2020 Round Up

photo credit: The Telegraph

2020 has undoubtedly been arduous. Social interaction has become virtual, lockdowns continue to isolate people from friends and family, and we have all been forced to aclimatise to a new way of living. As we move into 2021 and the pandemic endures, it is important to acknoweldge how the events of the past year have placed a disproportionate strain on the lives of the UK’s poorest and most vulnerable. As Owen Jones recently noted, ‘coronavirus is not some great leveller, it is exacerbating inequality right now’. In recongising this, our editors have considered some key areas in which the burden of the pandemic is being felt asymmetrically.

Unemployment – Rebecca Pugh

This year has been dominated by the Covid-19 global pandemic, resulting in unprecedented shocks to the world economy. Businesses have experienced dramatic, uncontrollable changes in the levels of demand, compounded by vague distinctions surrounding what constitutes essential or non-essential goods, forcing many to close across two national lockdowns and subsequent Tier 4 restrictions. Moreover, as restrictions have eased, they have had to adapt, introducing more onerous safety guidelines.

3.6 million (1/9 workers) in the United Kingdom were in insecure work prior to the pandemic, leaaving many vulnerable to potentially large changes in working hours and income, if they are able to retain their job at all. The government has issued guidance on responsible behaviour when enforcing contracts, asking businesses to consider this as part of the national response. Despite this, current figures suggest 730,000 UK workers have been removed from the payrolls of British companies since March of this year, whilst the number of workers on zero-hour contracts has increased.

We have also seen that the impact of coronavirus has not been felt equally across the UK. The major drivers of these differences in regional economic performance result from local variation in sectoral structures, where those with greater dependence on tourism, greater reliance on international trade and supply chains, or even areas with poorer access to high-speed internet connectivity have experienced more adverse effects. All these factors and more will have a part to play. The only thing we can change is how we respond to this crisis through closer public scrutiny of government action and encouraging change through our own spending habits where possible.

Impact of Covid-19 on Women’s Work Inequality – Zoey Cama

Due to pre-existing inequalities, there is no doubt that women are bearing the brunt of Covid-19 in economies of every size. The rapid spread of the virus placed essential workers at the frontline of exposure. According to reports by the UN Women’s Policy and Programme Division, globally, 70 per cent of health workers are women. Yet, the gender pay gap in the health sector is at a staggering 28 per cent. During the UK’s lockdown, many essential workers were not eligible for furlough and were made to work without much-needed protections. As such, they have been faced with the option of high exposure or the risk of unemployment during a financially burdensome time. For example, it is estimated that 72 per cent of domestic workers have lost their jobs, with women making up 80 per cent of the labour force globally.

Women also make up the majority of single-parent households and many had to leave their jobs when children were sent home from school in March. With the inability to afford childcare, mothers are now facing the hurdle of providing for their families. Even before Covid-19, women spent an average of 4.1 hours per day performing unpaid work, while men spend 1.7 hours.

McKinsey & Company’s report suggests that if governments do not act to address this gender-parity regression, global GDP would be left $1 trillion below where it would be if the coronavirus had affected both sexes equally. Perhaps these statistics will incentivise governments to act redress these social and economic vulnerabilities.

NHS resource allocation – Ella Kennedy

The influx of demand for medical attention caused by the spread of Covid-19 across the UK has stretched our National Health Service to its limits. In the last week, healthcare professionals in London have made clear that the NHS is at breaking point, with patients being sent around the country to available beds. Resources have been redirected towards fighting the virus, impacting those with non-Covid health issues. For example, many NHS patients have had important treatments delayed to free up hospital beds, and A&E services have been significantly reduced. The day-to-day operations the NHS was conducting before the pandemic have been entirely impacted.

Some private hospitals have offered their facilities to NHS patients to help cope with demand, indicating that they have sufficient space to treat all their patients. In addition, due to their size and resources, there is a lower risk of contracting Covid within private hospitals than public hospitals. Evidently, those who can pay can receive treatment during this time in a safe environment.

The NHS has struggled to operate with inadequate government funding for many years, and the situation has been significantly worsened by Covid. Without increased government support, the NHS is vulnerable to collapsing into a US-style private healthcare system which excludes the poor from protection altogether.

