Whistleblowers contradict No 10 over destroyed Windrush landing cards

Home Office claims that the destruction of Windrush-era landing cards in 2010 had no impact on the rights of those individuals to stay in the UK have been dramatically undermined by the evidence of two new whistleblowers.

Staff, in fact, routinely used landing card information as part of their decision-making process, and saw the Windrush landing cards as a useful resource, according to information from two new Home Office whistleblowers.

Their accounts have been further supported by the emergence of Border Force guidance, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that appears to contradict the government’s justification of a decision to destroy an archive of Windrush-era arrival slips.

The Border Force note appears to undermine the Home Office and Downing Street’s rejection of the documents’ significance. Giving details of how landing cards are used currently, the document stated: “Information from a landing card may be used by an entry clearance officer in making a decision on a visa application.”

A now-retired senior Croydon-based Home Office employee told the Guardian she had regularly used landing card information in decision-making work during the 1980s.

“Landing and embarkation cards were kept in alphabetical order, and by month,” she said, adding that it was a very important database because “it would show who else arrived with you; it would show the parents and the children that they brought with them”.

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.

Former Home Office employees and immigration case workers have also expressed deep concern about a shift in the way officials have been handling undocumented Commonwealth residents, following tightened immigration regulations, with one describing a new “gotcha attitude” among staff, who enjoyed catching out applicants.

Both Downing Street and the Home Office attempted to play down the significance of the revelation in the Guardian on Tuesday that an archive of landing slips documenting Windrush era arrivals had been destroyed in 2010.

A Downing Street spokesperson said the documents did “not provide any reliable evidence of ongoing residence in the UK or immigration status and therefore would not have bearing on immigration cases whereby Commonwealth citizens are proving residence in the UK”.

The Home Office said: “Registration slips provided details of an individual’s date of entry, they did not provide any reliable evidence relating to ongoing residence in the UK or their immigration status. So it would be misleading and inaccurate to suggest that registration slips would therefore have a bearing on immigration cases whereby Commonwealth citizens are proving residency in the UK.”

But the second former Home Office employee said the information had been very useful and that it was wrong to destroy the archive. “It was a mistake. I used it when I was doing immigration work to check for people’s arrivals,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Home Office is investigating 49 new cases of Windrush citizens experiencing immigration status difficulties, which emerged on Tuesday in the wake of the home secretary’s announcement of a new taskforce on the issue.

Ex-Home Office employees said they hoped taskforce staff would be more sensitive in their handling of claims. One long-term former employee, who worked for the Home Office for many years in Liverpool, told the Guardian there had been a stark change among immigration staff‘s behaviour following Theresa May’s announcement of “hostile environment” immigration regulations when she was home secretary.

“The introduction of the hostile environment policy meant the mentality was: ‘I’m going to say no, unless you can prove me wrong.’ Whereas before we’d been a lot more lenient towards the Commonwealth immigrants. We had no problem about going after everyone else, but the Commonwealth immigrants had always been a different kettle of fish,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

“That changed about five or six years ago with the hostile environment. Some of the immigration people welcomed it. There was a ’gotcha attitude’ – some people enjoyed it; I didn’t like that.”

The home secretary, Amber Rudd, appeared to acknowledge that this newly hardened culture within the Home Office was becoming problematic on Monday when she apologised for the “appalling” actions of her own department towards some Windrush-era citizens who have struggled to prove their right to live in the UK, and recognised that the Home Office had “lost sight of individuals” and become “too concerned with policy”.

The Liverpool ex-Home Office worker said there was a younger generation of immigration employees who were more aggressive in their attitude to undocumented Windrush-generation residents struggling to establish their right to remain in the UK. “People who were coming into the department were new and didn’t have the background knowledge about immigration in the 1960s that I had,” he said.

“I was saying to them: ‘Look they’re more British than you! How can you, a 27-year-old fellow, refuse a 54-year-old fellow, and say he’s not entitled to remain in a country he’s lived in for 51 years? It is madness. It upset me and a few of the older staff members when they started saying to these fellows: we want four pieces of information per year you’ve been here.

“There were some people who enjoyed saying: I’ve caught you, you are illegal. But they weren’t illegal at all. I’ve got no issue with people getting rid of illegal immigrants but the Jamaican and Trinidadians – these are Commonwealth people, who were British subjects or citizens of the UK and colonies before their countries became independent.”

He was “shocked and ashamed” to read about cases of Windrush-generation residents, who have been in Britain for over half a century, being detained. “I’m astounded by it all,” he said. “They’ve realised that they have made a complete mistake.”

Previously staff had been allowed to apply reasonable discretion towards applicants in this group. “Some had come on their parents’ passport. Some of them came on their own passports – most of them didn’t still have them, of course they didn’t, they’ve been here for 40 years,” he said.

“So the policy in the citizenship department was: if they say they have been here for that long, OK, provided they pass the character checks and they’re not mass murderers, then in they come, give them British citizenship.” The policy was “to accept that people were telling the truth because there was no reason to doubt them”, he said.

The senior ex-Croydon immigration employee was also concerned by worsening Home Office attitudes towards people seeking to regularise their status. “In my day working in immigration we very much had the individual’s situation in our minds. We did not work from crib sheets or take a this-is-what-the-rules-say approach – you looked at each person’s case sympathetically and with discretion,” she said.

Her account chimed with comments made on Tuesday by an ex-employee who said from 2013 onwards, staff were “given no leeway to make a judgment call on the balance of probability rather than the burden of proof”. Many experienced staff took redundancy because they disliked the new atmosphere. The people who remained were told: “These are the rules, stick to them”.

Daniel Ashwell, a senior caseworker at the refugee and migrant centre in Wolverhampton, which has helped many Windrush-era citzens, said he was doubtful about whether Home Office attitudes would change after this week’s apology for the “appalling” treatment meted out to Windrush residents.

“I am sceptical. This just illuminates how the whole system is set up – with staff not believing what people say, always questioning them and making people feel that their status is at risk. This is just a the tip of the iceberg example of the whole immigration system works,” he said.