Corporate report

Minutes of the Windrush Cross-Government Working Group: 28 October 2021 (accessible version)

Updated 4 March 2024

Date: 28 October 2021

Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm

Venue: Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, Westminster (dial in-options available)

Chair: Home Secretary Rt Hon Priti Patel MP and Bishop Derek Webley MBE DL

Secretariat: Shakila Bukhari

Attendees: For a full list of attendees see Annex A

Apologies: For a full list of apologies please see Annex A

Copies to: Members of the Windrush Cross-Government Working Group

Welcome and opening remarks

1. The Home Secretary and Bishop Webley opened the fourth meeting of the Windrush Cross-Government Working Group meeting. In her opening remarks, the Home Secretary introduced Minister Kevin Foster to the meeting. Minister Foster will be supporting the Home Secretary on Windrush, including with the Windrush Working Group and on the work the department is doing on Windrush lessons learned implementation and righting the wrongs suffered by the Windrush generation.

2. The Home Secretary remarked on the powerful agenda and described her morning visit to Thames Valley Police where she heard from officers who explained the importance of an open culture. The Home Secretary re-iterated her full commitment to righting the wrongs of Windrush, thanked the Windrush Working Group for all their work and feedback, and emphasised the open-door policy she holds, which includes wanting to know about any concerns the Windrush Working Group may have. The Home Secretary acknowledged there was more work to do.

3. The Home Secretary explained that she would need to leave the meeting early to attend to government business and that she would hand over to Minister Foster to co-Chair the remainder of the meeting. Minister Foster thanked attendees for welcoming him to the meeting and said he looked forward to supporting the Home Secretary on Windrush. The Home Secretary handed over to Bishop Webley to open the agenda item on celebrating Black History Month across government.

Marking Black History Month across government

4. Bishop Webley invited the Home Office Second Permanent Secretary, Tricia Hayes, to say a few words on celebrating Black History Month.

5. The Second Permanent Secretary reported wanting to get right the balance of voices across the organisation and the importance of openness and collaboration, before setting out the broad programme of events running across the Home Office during Black History Month including: hearing from black senior leaders about their experiences of working in government; and a feature in Black History Month Magazine talking to the Permanent Secretaries and others about the department’s commitment to improving representation at all levels of the organisation.

6. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) representative, Squadron Leader Kyle Roachford spoke about his 18-year military career supporting positive education, learning and development. He also remarked on the need to tell our positive stories and that diverse and representative recruitment at senior level is important because if ‘you recruit people like yourself then the problem never changes.’ The Home Secretary invited the MoD representative to the Home Office to help challenge conventional leadership approaches. She also spoke about the recruitment of 20,000 police officers and the importance of being ethnically diverse to help move the needle on representative workforce and leadership. The Independent Person, Martin Levermore, thanked MoD and acknowledged that you have to ‘see it to be it’ to encourage people to reach for senior ranks, and that it was not just about what other communities can do but what all communities can do to advocate for power of those who are underrepresented and have endured challenges.

7. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) representative updated on its work including ‘Proud to be’, the newly formed Criminal Justice Race Networks Alliance, and reviewing public service delivery looking at accountability. The Home Secretary commended MoJ’s work and remarked on the importance of showing join-up and consistencies across government on race and policy making.

8. The Group also heard from representatives from: Department for Education on their work including ‘Proud to be’ and education and music; Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on their work on an inclusive leadership programme; and No 10 on their work on inspiring service with Colour Sargeant Johnson Beharry VC who led an event with pupils from three schools, as well as work around widening opportunity and levelling up with events with Color in Tech and the 10,000 Black Interns programme, whose young recruits formed the focus of the annual Black History Month reception with the Prime Minister. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) representative spoke about inviting Anton Ferdinand to talk to staff about his life and family. The Home Secretary invited several representatives including MoJ and No 10 into the Home Office, to share their learning with the department. Written updates were also provided by the Department for Health and Social Care and Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.