The Hypocrisy of Dominic Cummings and the Current Administration – Miranda Daniel

Since the story broke in May, it has been near impossible to avoid the jokes and memes made about Dominic Cummings’ drive to Durham and eye-testing trip to Barnard Castle. Whilst such mockery is undoubtedly humorous, it is important to remember the harsh reality that the scandal has exposed. The coronavirus pandemic highlighted a reality within our society in that there is often one rule for the rich and powerful and another for the majority. Despite clearly breaking the law, Cummings was not forced to resign, instead stepping down from his £140k-a-year role in November following an unrelated, comparatively trivial, internal dispute. In contrast, the police fined at least two people who made the same journey from London to Durham. Fines are an intrinsically elitist means of punishment, as they only deter those who do not have the means to pay if caught, whilst those with excess wealth are free to disregard the law provided they can cover the cost. It was therefore particularly galling and hypocritical to see Cummings push for tougher fines for breaches of coronavirus restrictions in October. There is, however, perhaps a silver-lining emanating from this saga, as the UK public has become more aware of the law’s preferential treatment of elite actors and the self-preservationist nature of the current Conservative government.

BAME Inequalities – Imogen Watkins, Jing Wern Tan and Yen Ning Tay

Multiple studies since the first peak of the Covid-19 pandemic have indicated that individuals from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME) have been disproportionately affected by the virus, with black people being four times more likely to die from Covid.

ONS figures suggest this is a result of BAME members of society disproportionately occupying frontline work such as such in social care and the gig-economy, where they are more directly exposed to the virus. Due to the physical nature of this work, these individuals are unable to work from the safety of their homes, instead faced with the choice of leaving their job and losing an invaluable source of income, or continuing employment, at risk of contracting the virus.

Indeed, the pandemic has exposed the effects of more deeply-rooted inequalities, as there has been a disproportionate number of BAME individuals die from the disease. BAME individuals are more likely to be found living in densely packed communities, meaning the virus can spread at an accelerated rate. Furthermore, the long-term effects of austerity and poverty mean the prevalence of comorbidities such as obesity, asthma and cardiovascular disease are more significant in BAME communities – pre-existing conditions that have been found to reduce Covid survival chances. It is the effects of social issues, rather than mere biology, which has contributed to the disproportionate deaths of BAME individuals.

The Conservative government has long-betrayed and marginalised BAME communities, playing a key role in creating the inequalities that have ultimately led to hundreds of unnecessary deaths. Whilst Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling-up’ initiative is welcomed, as it purports to more widely uplift society, there is little to suggest that this will materially differ from previous Conservative neglect of BAME communities.

The Dearth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Privatisation

By Harry Hudson

photo credit: Keep Our NHS Public

Two terms abound when in discussions of the NHS: privatisation and crisis. I will focus on both of these to provide a historically informed account of how the creation of a crisis discourse has enabled privatisation, focusing on the period since 1983, and how this undermining of universalism is concerning in the light of worsening health inequalities. In my account, a crisis discourse has been intentionally manufactured for ideological aims, with a worsening tiered system of healthcare.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRIVATISATION (1983-)

The first tentative steps toward privatisation showed that it was politically tolerated. Tendering of contracts for laundry, catering, and cleaning services was implemented under the auspices of better value for money. It was, however, understood that transition to an insurance model could be hugely unpopular for the government; indeed, the manifestos upon which Thatcher was elected, particularly in 1987, belied the radicalism of many advisors and ministers. This was compounded by poor ministerial leadership, cuts, and nightmarish reforms under Sir Keith Joseph — the NHS had, for Charles Webster, “relapsed into a state of siege”. It was into this atmosphere that the rampant modernising agenda would finally eliminate Bevanite egalitarianism. Indeed, Thatcher herself was forced to declare that “the NHS is safe in our hands” after a leak of papers showed that the Cabinet was considering transferring to an insurance system. Ultimately, however, it wouldn’t be until her successors in office, Major and Blair, took office that privatisation would be omnipresent. For the time being, in part due to the scandalous leak, the NHS wasn’t all on the plate.

