A committee of MPs has called for urgent ‘root and branch reform’ of the Home Office’s approach to immigration, warning that the Windrush generation was ‘badly let down’ and subjected to processes seemingly designed to ‘set them up to fail’. The Home Affairs Committee criticised the ‘hostile environment’ policy and questioned whether it should continue in its current form.
Committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper said thousands of people had been ‘denied their rights and treated appallingly by the Home Office’, adding that there was ‘still a very long way to go to put this right or to ensure it won’t happen again’. The report highlighted a culture of scepticism and suspicion, a lack of discretion, and insufficient checks and balances within the immigration system.
The MPs raised concerns that enforcement targets may have encouraged a focus on groups like the Windrush generation, who were easier to detain and remove. They also warned that without lessons learned, similar mistakes could affect 144,000 undocumented children in Britain and three million EU nationals seeking settled status after Brexit.
The Home Office responded by saying Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s top priority is to ‘right the wrongs that have occurred’, and that a lessons learned review with independent oversight will be conducted. However, the committee described the rebranding of the ‘hostile environment’ as a ‘meaningless’ exercise and called for more transparency on wrongful deportations and detentions.
