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Public Law Solicitors

Government should use Windrush Day to rethink broken compensation scheme (22 June 2022)

Date: 22/06/2022
Duncan Lewis, Public Law Solicitors, Government should use Windrush Day to rethink broken compensation scheme

When a man who was wrongfully barred from returning home to the UK for 13 years because of ‘shameful’ government actions and forced to live in a chicken coop cannot access compensation to which he is entitled under the very fund set up for people like him, something is very wrong.

This story seems too awful to be true, but it is true, and it is why our public law team has once again been forced to challenge the Government over injustices done to the Windrush generation by way of judicial review.

On the one hand, the Government says it wants to make amends for past wrongs, to celebrate this generation and support Windrush Day celebrations, but on the other, it is compounding the sins of the past with a narrow and arbitrary reading of its own compensation scheme.

The Duncan Lewis public law team is currently working hard on our latest judicial review challenges to ensure that the victims of the Windrush scandal are adequately compensated for the cruel treatment that left so many unable to access employment, services, or to return to their rightful home in the UK.

The Home Secretary has rightfully acknowledged that one of our claimants, Mr V, has been subjected to a ‘shameful injustice,’ yet she seems blindly committed to repeating the injustice.

On 24 May 2022, the High Court granted permission for his claim challenging the lawfulness of decisions under the Windrush Compensation Scheme to proceed to a final hearing.

Mr V was born in Jamaica and arrived in the UK in 1962 at the age of six, residing here continuously from 1962 until 2005.

Based in London, he started his own business as an electrician and became an accomplished boxer, rising to no. 2 in Britain and fighting at the Royal Albert Hall.

In July 2005, he travelled to Jamaica to visit his youngest son but upon his attempted return in 2007, he was unlawfully denied entry to the UK.

As a result, he became stranded in Jamaica for more than eleven years, forced to live in shelters including a disused chicken coop and an abandoned grocery shack, without electricity or water. His mental health declined, and he was unable to work, destitute and homeless.

Only when the Windrush Scandal broke in 2018 was he allowed to return home. In fact, last year, the Home Secretary Priti Patel MP, personally signed a letter to him acknowledging that her predecessors had wrongly shut him out of the UK, stating that the “injustice and hardships suffered by you …have been shameful”.

Unfortunately, the compensation scheme being touted by that very same Home Secretary and designed to compensate people for the wrongs they suffered fails to address the very injustices inflicted upon our client, and others like him.

His two main losses, homelessness and destitution, flow directly from the fact that he was wrongfully denied a chance to return home, yet the Home Office has interpreted the scheme rules so as to prevent him from being properly compensated for these losses.


Two wrongs and no rights

The defendant has made repeated statements to the effect that, “the Government deeply regrets what has happened to the Windrush generation and is determined to right the wrongs they have experienced under successive governments.”

Yet, the Government continues to interpret the Windrush Compensation Scheme Rules very narrowly, denying people who by any measure of justice deserve compensation. Instead of exercising discretion and ensuring victims can access damages for the losses that they have suffered, they rely heavily on the absence of documentation to refuse awards, where that documentation either never existed due to the Home Office’s own failings, or where that evidence no longer exists given the passage of time.

The current approach to evidence is so irrational as to be unlawful, and fails to come anywhere near to meeting the lofty claims and commitments that are being made about the scheme. It can only be hoped that the judicial review claims made on behalf of our clients will help the Government see sense or if they do not, that the courts will force them to act in a lawful way.

In an ideal world, Windrush Day would give pause for thought, and prompt the Government into rethinking this scheme without the courts having to get involved. That is, however, unlikely, and we will continue working on these judicial reviews to ensure that justice is finally done.


Duncan Lewis public law solicitor Jeremy Bloom is an experienced lawyer with particular expertise in representing Windrush clients on immigration and compensation matters, as well as representing individuals at all stages of the asylum process. If you are affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact him for advice via email at Jeremyb@duncanlewis.com or telephone 020 3114 1260.




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