The reforms of Major and Blair are best dealt with together with the example of private-finance initiatives (PFI), one of the most entrenched aspects of privatisation — the last repayment will not be until 2050. It was conceived in 1992 by Major as a way of hiding money from the public accounts, and it was for this reason Labour embraced PFI — prior to the election, they had denounced it. As an example of the creation of crisis, PFI is supreme: £80 billion pounds spent for £13 billion of assets, with some trusts spending 17% of their annual income on PFI payments. The desire for a smaller state, with less capital expenditure on the balance sheets, has led to such exorbitant and profligate private sector profiteering. Multiple financial concerns were predicted in Cabinet papers, as reported, with an order to “push forcefully ahead” from Major. The legacy of PFI is, unsurprisingly, that there is a postcode lottery in the financial standing of trusts.

THE CREATION OF CRISIS DISCOURSE TOWARD FULL PRIVATISATION

For Conservatives, a new strategy was required. Blair had adopted much of their traditional policy platform, and was riding high from two huge election wins in 1997 and 2001. Policy innovation was needed; health policy is indicative of wider changes. This came in one key publication written in 2005, titled Direct Democracy. It signified a revolution in attitudes to privatisation from a Thatcherite slash-and-privatise model to one of subterfuge. Carswell et al innovated a new response to the failure of Thatcherism to achieve privatisation of the NHS: to break down the barrier between public and private piecemeal, “in effect denationalising the provision of health care in Britain”. Writing six years later, Raab et al, concord: “[t]he current monolith should be broken up.” The method suggested by Carswell et al is revolutionary, and marks a sea change in strategy: the Thatcher administrations pushed through as much privatisation as was possible against any public opinion; the strategy in Carswell was, for me, a way of creating a crisis discourse. In articulating breaking down the barriers between state and private, the authors are arguing for manufactured inefficiency, building unaccountable and exploitative corporations into the NHS.

Under the Coalition, in which many of the authors served (notably Jeremy Hunt, a coauthor of Carswell), parts of this plan were put into place in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, exemplified by trusts being able to provide 49% of services to private patients. The Act was based on a white paper euphemistically titled ‘Liberating the NHS’. In actuality, this Act was a realisation of the plan in Carswell – a provision for regulations to be issued on tendering, and subsequent regulations requiring compulsory competitive tendering. As reported in the BMJ, this Act, and related policy introduced, also ushered in the concept of the self-funded’ NHS patient — including the oft-discussed in-vitro fertilisation, also some cancer surgery and genetic screening.

My conception of the crisis discourse is that when the boundaries between public and private are sufficiently blurred, there will be a semantic change: no longer how inefficient, expensive and unaccountable those private contractors are, but how unaccountable, expensive and inefficient the NHS is. This marks a turn from seeing the NHS as predated upon to seeing the NHS as part of the problem; this is the unseen genius of Carswell. Initiatives such as PFI and relaxations under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 embed the private sector so deeply that it is indistinguishable. The response, then, will be to resort to the efficiency of the market, to open up the entire healthcare system to corporate interests. Privatisation by parts is a lesson from Thatcher’s embarrassing ‘safe in our hands’ experience; this is something suggested by Raab, too: “in the long term if pursued sensitively and on an evolutionary basis, [reforms] are likely to be achieved.”

“no longer how inefficient, expensive and unaccountable those private contractors are, but how unaccountable, expensive and inefficient the NHS is”

To elucidate further the nature of crisis discourse, it is a rhetorical flourish that is itself a genuine problem. It is a way of creating a sense of urgency, analogous to pitiable canoe occupants in the Channel supposedly meriting an immigration bill. It is not that the solution requires radical reform, but that radical reform is sought and a crisis discourse created to enable it. It is a way of undermining the NHS to such an extent that ideologues can respond that the only way to escape such a manufactured crisis is through transition to an insurance-based model. This is the future envisaged by many with individual patients and their doctors in charge of budgets. The NHS is characterised as a problem simply because it is a monopoly. As Carwell et al assert, “ [t]he problem with the NHS is… that the system remains a centrally run, state monopoly, designed over half a century ago.”

