How can the Home Office avoid another Windrush scandal?

Thursday 22 June marks 75 years since HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury docks in 1948. This key moment in British history took on even greater significance in 2018, when it emerged that hundreds of members of the ‘Windrush generation’ had been wrongly detained, denied rights and deported by the Home Office.

The Windrush scandal exposed longstanding cultural and organisational problems in the Home Office, which the department set out to fix through its 2020 ‘Comprehensive Improvement Plan’, a response to Wendy Williams’ Lessons Learned review of the same year. It would, the plan said, learn from the past; take a more compassionate approach; open itself to scrutiny; make more robust policy; and lead an inclusive workforce.

But in the same week as this symbolic anniversary it has been reported that the team leading these reforms is to be disbanded. ⁸ Gentleman A, ‘Unit tasked with reforming Home Office after Windrush scandal being disbanded’, The Guardian, 19 June 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/19/unit-reforming-home-office-windrush-scandal-being-disbanded This is a mistake. As our recent report into the Home Office argued, the department has made progress since 2018 but the job is far from finished. Rather than trying to draw a line and move on the home secretary, Suella Braverman, should re-commit to learning the lessons of Windrush. Below are four ways the Home Office can do this and, in the process, help to avoid crises and scandals like Windrush in the future.

Insist upon evidence and evaluate the impact of policies

Migration and asylum policy has long been undermined by lazy assumptions. In her review Williams found an “institutional thoughtlessness towards race” – in particular a failure to understand the disproportionate effect of ‘hostile environment’ policies on minority ethnic groups. And despite some progress being made here – for example through a review of the re-branded ‘compliant environment’ – a lack of evidence and public evaluation remains a problem for Home Office policy.

The Illegal Migration Bill is a case in point. Its equality and economic impact assessments have been delayed and left unpublished respectively. There is also no published evaluation plan for the controversial Rwanda scheme, more than a year after its announcement.

It is difficult to predict the effects of novel, future policies – especially for areas such as asylum that are complex and lacking robust, unbiased evidence. But this makes analysis all the more important for good policy making: public evaluation plans, for instance, help assess the impact of policies in real-time. Where evidence exists, ministers should use it; where it does not they should commission it.

Motivate staff to speak truth to power

Williams also identified a problem with Home Office staff feeling unable to raise concerns about policy, often under the pressure to meet targets. Indeed, less than half of its staff (42%) report feeling “safe to challenge the way things are done” – the third worst score of any department. ¹⁰ As shown by the latest Civil Service People Survey scores.

More recently, a Conservative Party email sent in Braverman’s name blamed “an activist blob of left-wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour party” for the government’s failure to stop small boat crossings. This is unhelpful. Civil servants should never undermine lawful policies, but should feel safe to offer honest advice on the practicality and the legality of policy proposals. Creating the circumstances for that to be possible requires trust and permission to challenge between ministers and civil service leaders.

Open up to scrutiny

Another key critique of the Williams review was about the Home Office’s closed approach to policy making. To her credit the then home secretary, Priti Patel, accepted Williams’ recommendations and the Home Office’s improvement plan recognised the need to “be more transparent” and enable “greater external scrutiny”. A new community and stakeholder engagement hub was created in the department.

But insufficient progress has been made and Patel’s successor has backtracked on several key commitments. This is a problem. The department is still too closed to scrutiny.

The Illegal Migration Bill is again an example. Greater parliamentary scrutiny would help to answer some of the bill’s many unanswered questions. Greater use of outside experts also would help the Home Office’s broader mission of clearing the asylum backlog. For instance, asylum experts immediately called out practical problems with the Home Office’s recent attempt to expedite decision making by issuing new questionnaires to asylum seekers – to be completed in English, against a tight deadline – which led to just one in ten forms being returned properly. ¹² Syal R, ‘Home Office to tell refugees to complete questionnaire in English or risk refusal’, The Guardian, 22 February 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/22/home-office-plans-to-use-questionnaires-to-clear-asylum-backlog

The home secretary should reverse the decision to scrap outstanding Windrush reforms and look for further opportunities to welcome scrutiny and outside expertise.

Keep up momentum on reform

Deep-rooted cultural and organisational change takes time. As of 2022 the Home Office had met or partially met 21 of Williams’ 30 recommendations, and our research finds some satisfaction with the permanent secretary, Matthew Rycroft’s, commitment to the reform agenda. Signs that the transformation programme might be having a positive effect can be seen in the latest People Survey scores. While overall morale remains a problem, the Home Office was the only department in which officials’ attitude to their leadership and their ability to manage change held steady between 2021 and 2022 – despite a disruptive year.

But even the staunchest defenders of the Home Office would acknowledge that the problems exposed by the Windrush scandal have not been fully fixed. Which means now is the time to double-down on reform efforts – not to disband the team responsible.

As well as time, such change takes sustained political leadership. Braverman has not shown the commitment to learning the lessons of Windrush of her predecessor. She is running out of time to do so.