Windrush scandal victims who were denied compensation could have their cases reconsidered after a landmark ruling against the Home Office.
Raymond Lee, 67, was returning from a trip to Jamaica in 1999 when he was denied re-entry to the UK, detained and removed, separating him from his family and putting him out of work.
He applied to the Windrush compensation scheme in 2019, but his claim was rejected 19 months later – a decision that was upheld in two subsequent internal reviews. Now, a judicial review has found that the then-home secretary “wrongly misunderstood how immigration law, including the immigration rules in force in 1999, would have applied to the claimant”, and that his case should go back to the Home Office to be reconsidered.
The Home Office refused Lee’s compensation with the claim that at the time he was detained his indefinite leave to remain had “lapsed” – despite the fact that under the rules at the time, he could be re-granted leave to enter or remain on return to the UK.
The ruling is expected to have implications for other members of the Windrush generation whose claims have been refused. “For years, I have lived with the pain and injustice of being turned away from the UK,” Lee said after the ruling. “No one should have to fight this hard just to be recognised and treated fairly. I hope this decision forces the Home Office to do right by others who have suffered as I have.”
In the judicial review hearing, the deputy high court judge Michael Ford KC found the then-home secretary had failed to recognise that under immigration rules then in force, Lee had a right to seek readmission to the UK as a returning resident. While the timeline of Lee’s case covers Priti Patel and Suella Braverman’s periods in office, it is Braverman’s final decision in December 2022 that is covered by judicial review.
The Windrush scandal was revealed by the Guardian in 2017 and 2018. It concerned thousands of Black Britons who were wrongly detained and removed, having settled in the UK lawfully from former British colonies in the Caribbean, often as children, who were never provided with documents “proving” their status.
Lee was born a “British subject” in Jamaica. He came to the UK in 1971, attended school, married, worked as a builder and raised a family in south London with indefinite leave to remain.
However, in July 1999, on returning from a trip to Jamaica, he was stopped at Heathrow. At the time, Lee was travelling on a Jamaican passport, as he had always done, and visas were not needed to enter from Jamaica. But immigration officials refused him re-entry.
Lee returned to the UK in 2000 and was again granted indefinite leave to remain. When the Windrush compensation scheme was set up in April 2019 to compensate members of the postwar Windrush generation, who, like Lee, had suffered after officials began insisting they prove their status in the country, he made an application, but the claim was rejected in 2021 and upheld twice.
After the review, in which the judge concluded “legal error” led to the decision that Lee was “ineligible for compensation”, his lawyer, Stephanie Hill, described the judgment as a “significant victory for Raymond and others affected by the Windrush scandal”, urging government “to take swift action to properly compensate Raymond and ensure the Windrush compensation scheme operates fairly and lawfully”.
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