INEQUITY AND HEALTH TODAY

Some of the issues we face relate to the incomplete nationalisation of healthcare — insurance and a private healthcare system remain. As acknowledged by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies,“[the insurance market] threatens the de facto emergence of what is usually referred to as a “two-tier health-care system”.” It is hard to elucidate driving factors too behind insurance; even the evidence on NHS waiting lists encouraging it is inconclusive. The scale of the private sector is difficult to discern, and will worsen in light of the grossly opaque handling of tendering and contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The most reliable analytics on both are also paywalled. On the most recent data I have found publicly available, dating from 2011, the private acute medical sector generated £6.42 billion, with an estimated 28,000 consultants spending some time in the sector. On a background of deinstitutionalisation and the closure of many large psychiatric hospitals, private mental health hospitals are paradigmatic of backdoor privatisation, with 87% of the provision purchased by the NHS. Not only is there a two-tier system in operation, where the rich can buy one kind of healthcare, the NHS is buying private healthcare and is forced to create a bureaucracy for competitive tender regardless. The rich get the most comfortable care, whilst the poor help to enrich private providers whilst unable to afford their wares.

“not only is there a two-tier system in operation, where the rich can buy one kind of healthcare, the NHS is buying private healthcare and is forced to create a bureaucracy for competitive tender regardless”

The existence of a two-tier system also seems evident when one considers the state of worsening health inequalities in the UK. Ten years on from the landmark Marmot Review, inequalities are worsening. Life expectancy is falling in much of the country, and time spent in poor health is increasing; the health gap has grown between wealthy and deprived areas. Those responsible for this are the very same figures who have authored works on the privatisation of the healthcare system — the entrenching of a tiered system. This is not a matter of debate about the relative merits of varying insurance models, but a moral matter: the NHS is valuable because of its universalist ideals; these are dying. Indeed, it may reasonably be argued that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 signalled the death of the English NHS.

The scale of the damage done by recent reforms is hard to overstate. Much of the damage of austerity to health cannot be undone, with some 120,000 excess deaths during the first half of this decade. Additionally, we can see that the crisis discourse was working very well prior to COVID-19; the NHS was consistently discussed as being in a crisis. Indeed, things were bad: the Care Quality Commission assessed more than half of urgent and emergency care and almost a third of medical and outpatient care as requiring improvement or inadequate. The crisis discourse had taken hold, the NHS lay dying, and patients were treated suboptimally in a tiered system — this will likely be compounded by COVID-19 and a future package of austerity. As I have predicted, it will not be long until the manufactured crisis is so real that calls for full privatisation clamour.

TOWARD A UNIVERSALIST FUTURE

One can only hope that with sustained grassroots campaigning Bevanite ideals of universalism will be reinvigorated. This must lead to substantive legal change, repealing much of the law of the past three decades in this area, removing the private sector entirely. This is not a reification of the NHS, but a restitution. When I look to the cabinet and see the authors of After the Coalition occupying the roles of Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and International Trade Secretary, however, I have little hope.

I have sketched an archeology here of privatisation, a story that cuts much deeper and broader than the essential features noted above. A quote from Sir Michael Marmot aptly sums it up, “[t]he question we should ask is not, can we afford better health for the population of England, but what kind of society do we want?” We cannot trust rabid neoliberal ideologues to decide; they have already shown their hand.

Harry is a medical student at the University of Bristol, currently intercalating in Law. He is an aspiring academic and has a particular interest in post-structuralism.

How the rise of environmental law has led to carbon colonialism

photo credit: Redd Monitor

By Archie McCreath

Nature narrates the tale of colonialism. Tales of controlling the landscape and exploiting natural resources, stealing land and profiteering off plantations. The environment has never recovered from its commodification. Colonialism did not, of course, solely impact the natural world. Anthropologically, it was a triple threat: economic violation through exploitation, cultural violation through exclusion and political violation through repression. Far from a relic of the distant past, the consequences of imperialism for the Global South are still felt today. Mass poverty, human rights violations and political instability are a legacy of western domination that remains.

