Thread by @JolyonMaugham

🚨Thread🚨
“I got more stressed trying to get the information they” - the Windrush Compensation Scheme - “were asking, than actually losing my passport.”

Welcome to the ‘hostile compensation scheme’, a service brought to you, the taxpayer, by @ukhomeoffice. [1/25]

So you’ve had your life and livelihood upended by the whims of a puerile govt policy pursuing a populist project that runs contrary to the staggering weight of evidence derived from economics, history and demographic science! Ain’t that something? [2/25]

Chin up - here is a Compensation Scheme we’ve designed to make amends for our unjust, racist ways. Just one thing though: if you want some of this money, there are some forms to fill out, and we’ll need some supporting evidence. Nothing tricky... [3/25]

Just some proof from people you went to school with 40-odd years ago, letters from companies that *didn’t* employ you 20+ years ago explaining they didn’t employ you bc we made it impossible for them to do so, that sort of thing. [4/25]

Oh, you’re British? Sure thing. Just send over copies of the birth certificates of your parents who were born in other Commonwealth countries in the early part of the 20th century when records like that were kept on paper, likely in regional or provincial registry offices. [5/25]

Look at all this stuff you’ve pieced together by traversing a couple of continents at your own expense, wrestling foreign bureaucrats, tracking down people you knew for a couple of years a lifetime ago! Just leave that with us, and we’ll be sure to get you some money out. [6/25]

When? You want to know WHEN we’ll give you this money we promised you? Like, a specific time? Ahh, you know what it’s like, all these computers, internal *mumbles*, and this *points to nothing in particular*. We’re on it though. It’s coming. Real soon. [7/25]

This is a pattern of conduct that re-traumatises victims of the #WindrushInjustice, as ex-HO official @cheamfields has noted. As should be obvious - most of all to @ukhomeoffice - Windrush victims have gone through this once already. It’s why the Scheme exists. [8/25]

In anticipation of the responses these charges attract, we’re going to list the stock phrases and explanations that make up the @ukhomeoffice playbook. Let’s play HO-bingo. [9/25]

“Since April 2019 the Scheme has paid or offered £18 million. Of this, more than £6.1 million have been accepted and paid, an increase of £2 million in one month.” That’s of an estimated total of between £200-500m, i.e. between 3.6% and 9%. [10/25] questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questi…

“In December, we announced a significant package of measures to the Windrush Compensation Scheme so that those affected will receive significantly more money, much more quickly.” This one is all about relativity. [11/25]

Yes, it’s significantly more than the chump change you *were* handing out, in the sense that any positive integer is in fact greater than zero. That doesn’t exactly make you Oprah, Priti Patel. And as for the *speed* at which this debacle is progressing… [12/25] @WindrushLives

...by @ukhomeoffice’s own admission, this is moving at about the speed (and with about equivalent grace) of treacle being pushed up a hill. [13/25]

“We are working hard with the Windrush community to ‘right the wrongs’ of the Windrush scandal.” The Windrush community has heard this phrase *so often* that it provokes a visceral outpouring of disgust. Saying something over and over does not make it true. [14/25]

There is a deeper point there too. The phrase is bereft of meaning in part bc it’s not clear that @ukhomeoffice understands what “the wrongs” actually are - that much is clear in the continued existence of the hostile environment, and every single thing Priti Patel says. [15/25]

You cannot be “righting” (ugh) the wrongs if you’re still very much doing the wrongs. You’ve seen our earlier thread of passport confiscations - that is just one example of an ongoing #WindrushInjustice, and one @ukhomeoffice has yet to acknowledge. [16/25]

An unknown number of the Windrush generation remain stranded overseas, having been refused re-entry after going abroad. We’re being very precise there - @ukhomeoffice itself has no idea how many people fall into that category. [17/25]

Richard Black is just one example. Here is @Nadine_Writes’ excellent coverage of his story. Richard was unlawfully refused re-entry to the UK nearly *40 yrs ago*, and he is only now set to return, in lockstep with increased media attention. [18/25] independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…

In that lifetime, Richard had a daughter. B/c her father was wrongfully denied his British citizenship, Marissa has in turn grown up away from her mother, who *was* allowed back into the UK, and her siblings. They are not accounted for in any statistics we’re aware of. [19/25]

Any mention of such egs will draw out the stock phrase: “We are unable to comment on individual cases and circumstances.” Ok. So you don’t have overall statistics, and you won’t address individual cases. Is there some other descriptive unit known only to @ukhomeoffice? [20/25]

That phrase also gets dusted off when victims attempt to hold officials to account at Windrush “engagement events”. The putative purpose of these events is for victims to get information about the wonderful things @ukhomeoffice is doing for them. [21/25]

But if you show up and attempt to ask qs about, y’know, why none of the things promised are actually happening, you are told that your “individual case” can’t possibly be commented on. Gaslighting like this doesn’t exist outside Philip Pullman novels. [22/25]

This refusal to engage has gone so far that @ukhomeoffice has, as of the most recent “engagement event” shut down the question function that was previously available for claimants to put queries to attending officials. Literal no-platforming. [23/25]

You’re going to hear from claimants later today that the only solution to this mess is to take the Compensation Scheme away from @ukhomeoffice, despite the fact that that will mean further delays. Persevering with this is throwing good money after bad, no pun intended. [24/25]

It comes down to this: the Scheme, unfit for purpose by design, is being run in a way that frustrates claims. When claims do make it through, it is *years* after the fact. Windrushers are an aging, ailing cohort who have already suffered too much. Enough is enough. [25/25]