Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to expedite compensation for those people affected by the Windrush scandal.

Since April 2019 the Scheme has offered or paid more than £32.4 million in compensation to members of the Windrush generation. On 24 June the Home Office published the latest set of data on the Scheme which covers the period to the end of May 2021. During the month of May, the Home Office paid out £3.9 million in compensation and more than £24.4 million in compensation has been paid across 732 claims.

In December we overhauled the Scheme and the changes have had an immediate effect on the speed and value of offers of compensation. Since the end of December, we have paid more than seven times the total amount paid previously.

However, we recognise we still have more to do to speed up the processing of claims and are committed to reducing the time between submission and decision significantly over the coming months. To do this we are, amongst other things, recruiting more case workers, directing resources to where they are needed most to maximise final decision output and refining our processes so cases progress as quickly as possible. We are also improving the evidence gathering process, for instance by revising our data sharing agreements with other government departments.