Now nature narrates a new horror story. A story of rising sea levels and increasingly desperate food shortages, mass extinctions and extreme weather. While this is a worldwide problem, it places the greatest burden on the Global South. Communities, yet to recover economically from past abuses, have a greater reliance on nature while lacking the resources to counter the impact of western pollution. Despite barely contributing to historical emissions, the South is at the receiving end of the West’s disastrous actions.

This is no coincidence. The ecological destruction, exploitation and commodification at the hand of imperialism has left an almost irreversible print on the natural world. The climate crisis is inseparable from our colonialist past. And by trying to fix it, the evils of neo-colonialism appear to rear up once again.

“The climate crisis is inseparable from our colonialist past.”

The Rise of Environmental Law

The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, signalled that developed countries are beginning to take the climate crisis seriously. It represents an explosion of new environmental law over the last fifty years. Law grows with society, and as a result, we have nurtured a garden full of protections for the environment. This garden has grown considerably quickly, and not without capitalist fertiliser, which has had adverse effects for the world.

Prior to the 1960s, environmental law had not even come into existence as a distinct legal category. It is a parasitic form of law; one that has attached itself to our domestic and international legal systems without strong roots in either common, civil, constitutional or customary law. Without development over time, it has had to adapt fast, and must continue to do so. It is vital that environmental considerations are factored into every aspect of law and society. The Paris Agreement provides for countries to issue Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the fight for a better climate – regulating how humans interact with the environment and natural resources. This is a step in the right direction, but capitalism has a way of finding opportunities to exploit wherever there are gaps to be exploited.

Offset Culture

We live in an age of the carbon neutral citizen. We want carbon neutral flights and carbon neutral homes, carbon neutral food and carbon neutral lattes. Our governments pride themselves on viewing policy through a carbon neutral lens. They all mix with the world’s biggest corporations at Davos, which prides itself on being carbon neutral. This carbon neutral culture is understandable for companies, ever conscious of brand and consumer demands. Even BP, one of history’s biggest polluters, has pledged to hit net zero by 2050. Increasingly, pressure is coming from investors diverting to carbon neutral portfolios.

It is important to clarify that when we talk of being carbon neutral, we’re not talking about producing zero emissions. The Paris Agreement, and the resulting domestic legislation such as the Climate Change Act, use the language ‘net zero’. Carbon will still play a role in our society in 2050, we will just be offsetting it. There are a couple of legal mechanisms provided for in international agreements to achieve ‘net zero’. Emissions-trading is a market driven mechanism that allows for the legal pollution of the atmosphere, enabling corporations to trade-up emission allowances with other companies. This parcels up the atmosphere as a commodity, issuing ‘permits to pollute’ that can be bought and sold. Carbon offsetting is the reduction in certain emissions to make room for emissions elsewhere. While both of these are painted by the Paris Agreement as part of the solution, they are, in reality, part of the problem.

Carbon neutrality is essential and must be fought for. However, the reality is that offsetting, emission trading and other legal mechanisms do not challenge the destructive consumerist ethic that the world runs on which drives the fossil fuel economy. Instead, our demands for a carbon neutral world currently act as a ‘moral cover’ for consumers. While consumers in the Global North can feel guilt free about neutralising flying on holiday by offsetting their emissions, a burden still remains – although it is not shouldered by them. The costs of this moral cover are covered by the Global South.

“our demands for a carbon neutral world currently act as a ‘moral cover’ for consumers … the cost of this moral cover are covered by the Global South.”

Corporations pledge to plant trees to offset their extreme culpability in our climate crisis, commandeering land in the South for large-scale plantations and acting as an occupying force in impoverished rural communities dependent on these lands for survival. All the while allowing Western corporations to pollute more and rake in more money. Sound familiar? See the case of the Norwegian company that leased Ugandan lands for a carbon sink project, resulting in the eviction, torture and deaths of locals. Or the World Bank funded Brazilian eucalyptus plantations, which steal residents’ water supplies, pollute their land with pesticides and evict them from their homes, all the while engaging in illegal labour practices. Corporations charge ahead with these plantations while pushing the notion that consumers need not change their lifestyle. By refusing to change our individual behaviour and demanding that the polluter pays, we’re shifting the burden onto poor communities within the Global South.

