Home Office ‘runs risk of another Windrush’ if it doesn’t transform culture, independent reviewer says
The Home Office runs the risk of another Windrush scandal if it doesn’t implement further “systemic and cultural” changes, an inspection report has found.
Independent expert Wendy Williams said that the department was at a “tipping point”, between making the changes necessary and losing focus.
Commenting on her findings, Ms Williams added: “It may only be a matter of time before it faces another difficult outcome.”
Pressed on whether the Home Office could see a repeat of the Windrush scandal, she said: “The department runs the risk of another incident whatever that entails and I think my report speaks for itself.”
In the report, Ms Williams concluded that she was “disappointed by the lack of tangible progress or drive to achieve the cultural changes required”.
Responding to the findings, home secretary Priti Patel said that she had “laid the foundations for radical change in the department and a total transformation of culture.”
Wendy Williams was appointed in 2018 to investigate the causes of the Windrush scandal, which saw people with a right to live in the UK wrongfully detained or deported to the Caribbean.
Her initial review into the failings found that the Home Office had demonstrated “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness” towards the issue of race.
She was invited back by the Home Secretary to see how the recommendations from her initial review had been implemented.
In the updated report, released on Thursday, Ms Williams praised the department for positive steps made in some areas, saying that there was a “real desire” for change within the Home Office.
She also acknowledged that “in an organisation as large as the Home Office, the scale of change envisaged in my report takes time.”
However she raised the Home Office’s failure to engage with the public as a concern.
She urged senior leaders in the Home Office to set up meetings with the people affected by the Windrush scandal “without delay”.
Ms Williams told reporters: “I spoke to people affected and to my mind they were still of the view that they couldn’t draw a line under what had happened.
“The majority of them said they were sceptical, saying: ‘we don’t think the department’s changed.”
Her 2020 report into the scandal made 30 recommendations for improvements to the Home Office, but Ms Williams said that only eight have been fully implemented.
21 of the recommendations have been met or partially met however and she told reporters that she did see “commitment at the most senior levels” for further change.
She added: “I did also see a great deal of commitment on the front line.”
One key change put forward was to build a “more compassionate Home Office”, but over half of the people Ms Williams surveyed said that they thought there had been “no progress at all” or “not much progress” towards this goal.
