January 1973.

What is the government doing to resolve the problem?

On Monday, the home secretary Amber Rudd announced the creation of a new Home Office team dedicated to ensuring that Commonwealth-born long-term UK residents would no longer find themselves classified as being in the UK illegally.

It has been difficult to assess the scale of the Windrush scandal, but some estimates suggestit may affect some 50,000 citizens. Compare that with the scale of the challenge when up to 3.5 million EU citizens potentially apply for settled status: how will the Home Office cope with hundreds of thousands of applicants for whom there may well be similar difficulties in evidencing residency?

May’s “hostile environment” strategy does not sit well with the commitments the government has made to these individuals as part of our exit agreement. Those commitments must also be backed up with the capacity and capability to deal with the scale and complexity of the task, a point not lost on our EU partners, which are already raising concerns.

So, while it is clear the Home Office will need to change its direction from reducing immigration to facilitating citizens’ rights to stay, the real lessons from this scandal need to be learned by the politicians who got exactly what they asked for from the civil service, even if that fact is now a little inconvenient.

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