Keir Starmer promises Windrush families he'll 'turbo-charge' compensation scheme

22 June 2024 , 20:33

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The Labour leader spent time with members of the Windrush generation at a school in Vauxhall (Image: PA)

Keir Starmer promised Windrush families he would “turbo-charge” the compensation scheme for those affected by the scandal

The Labour leader spent time with people who came to the UK during the 1970s at a coffee morning in Vauxhall, London to mark Windrush day. It’s 76 years since passengers disembarked from HMT Empire Windrush in Tilbury, Essex - many of them arriving from the Caribbean to plug a labour shortage in the UK.

A scandal emerged in 2018 when some members of the Windrush generation were wrongly detained, deported or threatened with deportation despite having the right to work in the UK - after the Home Office made an “operational decision” to destroy registry slips some years beforehand.

Labour have pledged to re-establish the ‘Windrush Unit’ - a specialist team working inside the Home Office, and to appoint a commissioner to be a “champion for the Windrush generation.”

Labour vowed to appoint a "Windrush Commissioner" (PA)

The party has also said it would look at ways to streamline the Government’s compensation application form, improve language support for claimants, speed up compensation, an implement the recommendations which Wendy Williams made in her independent Windrush Lessons Learned Review.

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“But,” he said, “we also want to use the day to tell and retell the exeriences and stories.”

He said of the people he spoke to at the coffee morning: “Windrush is part of their history, but also the history of this country. So yes, there’s the formal bits - compensation units in the Home Office, etc - but there’s a wider bit, which is the change they’ve made to our country which has made our country a better place. And I think we need to celebrate that today, and actually every day.” Speaking after meeting the families, he said the issue of slow compensation came up quickly during discussions.

“They’re too slow, and too many people have died already before they’ve got the compensation they’re entitled to,” he said.

In January this year, the Tory Government’s legal migration minister Tom Pursglove told the Commons the Windrush Compensation Scheme was aware of 53 claimants who had died after they submitted a claim.

Mikey Smith