Home Office to hire Windrush tsar on £130k salary
The Home Office is seeking a £130,000 Windrush tsar with 'lived experience' of the scandal to help steer immigration policy.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has opened an application for an adviser who will ensure that Britain's 'homeland security and public safety' are informed by the Windrush scandal.
Labour has pledged to speed up compensation for victims of the scandal in which more than 80 people, mainly of Caribbean origin, were wrongly deported.
The Home Office has stated that the department 'ideally' wants the new tsar to have 'lived experience' of the scandal.
Lived experience is not necessarily expertise in a particular area, but personal familiarity with it, often related to their identity.
The successful applicant will then be tasked with ensuring that the Home Office properly implements the recommendations for handling the Windrush scandal, published in 2020.
These included running 'reconciliation events', in the style of South African truth and reconciliation panels post-apartheid, with victims recounting their experience in front of Home Office ministers and staff.
This plan was previously rejected by Suella Braverman, the former home secretary.
Seema Malhotra, the migration and citizenship minister, said the planned new Windrush commissioner would be a major step in 'delivering the change that the victims of this scandal want and deserve to see'.
She added: 'This independent advocate will ensure the voices of victims and communities are heard and acted on throughout government.
'By engaging with communities, driving improvements, and holding government to account, the commissioner will help ensure that lasting change is delivered and the lessons of the past are truly learned.'
The commissioner will work a minimum of three days a week, according to job application details, and should have a 'commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and cultural sensitivity'.
They should also be able to 'sustain effective relationships with diverse stakeholders such as communities', the Government, and public bodies.
The Home Office has stated in a diversity section on the job application information page that 'boards of public bodies are most effective when they reflect the diversity of views of the society they serve'.
The advisory role will have broad scope, and the commission will be expected to 'embed the principles and the lessons from the Windrush Review into every aspect of our work within the Home Office on immigration, homeland security and public safety'.
The commissioner will work with the post-Windrush transformation unit, a group shut down by the Tory government which was tasked with overseeing the official response to the scandal.
Ms Cooper also released £1.5 million of funding to support advocacy on behalf of potential Windrush victims.
The Windrush scandal relates to people who arrived in Britain, largely from the Caribbean, before 1973. Before this date they were given an automatic right to remain and work in the UK, a fact which meant many did not receive any official documentation relating to their immigration status.
In 2018, it became clear that some individuals who arrived before 1973 had been deported, others detained, and others denied access to public services because they could not prove their immigration status.
The Home Office admitted that it had not kept record of those who had arrived, and Theresa May, the former prime minister and a former home secretary, ultimately admitted responsibility for the scandal.
A review led by Wendy Williams, the then inspector of constabulary, listed 30 recommendations to help compensate victims, and to prevent a similar scandal from happening in future.
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