Scrapping Windrush pledges would be a big mistake for Suella Braverman’s Home Office

According to reports in the Guardian ⁷ A Gentleman and R Syal, ‘Suella Braverman plans to ditch key Windrush pledges’, The Guardian, 6 January 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/06/suella-bravermann-plans-to-ditch-key-windrush-pledges , home secretary Suella Braverman is planning to abandon a number of reforms – agreed in the aftermath of the Windrush scandal – which aim to make the Home Office more transparent and open to greater outside input. Whether Braverman believes the problems exposed by Windrush have been fixed, or she does not see them as a priority for the Home Office today, she is wrong.

The Home Office is still too closed and resistant to scrutiny

In her independent review, Wendy Williams found that the Home Office’s closed approach to policy making contributed to the failings of the Windrush scandal. Among her 30 recommendations for the department were several that aimed to “engage meaningfully with stakeholders and communities”. To the then home secretary Priti Patel’s credit, all 30 of these recommendations were adopted and reflected in the department’s 2020 “comprehensive improvement plan”. However, last year Williams found that 22 of the 30 recommendations remained either unmet or only partially met, with the Home Office having made particularly poor progress implementing the recommendations intended to open the department up to outside input.

The 2020 improvement plan included various steps aimed at greater openness including Williams’s recommendations to introduce a new, independent migrants’ commissioner, to review and strengthen the role of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), and to otherwise improve understanding of the individuals and communities affected by policy.

And the department has taken some steps to open up, such as by creating a new community and stakeholder engagement hub. It has also made some progress implementing its post-Windrush reforms more broadly. For example, it agreed a new mission and set of values, reformed its equality impact assessments, introduced an “ethical” decision-making model and a board-level ethics adviser, and established a strategic race advisory board.

But the Home Office’s continued unwillingness to engage with the outside world has been demonstrated frequently since its improvement plan was agreed. For instance, experts and people with personal experience of the asylum system were insufficiently involved in the development of the controversial Rwanda scheme. And the department has been criticised repeatedly for its reluctance to publish internal research on asylum and immigration policy. ⁸ M Townsend, ‘Home Office ‘covering up’ its own study of why refugees come to the UK’, The Guardian, 30 November 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/20/home-office-covering-up-its-own-study-of-why-refugees-come-to-the-uk;
A Gentleman, ‘Windrush scandal caused by ’30 years of racist immigration laws’ – report’, The Guardian, 29 May 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/29/windrush-scandal-caused-by-30-years-of-racist-immigration-laws-report;
J Dunton, ‘Government loses secrecy bid over Rwanda policy documents’, Civil Service World, 18 August 2022, https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/rwanda-asylum-seeker-policy-government-loses-secrecy-over-documents-liz-truss
 

Completing outstanding reforms would help Home Office ministers avoid future crises

The changes yet to be implemented, which Braverman is reportedly planning to abandon, would help the Home Office to become more effective and potentially prevent the sorts of crises the department so often attracts.

The ICIBI has a track-record of spotting risks in the asylum and immigration system before they develop into crises, such as last year’s problems in migrant processing centres, but is unusual among government inspectorates in being unable to choose when to share its findings. Instead, the Home Office often publishes reports long after they have been submitted. Seeing through the commitment to review the ICIBI’s remit, specifically giving the Inspector the power to publish findings and requiring ministers to explain publicly any deviation from recommendations, would strengthen and make more timely the scrutiny provided by the Inspector, improving policy and services as a result.

Running promised reconciliation events between members of the Windrush generation, senior officials and ministers would be a powerful signal that the department is serious about improving its outside engagement. It would also help ministers and civil servants to understand the impact of the scandal on people’s lives, to better spot similar problems before they arise in the future.

And creating a new, independent migrants’ commissioner could help to ensure the lived-experience of migrants is embedded in the department’s thinking in relation to high-priority areas, including the asylum backlog, early enough in the policy process to make a difference.

Improvement will take time and should concern both ministers and civil servants

It is reasonable for the Home Office not to have fully implemented all 30 of the recommendations by now. Opening up to greater input from outside government is a long-term challenge that will take structural, process and cultural changes – not to mention time – to achieve. But the job is unfinished. Achieving these changes requires sustained advocacy from ministers. It is disappointing to see Braverman stepping back from the political support signalled by Priti Patel.  

Which makes scrapping these pledges a mistake, and one the home secretary and prime minister should resist ahead of the 75^th anniversary of the HMT Empire Windrush arriving in Britain in June. If they do not, the home secretary will find the Home Office continues to experience unmanageable crises and continues to let down the people it should be serving.