Following a recent report reflecting the disparities in the compensation scheme, Windrush victims have urged the government to end the two-tier system of justice and overhaul the scheme
After almost nine years since the Windrush scandal was exposed, campaigners have united to demand an urgent overhaul of the compensation scheme.
Survivors have teamed up with Grenfell United, Hillsborough Justice families, Imran Khan KC, Brian Eno and several more civil rights organisations. Today, they have proposed an open letter addressing the Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, calling on the Government to ‘radically overhaul’ the Windrush Compensation Scheme.
They hope to see similar support that Grenfell and Hillsborough have seen with their campaigns, as they both won hard-fought battles for independent oversight and much-needed legal support. The letter includes: “The Windrush generation helped rebuild post-war Britain. In return, they were wrongly detained, deported, denied healthcare and work, and stripped of their citizenship, homes and livelihoods by the Hostile Environment policy.
“Seven years after the government’s remedy to the scandal was launched, the Windrush Compensation Scheme, remains a profound failure. Recent evidence from JUSTICE with the University of Sussex and Dechert LLP lays bare the disparity.”
In the letter they have included recent evidence from JUSTICE with the University of Sussex and Dechert LLP, including a victim who was initially offered £300 from the Home Office, however after receiving pro bono legal support, her award increased to £170,000. Similarly, another claimant went from zero to £295,000 with legal support.
Upon this, they also found that two-thirds (66%) of all applicants are initially refused any payment at all making the scheme’s success rate is the lowest of any major state redress scheme. The letter also highlights that the application form is 44 pages long – “more than four times longer than the form for child abuse survivors in Lambeth, and three times longer than the Post Office Horizon form.”
Ms Mahmood, Home Secretary since September, has become somewhat of a lightning-rod figure among Labour MPs after putting forward controversial immigration reforms. But speaking in 2023, the politician, from Birmingham, said: “I’m so grateful for the contributions the Windrush generation have made to civic life – and I’m delighted that events this week across our city have celebrated that legacy.”
Deborah Trotman, whose brother Carlton is a victim, explained the mental toll the application takes for people, especially those with special needs. She told the Mirror: “He couldn’t do that because he’s got special needs. He doesn’t understand those forms, so people are excluded straight away. So they need help, and they need to pay for legal help because nobody’s available.
“When you’re writing it that’s when it starts to resurface. So it’s very traumatic because you have to relive everything. There’s no help – something like that you need counselling for because it’s trauma.”
In the letter, the group has set out three demands that they call on the Government in moving the Windrush Compensation Scheme out of the Home Office and placing it under an independent body, overseen by a judge or independent commissioner. They are also calling for guaranteed, non-means-tested legal assistance for all Windrush claimants at all stage of the process and for the scheme to include all losses and adopt a “soft edge” approach to evidence that recognises the difficulty of obtaining historical documents.
“Our communities know too well the pain of state betrayal. We have seen loved ones die awaiting justice. We have fought for decades against cover-ups, institutional defensiveness, and a culture that prioritises protecting the government over repairing the harm done to innocent people. That is why we speak with one voice today,” the signatories said in a joint statement.
With the proposed changes, Carlton may have a better chance of having his voice heard. After coming to the UK as a child after their parents were asked to help rebuild England, their father was in the Merchant Navy, while their mother came to the country to work as a nurse.
Carlton arrived in 1966 on a British passport. However after visiting Barbados he was later met with a shock when he was denied travel back to the country that had been his home for years. Deborah told the Mirror: “We never knew anything. So years passed, his British passport expired, and then when we went to renew it, they said to us ‘there’s no record of him.
“We didn’t know he was under the Windrush. We just thought that obviously something’s happening, we wasn’t sort of clued up with what was going on. We just kept ringing the Home Office and tried to renew his passport. I had to keep going backwards and forth to Barbados, there was times when he slept in the dog pen.”
In November 2024, 48 years later, they managed to bring him back. After calling the Home Office, they were advised he was part of the Windrush scandal. However, after Carlton and Deborah were under the impression he was finally going to get his life back, the Home Office explained he needed to leave the country or he would be deported.
Since then, Carlton has remained in the Caribbean. Deborah has sought legal help and resubmitted the application, hoping to bring her brother, now 69, home.
“They didn’t do any investigation, they didn’t do anything – they just made an assumption. I don’t know who’s making these decisions in these offices or what they’re doing, but it’s criminal, it’s absolutely criminal.”