A call for the top civil servant at the Home Office to resign over the Windrush scandal was made today by the Tory mayoral candidate for London.
Shaun Bailey said permanent secretary Sir Philip Rutnam should carry the can for failures which led to scores of people being wrongly deported.
“While I appreciate the daily efforts of our non-partisan civil service, it is clear the work of the Home Office bureaucracy on the Windrush scandal has been deeply flawed and far below the required standard,” said Mr Bailey, a member of the London Assembly.
“Our nation’s Windrush heroes, including members of my family, deserve better than this serial incompetence.”
Mr Bailey’s grandfather was part of the Windrush generation, thousands invited to Britain from 1947 to the Seventies to help rebuild the nation after the war.
A scandal erupted this year when it emerged that, since 2002, 83 people had been deported or blocked from returning to the UK after holidays. They had been caught up in a clampdown meant to target only illegal immigrants.
A report by Sir Alex Allan, a senior adviser to the Prime Minister, criticised two senior civil servants for failing to give ministers the right information. It did not blame Sir Philip, who later told staff there were lessons to be learnt but said: “I remain very proud of the way the department responded to Windrush.”
Mr Bailey said Sir Philip should go as the Home Office did not have a “grip” on the scandal at key moments, and failed to recognise the “magnitude” of the failures.
He highlighted two other controversies to hit the department: delays to an Emergency Services Network deal that will cost £1 billion and DNA testing of immigration claimants which critics say was illegal.
A Home Office spokesman said its “top priority is to right the wrongs experienced by the Windrush generation”, adding: “A taskforce is supporting all those who arrived in the UK many years ago to demonstrate their right to be here.
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A consultation on a compensation scheme for all those affected has just closed and separately we have launched a ‘lessons learned’ review to ensure that nothing like it happens again.”