9. Bishop Webley invited other representatives to share additional thoughts or views for onward sharing with other departments with the Secretariat and remarked that Celebrating Black History should not be confined to a month.

Showcasing government-funded work with communities across the UK

10. The Chair of Sub-group 2 (Windrush Community Fund and Windrush Schemes), Paulette Simpson, presented a ‘Show and Tell’ of government-funded, community projects running across the UK, including the Home Office funded Windrush Community Fund and DLUHC funded Windrush Day Grant. The presentation included videos, infomercials and fliers, showing community groups across the UK raising awareness of the Windrush Schemes (Windrush Community Fund projects) and celebrating Windrush Day (Windrush Day Grant projects). Paulette Simpson emphasised the geographical spread of projects across the UK, the reach across generations and to communities wider than the Caribbean.

11. The presentation was well-received and attendees commended the work done by Sub-group 2 to make the projects a reality. A link to the material in the presentation can be found here: Windrush Community Fund Phase 1: projects. There was some discussion about the need to measure whether the objectives of the Fund were being met, keep an eye on the numbers of claims and to promote the outputs of the Community Fund. The Independent Person commented on the need to discuss immigration in the context of the 72 nationalities, development, growth and narrative. DLUHC reported that the impact of the 2020 Windrush Day Grant Scheme meant 41 projects were completed. Over 95,000 people were reached, approximately 300 volunteers devoted 9000 hours had been spent on making the projects happen and 80% of projects said they would continue beyond the life of the grant. Taking press, radio coverage, online content, and social media into account, the evaluation estimated the scheme reached over 2 million people.

12. Everyone agreed that the presentation showed that joined up working is a must. Bishop Webley thanked Paulette Simpson and the Secretariat for their work.

Updates from Home Office

13. Windrush Programme Team – The Head of the Windrush Programme Team, Kate Ridley-Moy provided an update on the Windrush Programme. She reported that Wendy Williams had returned to the department after 18 months, and was speaking to people as part of her evidence gathering and that staff were keen to show her the work they had done. Kate Ridley-Moy also reported on the work being done by the Windrush Engagement team in India and beyond, with High Commissioners from affected countries around the world and in the UK, and the Engagement Team have key work to deliver over the next six months. Bishop Webley commented that engagement from the Windrush Working Group was going beyond the Caribbean.

14. Bishop Joe Aldred reminded the Group that rather than the generally used narrative about re-building Britain post the second world war, historically, while the UK needed immigration to help rebuild the country after the war, the main factor that drove Caribbean to the UK was to build better lives for themselves and their families and that must be included in the narrative.

15. The Head of Windrush Policy, Gabi Monk, introduced herself to the Group. She reported that over 13,000 individuals had now been given documents to confirm their individual status and teams were working to evidence their status. Gabi Monk also spoke of the importance of engaging with communities to build trust and that the end date for the Windrush Compensation Scheme had been removed. In response to questions around communicating expected timeframes for dealing with claims, and the amount of time it was taking to process claims, Gabi Monk reported that an additional 59 Home Office staff will be in post by Christmas and will be trained to support case work. She added that the department was making more and significantly higher payments at around £1m per month but there was more to do. She recognised the need to make the system more accessible, speedy and as less threatening as possible. In addition, work is being undertaken to assess how quickly claims can be processed and how to communicate this, and that cases in the system from 2020 are being processed first. In response to questions about how high the actual numbers of people eligible to make claims are, Gabi Monk explained that while it was a challenge to say with certainty, the department has revised figures downwards in terms of planning and this needs to be communicated to communities and that the department would like to see more applications. Kate Ridley-Moy added that following some research, it appeared that a relatively small proportion of those applying for status planned to out in claims for compensation, but we are keen to reach those that are. Tony Sewell added that the message in terms of numbers, proportion and percentage needed to be understood and conveyed. It was agreed that Sub-group 2 would take this forward.

