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The Interior Ministry violated the equality law when it introduced its immigration measures in hostile environments, a critical report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (ECHR) concluded.
The department now has a legal duty to review these policies to ensure that they are not racially discriminatory and that they comply with equality legislation, the rights body announced.
In the latest damning report on the Home Office’s record on its hostile environmental policies and the Windrush scandal, the EHRC study found “a lack of commitment” within the Home Office to the importance of equality.
The negative consequences of the hostile environment were “repeatedly ignored, dismissed, or their severity ignored,” according to the report. “This was particularly the case when they were seen as a barrier to implementing hostile environmental policies in a highly politicized environment.”
The department’s approach to its legal duty to ensure that its policies complied with the legalization of equality was “superficial,” the study concluded.
The Home Office will need to launch a review of its hostile environmental measures (now known as compliant environmental policies) to make sure they comply with equality legislation, particularly with regard to race.
Caroline Waters, Acting President of the EHRC, said the policies would look “very different” once this review is complete. “We would expect them to be different, because we found that equality is generally discarded or overlooked,” he said.
In its report, the EHRC assessed how and if the Interior Ministry complied with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), a legal requirement since 2010, by developing, implementing and monitoring the hostile environmental policy agenda, particularly when considering its impact on black members of the Windrush generation.
It found that officials did not appreciate the severity of the negative impacts of its policy on this group of people. Even as the damaging consequences of hostile environmental policies began to emerge, the department did not engage with representatives of the Windrush generation.
The report found that “there was a limited focus on meeting the political commitment to reduce immigration and a culture in which equality was not seen as important. Therefore, the identification of risks to equality was not encouraged. “
The EHRC detected a “lack of commitment throughout the organization, including from top management, to the importance of equality and the obligations of the Ministry of the Interior under the public sector’s duty of equality. Some officials had the misconception that immigration was exempt from all equality legislation. “
Theresa May introduced a series of hostile environmental policies in 2012 during a campaign to reduce net migration; The measures made it more difficult for people without documentation proving their right to be in the UK to find work, rent property, access health care and open bank accounts. Large numbers of people who had the right to live in the UK, but without documentation, were adversely affected by the policies.
Waters said that if the Home Office had fulfilled its duties to consider the impact of its policies on racial equality, the Windrush scandal could have been avoided. “This is a very shocking report. It was a very political environment; there was a very clear direction to reduce immigration.
“The Home Office failed to fulfill its obligations under the public sector equality policy and that failure has contributed absolutely to the grave injustices suffered by the Windrush generation.”
Satbir Singh, executive director of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said activists had repeatedly warned the Interior Ministry that hostile environmental policies would lead to severe discrimination. He called on the government to repeal hostile environmental legislation. Successive home secretaries ignored these warnings. Today’s landmark EHRC report confirms that this was not only dangerous, it was illegal. The Home Office has for too long been concerned more with its reputation and political goals than with the actual consequences of its decisions on individuals. “
Halima Begum, Director of the Runnymede Trust, said: “This latest report is further evidence of the discriminatory nature of the hostile environment of the government. The report’s findings are nothing short of a national scandal. “
A Home Office spokesperson said: “This report highlights important areas for Home Office improvement, building on the work we are already doing in response to the Windrush Lessons Learned Review to apply a more rigorous approach to formulating policies, increase openness to scrutiny and create a more inclusive workforce, including by launching comprehensive training for all who work in the Home Office to ensure they understand and appreciate the history of migration and race in this country . We are working closely with the EHRC on an action plan designed to ensure that we never make similar mistakes in the future. “
Harsh Environment and Critical Wind Reports
November 2020, ECHR Report: Evaluation of the public sector’s duty to equality in hostile environmental policies.
The Home Office violated the equality law when it introduced its immigration measures in hostile environments
September 2020, IPPR Research Paper: Access Denied: The Human Impact of the Hostile Environment.
The ‘hostile environment’ policy has fostered racism, pushed people into poverty and wrongly targeted people living legally in the UK. The measures also failed to achieve their key goal of increasing the number of people choosing to voluntarily leave the UK.
March 2020, Independent Review of the Causes of the Windrush Scandal: Review of Lessons Learned from Wendy Williams.
The Home Office demonstrated an “ignorance and disregard” towards the issue of race and the history of the Windrush generation consistent with elements of institutional racism. The warnings were repeatedly ignored. The scandal was “foreseeable and avoidable”, and came about in part because of “officials’ poor understanding of Britain’s colonial history.”
March 2019, report of the public accounts committee.
The Home Office made life-changing decisions based on incorrect data, and despite the Windrush scandal, it remains complacent about its systemic and cultural problems. The Home Office showed a lack of concern about the impacts of its immigration policies on people without documents,
December 2018 National Audit Office: “Managing the Windrush situation”
He criticized officials for poor quality data that misclassified people as illegal immigrants, risky use of deportation targets, poor value for money offered by hostile environmental policies, failure to respond to numerous warnings that policies they would harm people living in the UK legally.
July 2018, home affairs committee: The Windrush Generation
Members of the “Windrush generation” have been treated as if they were in the country illegally despite having been legal residents for many decades. People have lost their homes and jobs, and have been denied health care, pensions and access to social security.
June 2018, Joint Human Rights Committee: Arrest of Windrush Generation
We consider that in all probability there was a systemic failure.
