Sajid Javid this Tuesday said sorry to 18 Windrush generation members believed to have been wrongly detailed or deported. The Home Secretary issued the apology after a review of thousands of cases where people with Caribbean heritage could have been wrongly caught up in an immigration crackdown. He also revealed that the total number of individuals who might have been wrongly detained or removed could be as high as 164.
The news came in a letter to MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Committee updating them on the process of trawling through records.
The Windrush scandal came to a head earlier this year when it emerged hundreds of Commonwealth citizens who came to the UK in the years up to 1973 and were entitled to be in the country had been wrongly threatened with deportation.
It led to the resignation of Amber Rudd as Home Secretary and a Government promise of a compensation fund for those affected.
Mr Javid said work was still ongoing, but there appeared to be 164 people of Caribbean Commonwealth heritage who might have been in the UK before 1973. Of those, officials had identified 18 cases where individuals had lived in the UK but were unable to demonstrate their continuous residence, and were removed or detained as a result. He said of the 18 individuals, four were removed and two detained before May 2010 - when Labour was in government. Seven were removed and five detained after 2010, when the Tory-Lib Dem coalition came to power.
The Empire Windrush passenger ship docked at Tilbury from Jamaica. The 492 passengers were temporarily housed near Brixton in London. Over the following decades some 500,000 came to the UK. Many arrived on their parents' passports and were not formally naturalised as British citizens.
In 1973 a new immigration Act came into force putting the onus on individuals to prove they have previously been resident in the UK. In 2014 a protection that exempted Commonwealth residents from enforced removal was removed under a new law. Theresa May was Home Secretary at the time.
