Coroner reconsidering decision to look at role of Home Office policy in death of Dexter Bristol

A coroner is reconsidering her ruling that the role of the hostile environment policy in the death of a Windrush citizen should be examined at his inquest after the Home Office challenged her decision.

Mary Hassell, the senior coroner for inner north London, was sitting at a pre-inquest review hearing into the death aged 58 of Dexter Bristol, who had spent the last year of his life trying and failing to get the Home Office to acknowledge that he was not an illegal immigrant.

Hassell had decided that the role of the hostile environment should be considered in the inquest, after hearing evidence from lawyers for the Home Office and for Bristol’s family.

But after she made her decision, the Home Office’s barrister, Alan Payne QC, sought to persuade her that any stress caused to Bristol by the process of trying to regularise his immigration status did not engage the state’s duty to protect the right to life, known as an article 2 duty, and so the impact of Home Office policies on Bristol should not be included in the inquest.

The coroner agreed to delay making a final decision until she had received further written submissions from lawyers for the Home Office and Bristol’s family.

The Bristol family’s solicitor, Irene Nembhard, from Birnberg Peirce solicitors said the coroner’s change of heart was “a betrayal”.

Dexter Bristol’s case emerged as part of the Guardian’s coverage of the Windrush scandal, which highlighted the damaging impact of the Home Office’s hostile environment policy on many individuals.

Bristol moved from Grenada to the UK in 1968 when he was eight. He was sacked from his cleaning job in 2017 because he had no passport, and was denied benefits because officials did not believe he was in the country legally.

Until he was sacked, he had no idea there was any problem with his immigration status. He feared being deported after he was told he had no right to live and work in the UK.

Adam Straw, the Bristol family’s barrister, told the court: “He came here when he was eight but he was expected to prove every year of his residence.”

Straw cited a report to parliament’s public accounts committee in March this year that said the Home Office had not lived up to its promises to sort out problems exposed in the Windrush scandal. The report says the Home Office’s Windrush taskforce “does nothing to tackle the systemic issues that led to the problems in the first place”.

But Payne said Home Office practices had changed significantly since the Windrush scandal had emerged.

Straw urged the coroner to consider “systemic flaws” in Home Office immigration policies that could put life at risk by denying employment, benefits and free NHS healthcare.

When Hassell made her ruling she said the arguments were finely balanced. “I am just persuaded that there are grounds to suspect that the state may have been in breach so I say article 2 is engaged,” she ruled.

But Payne successfully persuaded Hassell to consider the matter further before making a final decision about whether to include the role of the hostile environment policy in the inquest. “What is the risk we’re being asked to consider? If it’s just stress the risk of stress cannot possibly amount to a risk to life,” he said.

Straw said Bristol’s family had obtained an expert medical report that found aspects of the hostile environment such as having to prove the right to be in the UK and the denial of work contributed to Dexter Bristol’s death.

Hassell said she would provide a written ruling after receiving the lawyers’ submissions.

Nembhard said: “The family is very disappointed that having made a decision about the scope of the inquest the coroner was persuaded by the Home Office’s lawyer to review that decision, particularly because the home secretary met privately with Dexter’s mother, Sentina D’Artagnan Bristol. This feels like a complete betrayal. The family believe and have evidence to show that Home Office immigration policies put Dexter Bristol’s life at risk and contributed to his death.”