Climate Justice

It is one of the legacies of colonialism that the Global North has higher GDP alongside producing the highest CO2 emissions. The Global South, for centuries robbed of their resources, are now on the front line facing the effects of this. The rise of environmental law is aimed at leading us down a path to climate stabilisation. Whether agreements such as those signed in Paris and Kyoto will be effective is another thing. Climate justice puts the people most threatened by climate impacts at the heart of the crisis. The Paris Agreement was not without climate justice aspects. Developed countries agreed to provide $100bn of financial assistance every year to developing countries, helping them to cut emissions and mitigate the disproportionate effects they experience. The funding will fall short this year. This may, of course, have been largely the result of the economic impacts of COVID-19. There are positive signs that rich nations will double-down on climate financing post-pandemic – Germany plans to initiate an international process to increase funds post-2020. When we talk of the ‘polluter pays’ principle, we must make sure this does not just mean the polluting companies, but the colonial powers who have produced the highest levels of emissions to date.

Conclusion

“Empires, the children of the medieval world, were the midwives of the modern”, according to Professor of Imperial History, Richard Dayton. Colonial powers often try to forget or provide incomplete accounts of its past. They may choose to forget the wrongs that have caused the climate justice crisis we face, but the green finger of blame is rightly pointed squarely at Western nations. We’re left staring down the barrel of our own 19th Century muskets. Our money and influence will allow us to dodge the bullets, only for them to hit impoverished communities on Pacific islands and in African farmlands. The South has become the carbon dump for the industrialised world. The current path may well save the world, but it will sacrifice humanity, which, knowing colonial powers, we will choose to forget.

Archie is a Final Year LLB Student at the University of Bristol, who has a keen interest in International Law, Public Law and Environmental Law.

The Home Office’s Problem with Race

By Matt Richardson

photo credit: T A McKay

Britain’s Institutions and Race

The UK has an undeniably problematic relationship with race. Naturally, more overt displays of racism such as the anti immigrant sentiment arising from BREXIT, the attacks on East Asian students in the early stages of the Coronavirus pandemic and violence against the Pakistani community between the 1960s and 1990s draw more fervent media attention, showing clear instances of racial division and prejudice. It is, however, the tacit forms of racism, found in the legally-constituted lived disparities of ethnic minorities in the UK, which reflect the more insidious, structural issues with race in this country.

The 2018 Windrush Scandal, which saw people of Caribbean origin unlawfully detained, stripped of their rights, and, in at least 83 instances, incorrectly deported, serves as a painful and stark reminder of the inherent racism within our British institutions. This is exemplified by Williams’ conclusions on the processes that facilitated the Windrush injustices in the official ‘Lessons Learned’ report, finding the Home Office’s core issue was its inadequate understanding of the Macpherson definition of institutional racism – ‘the collective failure of an organisation’ to provide sufficient services based on racial or cultural markers, present in ‘processes, attitudes, and behaviour’.

Whilst it is important to recognise the value of reports such as Williams’ in creating dialogue around implicit racial biases in contemporary British society, it is equally as important to understand that increased dialogue is only the first step towards driving the practical changes needed to eradicate structural racism within institutions and organisations. As such, this blog argues that, despite the Home Office’s recent (largely symbolic) decision to omit certain individuals from a chartered deportation flight to Jamaica, racial bias remains instilled within the Home Office’s deportation policies and culture. Specifically, this post problematises these policies by inspecting their context and subsequently highlighting areas where the Home Office could implement tangible responses to these systemic issues.

Home Office Policy Context

Between 1948 and 1970, by virtue of the British Nationality Act 1948 (which granted citizens of Britain’s colonies rights to settle in the UK), almost 500,000 Caribbean citizens established new lives in Britain. As a result of this Act, there was no requirement for formal documentation, meaning many Caribbean immigrants to the UK had no way, or need, to prove their right to remain. As immigration measures became more restrictive throughout the 1960s and 1970s, legislative protections followed, granting Commonwealth citizens living in the UK ‘indefinite leave to remain’ and, subsequently, protection from ‘enforced removal’. The latter provision,enshrined in the Immigration Act 1999, was excluded from the Immigration Act 2014, as the Home Office deemed individuals who entered the UK pre-1st January 1973 to be ‘adequately protected from removal’.

