Patrick Vernon

‘Hurry for justice’: Windrush victims dying without redress, commissioner says

The Windrush scandal continues to cast a long shadow over the lives of thousands of British residents who were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants. Now, the Windrush commissioner, Clive Foster, has warned that time is running out to deliver justice.

Speaking at a people’s inquiry symposium in north London, Rev Foster called for urgent action to ensure redress for those affected. “We are sadly losing many of that generation who suffered and time is not on our side. I am a man in a hurry for justice,” he said. Foster, a pastor from Nottingham whose parents arrived in the UK from Jamaica in 1959, was appointed to oversee the government’s response to the scandal.

The scandal came to national attention in 2017 through investigative reporting by The Guardian, revealing that thousands of lawful UK residents — many from the Caribbean — had been wrongly labelled immigration offenders under the government’s “hostile environment” policy.

Since then, government schemes have granted documentation to around 17,000 people, while 2,600 out of 8,800 compensation claims had been paid as of July 2024. Yet for many, the process remains slow, bureaucratic and retraumatising.

At the symposium, survivors and campaigners renewed calls for a statutory public inquiry and legislative reform. Concerns were also raised about whether political shifts — including the possibility of a future Reform government — could stall progress.

Among those still impacted is Deborah, supporting her brother in Barbados after he was unable to return to the UK despite arriving as a Commonwealth citizen in 1966. After being directed to apply to the compensation scheme, her family’s claim was rejected due to insufficient documentation. She has since travelled to Barbados to gather further evidence. “There’s so much negligence,” she said. “There’s got to be a public inquiry and the voices of the victims heard and listened to.”

Campaigners such as Garrick Prayogg argue that only legislative change — particularly dismantling elements of the hostile environment policy — can prevent what some fear could become a “next generation of Windrush”.

Meanwhile, Patrick Vernon, who led a parliamentary petition on the scandal in 2018, has questioned disparities in treatment. He has called for a public inquiry and for the compensation scheme to be moved away from the Home Office, asking why those affected appear to receive less support compared to victims of other national scandals, such as the Post Office and infected blood cases.

The message from the symposium was clear: apologies are not enough. As members of the Windrush generation grow older and pass away, justice delayed increasingly risks becoming justice denied.