16. The Head of the Communications Team, Ben Biddulph, reported on the Communications work. He reported that the team had been continuing to try to get more balanced and positive messages into the media Phase 2 of the Communications campaign has been launched complimenting the Community Fund initiative with a focus on media outlets, paid for outlets across diasporas wider than the Caribbean, and that the team is producing video case studies of people who have been successful in their claims. Ben Biddulph expressed his gratitude to the Windrush Working Group for their challenge, support and insight. Bishop Webley thanked everyone for their work and recognised the work going on outside the meeting.

Update from Independent Person, Martin Levermore

17. The Independent Person, Martin Levermore provided an update on his work. He supported and reaffirmed the work being done by Kate Ridley-Moy and Gabi Monk and recognised the incredibly hard environment that the Home Office is working in, given the mistrust in the communities. He noted the need for joint agencies to work together and talked through his work meeting Metro Mayors, using trusted third parties to assist people. Martin Levermore spoke of the need to change the narrative and think about who and why we are targeting some communities. He praised churches and spoke about the need to engage non-faith groups and that the narrative can be told through children’s voices who can articulate to families and next of kin.

Closing remarks

18. Bishop Webley thanked everyone in the Windrush Working Group for all their work, and acknowledged that while everyone may have different challenges and perspectives, the Group all wanted to work together.

19. Minister Foster closed the meeting by saying he was glad to be working with the Windrush Cross-Government Working Group and that he was pleased to be picking up additional work on Windrush. He remarked on the need to look forwards and reiterated the positive work he has seen where the department is learning lessons from Windrush and applying them to the immigration system, especially our work on Face behind the Case, and the lessons taken onboard with the EUSS scheme.

Annex A

Attendees

Stakeholder members:

• Dr Joe Aldred (National Church Leaders Forum)
• Loanna Morrison (Journalist and founder of London Apprenticeship Fair)
• Kunle Olulode (Director, Voice4Change England)
• Dr Tony Sewell (Chief Executive, Generating Genius; Chair of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities)
• Paulette Simpson (Executive Director, ‘The Voice’)

Martin Levermore (Independent Adviser to the Windrush Compensation Scheme)

Other government department representatives:

• Jean Wilson (Deputy Director, Service Planning and Delivery, DWP)
• Inderjit Sanghera (DfE)
• Anojan Ratnarajah (FCDO)
• Ben Greener (Deputy Director, DLUHC)
• Samantha Des Forges (Director, HR, MOD)
• Kyle Roachford (MOD)
• Michael Warren (Director, Labour Markets, BEIS)
• Roshnee Patel (Deputy Director, Legal Support and Fees Policy, Access to Justice)

Myles Stacey (No 10 SpAd)

Sarah Cooper-Lesadd (Private Secretary to the Minister for Investment)

Home Office representatives:

• Minister Foster (Minister for Future Borders and Immigration)
• Tricia Hayes (Second Permanent Secretary)
• Harrison Worrell (Private Secretary to Home Secretary)
• Conor McMahon (Private Secretary to Minister Foster)
• Annabel Green (Private Secretary to Tricia Hayes)

Kate Ridley-Moy (Deputy Director, Windrush Lessons Learned Review Implementation Team)

Ben Biddulph (Windrush Communications)

Gabrielle Monk (Deputy Director, Head of Windrush Compensation Scheme)

Angela Wilson (Secretariat, Home Office)

Shakila Bukhari (Secretariat, Home Office)

Mark Cunningham (Secretariat, Home Office)

Apologies

Stakeholder Members

• Duwayne Brooks (Managing Director, Active Community Engagement and Development)
• Blondel Cluff (Chief Executive, West India Committee)

Other government department representative

Cathy Morgan – Department for Health and Social Care

Home Office representative

Matthew Rycroft – Permanent Secretary Home Office