Recommendation: ministers should admit that serious harm was inflicted on people who are British, and provide an unqualified apology to those affected

The review found that the government ignored repeated warnings, and that ministers were still failing to acknowledge the extent of suffering inflicted on thousands of people who were mistakenly classified as illegal immigrants by the Home Office. Throughout her interviews, Wendy Williams encountered a reflexively defensive position from senior civil servants and ministers. While officials agreed that the situation was “tragic”, there was a consistent desire to blame the individuals for failing to apply for documentation.

Officials told her: “It was the fault of the people caught up in it that they didn’t get evidence of their status and when they tried to, they didn’t provide the right documentation.” In the most strongly worded section of the report, Williams expresses frustration that ministers and senior officials did not appear to accept the full extent of the injustice done.

“Many gave the impression that the situation was unforeseen, unforeseeable and therefore unavoidable. Whereas, the evidence clearly shows that the sequence of events which culminated in the scandal, while unforeseen, was both foreseeable and avoidable.”

She concludes that unless there is a genuine acceptance of its failings, all attempts to right the wrongs of the Windrush generation will seem hollow, and warns that the department risks repeating the mistakes that led to the scandal.

Finding: race clearly played a part in what happened to the Windrush generation

Williams says she had “really serious concerns” about racism within the department. The report does not find that the Home Office was institutionally racist, but it offers a detailed analysis of how “thoughtlessness” and “ignorance” on race contributed to the scandal.

“I think it is unfortunate that most of the policymakers were white and most of the people involved were black,” a senior official told her. Williams finds a lack of understanding about the nature of racism: “There seems to be a misconception that racism is confined to decisions made with racist motivations … This is a misunderstanding of both the law and racism generally.” She notes that the Home Office failed to track “the racial impact of its policies and decisions”.

Recommendation: the department should establish a race advisory board, and teach staff about Britain’s colonial history

This may go some way to addressing ongoing concerns about whether the department is institutionally racist. Williams highlights the lack of ethnic diversity at senior levels in the Home Office, reflecting a pronounced disparity with the public it serves. Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff are predominantly concentrated in the lower grades, and in 2018 made up 26.14% and 26.33% of the two lowest grades respectively, but only 7.18% of the senior civil service roles. She finds there has been low take-up of unconscious bias training in the department. “The Windrush scandal was in part able to happen because of the public’s and officials’ poor understanding of Britain’s colonial history.”

A race advisory board might focus on improving these failings. But campaign groups want the government to go further. A group of 16 leading race equality organisations, led by the Runnymede Trust and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, has called on the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to investigate whether there is institutional racism in the Home Office.

Recommendation: the home secretary should commission officials to undertake a full review of the hostile/compliant environment policy and measures

The Home Office, under Theresa May, was aware of significant concerns about the potential for the hostile environment measures to result in discrimination, the review finds, adding: “Despite the warnings, the department failed to monitor, or properly evaluate, the effectiveness and impact of the compliant environment measures.”

The review makes clear that the roots of the scandal stretch back over decades, as immigration legislation was gradually tightened from 1948 onwards, and notes the responsibility of Labour governments in the 1990s onwards in tightening immigration controls. However, it pinpoints the development of hostile environment policies during May’s time at the Home Office as the moment at which problems escalated. The creation of the “hostile environment” was done with a “complete disregard” for the Windrush generation, the report finds. “Warning signs and messages about the hostile environment policy were not heeded.”

A key failure was a misplaced assumption in the impact assessments for the 2013 and 2015 immigration bills that those who were unable to prove that they were here legally were therefore here unlawfully. This was not the case. Around 17% of the UK population do not have passports, and until the introduction of the hostile environment most people had not needed them. After the report’s publication, Labour called for a repeal of hostile environment legislation, and the home secretary Priti Patel said she would review the report’s recommendations.

Finding: Windrush victims are still vulnerable to compliant environment measures

Some Windrush victims remain in severe financial and personal difficulties, facing homelessness and unemployment because of Home Office policies. Many people affected have not approached the Home Office because they remain scared of the threat of immigration enforcement action, Williams notes. The true scale of the problem remains unknown.

Finding: the department displayed a lack of empathy for individuals and used dehumanising jargon and cliches

Using words like “stock” and “flow” when describing immigration numbers is dehumanising, Williams says, criticising the way the department refers to people as a group, rather than recognising that individual lives are at stake. This language has “an impact on the attitudes and behaviour of staff towards people with whom they come into contact” – and contributes to officials “losing sight of individuals”. Initiatives like use of the “Go home” vans were “racially insensitive”, and should never be repeated.

Finding: the Home Office displayed “defensiveness, lack of awareness and an unwillingness to listen and learn from mistakes”.

This review follows numerous previous highly critical reports about the Home Office, published over the past 15 years. One senior official said: “The department has got used to being beaten up.”

This defensiveness meant that officials were unwilling to acknowledge the scale of what had gone wrong. “There is the sense that priorities and decisions have been driven by an overwhelming desire to defend positions of policy and strategy – often at the expense of defending individuals from the impact of policies.” The report recommends that officials be reminded of their duty to speak up when worried about the risks of policies and offer “candid” advice to ministers.

Recommendation: the department should be more proactive in identifying people affected

The government has admitted that over 160 people were wrongly detained or deported to Caribbean countries, but has never investigated who has been deported to other Commonwealth countries. Campaign groups will welcome the request that Home Office extend its own investigations into who it might have wrongly deported.

Finding: a ‘target-dominated’ work environment within the immigration system contributed to the scandal

Williams criticises a “target-dominated work environment within the immigration system and some low-quality decision making”, which combined with “operational and organisational failings” in the department to cause the detrimental treatment meted out to the Windrush generation. Some individual decision-makers operated an “irrational and unreasonable” approach to individuals, demanding multiple documents for proof of presence in the UK for each year of residence in the UK – despite there being no policy basis for this.