The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has concluded that the Home Office broke the law when it introduced the hostile environment policy, confirming the Windrush scandal as a double failure. The EHRC found that officials failed to properly assess whether the harsh immigration policies drawn up in 2012 would be racially discriminatory, leading to British citizens, mostly of Caribbean heritage, being denied healthcare, forced into destitution, or deported.
The report highlighted a culture in the Home Office driven by a “narrow focus on delivering the political commitment of reducing immigration” where equality was not seen as important. Officials repeatedly ignored warnings from campaigners, such as the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, that policies would discriminate against people with a right to live in the UK.
The hostile environment is part of a wider pattern of failures. In 2018, it emerged that up to 7,000 foreign students were wrongly accused of cheating on English tests, with some deported. In 2017, a court ruled the Home Office unlawfully deported homeless EU citizens under a discriminatory policy. This year, the “right to rent” scheme requiring landlords to check immigration status was found to cause racial discrimination.
Earlier failures include the fast-track immigration detention system, a New Labour policy, ended in 2015 after the high court declared it “structurally unfair”. Up to 10,000 people may have been denied a fair asylum hearing. The EHRC report confirmed a finding from the Windrush Lessons Learned review that senior Home Office staff appeared to assume the Equality Act did not apply to immigration control.
The report underscores that when immigration control becomes the overriding priority, people's rights get trampled. As Gracie Bradley of Liberty noted after the report: “You can’t have a hostile environment without breaching equality and human rights laws, and increasing surveillance of everyone.”
