Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department undertook an Equality Impact Assessment in advance of the decision to destroy documentation relating to the Windrush generation.

There was no obligation to complete an Equality Impact Assessment for the destruction of the documentation. Section 149(9) of the 2010 Equality Act provides Schedule 18 exceptions to the need to comply with the public sector equality duty in the Act; one of the exceptions is immigration.

In regards to landing cards specifically, although there was provision in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 to make a requirement for Commonwealth citizens to complete landing cards, this was never implemented. Landing cards were not required for the vast majority of nationals of Independent Commonwealth Countries until the implementation of the Immigration Act 1971. A very small number of cards were completed by Immigration officers for small cohorts of these nationals.

Landing cards do not confirm a person’s residency and, therefore, are of limited use to a decision which is reliant on ongoing residency (such as the Windrush cohort). The key pieces of evidence to the Windrush cohort is evidence to show a person’s residency here, but we will consider any evidence provided in order to build a picture of a person’s residency here.