Actors, musicians and campaigners call for faster Windrush compensation

Photograph: #Justice4Windrush campaign

Actors, musicians and campaigners have launched a new drive to put pressure on the Home Office to speed up its payment of compensation to people affected by the Windrush scandal.

Lady Doreen Lawrence, television presenter Jay Blades, and actors Colin McFarlane and Adrian Lester have joined musicians AJ Tracey and Annie Lennox to call on the government to remove the compensation scheme from the Home Office’s control and hand it to an independent organisation.

In an open letter to the prime minister and the leader of the Labour party, the new organisation Justice4Windrush notes that more than 40 claimants have died before receiving compensation, and requests that officials lower the burden of documentary proof that individuals are required to submit before being classified as eligible for payments. The campaign group is also calling for legal aid to be granted to those who are hoping to make claims against the Home Office.

The group’s letter represents the latest attempt to highlight the shortcomings of a scheme launched by the government in 2019 to compensate people who had been wrongly detained, deported, sacked from their jobs, made homeless or denied pensions, benefits, NHS treatment, bank accounts, mobile phone contracts or driving licences. Thousands of people were misclassified as illegal immigrants by the Home Office, despite having lived in the UK, legally, for decades, since arriving as children in the 1950s and 1960s from Commonwealth countries.

The lawyer who designed the compensation scheme, Martin Forde, has joined the campaign, explaining that he has become increasingly dissatisfied with the way the scheme is being administered. “The Windrush Compensation Scheme has left many victims in a state of limbo,” he said. “We have heard stories of individuals being wrongly denied tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of compensation, and of families whose lives have been torn apart while they await an outcome. This is unacceptable.”

Colin McFarlane, who is leading the new group, said: “The Home Office scandal that impacted the Windrush generation is not over. In 2022, a leaked internal report commissioned by the Home Office revealed that, ‘during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK’.

“2012’s hostile environment policy has exacerbated this institutional racism, resulting in over 15,000 victims and rising. The woeful 2019 compensation scheme has added insult to injury and merely prolonged the trauma and is yet another illustration of decades long discrimination by the Home Office against migrants of colour. We need justice for the Windrush generation now.”

A Home Office spokesperson said the staff believed that moving the operation of the scheme away from the department would disrupt work already under way and risk significantly delaying payments. “The government remains absolutely committed to righting the wrongs of the Windrush scandal and making sure those affected receive the compensation they rightly deserve,” the spokesperson said.

“We have paid more than £75m in compensation and we continue to make improvements so people receive the maximum award as quickly as possible, while providing extensive support to help people access and apply to the compensation scheme.”