The drastic inaccuracy of this was exposed following Theresa May’s implementation of the hostile environment policy, which “[aimed] to create a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants”, mandating organisations involved in core aspects of citizen life, such as the NHS, to check identification documents and take action if the individual could not confirm legal residence. This was compounded by threats to fine non-compliant organisations up to £20,000 per employee, a more complex process for attaining ‘leave to remain’, and ‘[astronomic]’ application fee increases. As members of the Windrush generation began to experience the adverse impacts of these changes: being stripped of employment, housing, benefits, and medical care; as well as experiencing the violent processes of immigration, detention, deportation, and refusal of re-entry, the Home Office’s ‘ignorance and thoughtlessness’ became clear.

Williams’ report affirmed this, tracing the ‘root cause’ of the policy to the ‘racial motivations’ inherent in the legislative changes of the mid-late 1900s. The more recent findings of the European Human Rights Commission further confirm this, finding the Home Office ‘repeatedly ignored [,] dismissed [and] disregarded’ the policy impacts, amounting to illegality as a result of their failure to fulfil public-sector equality duties. In turn, a pattern has emerged that reveals the Home Office’s weak understanding of the disproportionate impact of its policies on minority ethnic citizens.

“a pattern has emerged that reveals the Home Office’s weak understanding of the disproportionate impact of its policies on minority ethnic citizens”

The November 2020 Deal

Against this background, the Home Office’s ‘[quiet agreement]’ with the Jamaican government to cancel the removal of certain individuals is a symbolically positive step towards instituting more racially considerate conduct. Despite arriving legally in Britain under the age of 12, the Home Office sought to deport these individuals on grounds of criminal conviction. Clearly, their decision to cancel some of these deportations reflects increased recognition that those who immigrated here legally are British citizens, meaning the British courts and legal system should handle their crimes. Indeed, the Jamaican High Commissioner to the UK praised the ‘cooperation and consideration’ of the Home Office in resolving this issue, but emphasised that ‘it’s not a law, it’s a kind of understanding’. This is important to remember, as noted by Movement for Justice’s Karen Doyle, who stated that the change was ‘welcome’ but still inherently problematic, as it was shrouded in the ‘secrecy [of] backroom deal-making’.

For this positive action to mark a more significant change in Home Office policy, there must not only be a greater impetus placed on legislative protection from deportation practices for those under the age of 18, but there must also be more decisive and immediate action to subvert the racially biased Home Office culture. This starts with Ministers and senior civil servants taking more overt, public ownership of the fact that race has played an integral role in the formulation of British immigration policies, leading to the Windrush injustices. It is a matter of particular importance, as Williams’ report highlighted that ‘many gave the impression that the situation was unforeseeable and therefore unavoidable’ – suggesting a fundamental lack of understanding of the disproportionate impacts these policies inflict. By demonstrating a level of understanding and remorse, a small degree of comfort could be afforded to those affected by these policies, possibly providing elements of closure and the rebuilding of trust between the citizens concerned and those in power. However, this must ultimately be complemented with cultural reformation in the Home Office. Establishing a ‘race advisory board’ and ensuring the links between Britain’s imperialist history and race are taught to staff is fundamental to the re-shaping of departmental culture. From a policy perspective, rethinking the Home Office’s ‘target-dominated work environment’ and launching a comprehensive review into the hostile environment policy would help more definitively subvert both ingrained attitudes and the racially distorted policy history that has the effect of ‘othering’ those not deemed to be British citizens.

Clearly these reforms will not institute immediate, overnight change to an established culture of implicit bias. Instead, it must be recognised that working towards implementing these more lasting, systemic changes as soon as possible is the beginning of a process that strives to create a more equal and racially considerate approach to immigration in the UK.

Matt Richardson is a Final Year LLB Law Student interested in Corporate Law, EU Law and International Relations. In his spare time he enjoys playing cricket and going to the gym.