Home Office plans to overhaul “thoroughly discredited” hostile environment policies show the government has failed to learn from the Windrush scandal, immigration experts have said.
A task force is being set up to tackle illegal immigration, the Home Office announced on Sunday. As well as blocking access to banking for those without immigration status, it intends to find new ways to check people’s immigration status when using schools or the NHS.
Immigration Secretary Robert Jerrick is leading an interagency task force to cut many services for those without status. Tightening access to rental housing, bank accounts, health care, education, driver’s licenses and public funds will be addressed.
Jacqueline McKenzie, who represented many of the original Windrush victims and is a partner at law firm Leigh Day, said: “The hostile environment has never gone away, but the appearance of the language has changed. But it’s still alarming to hear of an official resurgence of ideas.
She added: “Given that the Windrush scandal is far from resolved, now is not the time for the Government to reinstate the same systems and policies that have been completely discredited.”
Jenrick said: “Illegal work causes untold harm to communities, tricking honest workers into employment, putting vulnerable people at risk and defrauding the public purse. Our immigration enforcement teams work to bring those who break our laws to justice. Our priority is to tackle this crime and enable law enforcement to remove illegal migrants.
However, 21 unions also accused the government of allowing further exploitation of migrant and undocumented workers by reverting to hostile environment policies.
Unison, the UK’s biggest trade union, and the PCS union, the biggest public sector union, are among those who have written to the government, arguing that its policies, along with temporary visa schemes, will expose migrant workers to increased risk of abuse.
Commenting on the latest rhetoric, McKenzie said: “Once again a Home Secretary wants to put non-state actors in a position to eavesdrop and pass on information they hold in confidence. Arguing that it needs to check illegal work, the government has pushed the idea that migrants are stealing British jobs, but has not provided any evidence or data to support its claim.
The power to freeze bank accounts was suspended in the wake of the Windrush scandal. A government watchdog found in 2017 that one in 10 people denied a bank account because of a failed immigration check were wrongly denied access.
A decision to reintroduce checks was signaled by Rishi Sunak last month when he promised to improve the asylum backlog.
Daniel Sohege, director of human rights group Stand For All, said: “These measures end up only depriving people of security and placing them in precarious positions, which can make them vulnerable to being undocumented and even exploited.” When you have an error rate as high as the last time these types of measures were tried, the inevitable result is disenfranchisement of innocent people.
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Sohege said the latest announcement was an attempt to deflect from serious issues facing the country, such as the cost of living crisis and challenges in the NHS.
“It’s a desperate move to try to avoid dealing with really important issues while trying to look like you’re taking some form of action,” he said. “The irony is that immigration is essential to solving the very problems, such as staff shortages, that the government is using this renewed hostile environment to avoid talking about.”
Stephen Kinnock, shadow immigration secretary, said: “Every time the Conservatives turn up the rhetoric, they end up making things worse. They have smashed our asylum system – as shown by the fact that they have failed to stop migrant children being abducted from hotels by criminal gangs, with 79 still missing from just one hotel in Sussex. Their chaos fuels crime and exploitation. We know from the Windrush scandal that they cannot be trusted to put adequate safeguards in place. They are also failing to crack down on employers who exploit migrant workers after failing to create the single employment enforcement body they promised in the 2019 manifesto – which Labor and the unions called for.”
Rob McNeil, deputy director of the Oxford University Migration Observatory, said: “Many of the original ‘hostile environment’ policies introduced by Theresa May a decade ago are still in place – penalties for landlords who rent to illegal migrants and to employers who hire workers without proof of their legal status, for example. Furthermore, there is little evidence that many of the punitive measures actually deter illegal migration or force illegal migrants to leave the UK.
“A review by the Government’s independent Chief Inspector for Borders and Immigration found evidence that some of these policies have contributed to discrimination against many migrants and minority communities in the UK quite legally. One result of this was the Windrush scandal.
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
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