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Windrush: Government admits 83 British citizens may have been wrongfully deported due to scandal but will only apologise to 18

Labour says apology 'nowhere near good enough': Getty
Labour says apology 'nowhere near good enough': Getty

More than 160 Windrush citizens could have been wrongfully deported from the UK or detained, Home Office figures have revealed.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid released the figure in a letter to the chair of the home affairs select committee, Yvette Cooper, in which he also vowed to apologise to the families of 18 people “most likely to have suffered detriment because their right to be in the UK was not recognised”.

Amnesty International criticised the decision to only apologise to 18 of the individuals involved, saying it was “worrying” and cast doubt on the government’s willingness to learn from the scandal.

Labour said the apology was “nowhere near good enough” and condemned the government for not having a clearer idea about the number of Windrush citizens affected.

A Home Office unit looked at 11,800 cases of Caribbean Commonwealth nationals who were removed or detained by the department since 2002.

Records of 83 deportees contained evidence they were in the UK before 1 January 1973, the date the 1971 Immigration Act granting them British citizenship came into force.

In its initial response to the Windrush scandal in April, the government said there was “no evidence” any individuals had been deported, although it revised the figure up to 63 cases in May.

It has since changed the way it calculates the totals, meaning people deported after being convicted of a crime are no longer counted – despite technically being British citizens due to their Windrush status.

A new category was also created for citizens who were removed because they “appear to have then left the UK to reside overseas for more than two years, thereby losing their entitlement to indefinite leave to remain”.

That category accounts for 74 of the 83 people removed. Neither those 74, or the unknown number who were removed after being convicted of a crime, are among those who will receive an apology.

Of the 83 Windrush citizens the Home Office now says it removed from the UK, 31 were detained beforehand, either at an immigration removal centre or a port.

A further 81 people thought to be Windrush citizens were detained but not deported.

Details of all 164 Windrush citizens have now been passed to a special taskforce who have started contacting them, the home secretary said.

Mr Javid said in the letter: “It is clear from our internal analysis of these that features of individual cases are markedly different.

“The way in which each individual was treated by the department, and the degree of detriment suffered, varied considerably.”

In 18 of the cases records suggested they were detained or deported specifically because they could not demonstrate continuous residence in the UK.

In a statement, Mr Javid said: “The experiences faced by some members of the Windrush generation are completely unacceptable and I am committed to righting the wrongs of the past.

“I would like to personally apologise to those identified in our review and am committed to providing them with the support and compensation they deserve.

“We must do everything we can to ensure that nothing like this happens again – which is why I have asked an independent adviser to look at what lessons we can learn from Windrush.”

The letter comes after a June report by the Home Affairs Committee said the detention of the Windrush generation was not a “mistake”, but instead a symptom of a systemic failure of the Home Office.

Another report by the influential group in July criticised the Home Office for failing to provide full figures about the number of Windrush citizens affected by the scandal.

It said the Home Office must undergo total reform, warning that unless the department was overhauled the scandal “will happen again for another group of people”.

The Home Office taskforce received 6,507 enquiries from possible Windrush cases between April – when it opened a call centre – and July, the letter to the Home Affairs Committee chair revealed.

Yet only 3,585 people had been given documentation confirming their status by last month – 2,272 under initial arrangements and 1,465 under the government’s formal Windrush scheme. The majority of the applicants were Jamaican nationals but the total also included people from Barbados, India, Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago

The government has been accused of “dragging its feet” over a compensation scheme for the Windrush generation. A consultation on the issue is scheduled to run until October, meaning victims will have to wait until autumn for a decision on the programme.

Earlier this month The Independent reported the Home Office was “gagging” Windrush citizens with non-disclosure agreements in return for promises of fast-track compensation.

In response to Mr Javid’s letter, Labour’s shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said the apology to 18 of the victims was “overdue and is nowhere near good enough”.

“The government has still not got a final figure on how many of our fellow citizens were deported, forced into so-called ‘voluntary removals’ or detained as prisoners in their own country,” she continued.

“It is an insult that the home secretary has still failed to confirm when the promised compensation scheme will be up and running, after so many of our fellow citizens have been left destitute, in debt and jobless by the government’s hostile environment.

“Labour is calling for a hardship fund to be set up immediately to support these people ahead of the promised compensation scheme, which will clearly not be up and running for months.”

Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights programme director, said: “The home secretary’s apology to just 18 individuals is worrying and brings into question whether the Home Office has a realistic grasp on all the people it has wrongly detained and removed following the exposure of its appalling treatment of the Windrush generation.

“The government’s focus remains narrow, casting doubt on its willingness to learn the full lessons of what has gone so badly wrong. Refusal to recognise the rights of people entitled to live in this country continues even now.

“Among those being denied their rights are the thousands of children, many born in the UK, who are blocked from claiming their British citizenship rights because of a profit-making fee they cannot afford.

“The government should urgently change tack, properly scrutinise the myriad ways in which its policies and practices continue to wrongly treat people as if ineligible or unentitled to be here, and do all it can to ensure that people both know and can claim their rights.”