Hostile environment fostering racist practices across society, finds report

The government’s hostile environment policies are fostering racist practices across British society and pushing people – including those with legal status – into poverty, a new report shows.

In a damning evaluation of the policy, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank found that, two and a half years on from the Windrush scandal, the measures have failed to achieve their own stated objectives, while also inflicting undue suffering and having what the authors call “poisonous impacts” on society.

The report states that the hostile environment has an impact far beyond just the targeted individuals, penetrating right across society and fostering racist practices by requiring ordinary, untrained citizens to police the measures.

Under the policy, employers, landlords, hospital staff and many other frontline workers are expected to carry out immigration checks, and in some cases share information with the Home Office.

This shift of responsibility from officials to citizens can facilitate discrimination against people from minority ethnic backgrounds by leading to new forms of racial profiling, according to the IPPR.

The Right to Rent scheme, for example, which requires private landlords to check the immigration status of potential tenants and forms a key branch of the government’s so-called hostile environment policy, was found to cause racial discrimination and violate human rights law in a ruling in March last year.

The Home Office launched a legal battle earlier this year to defend the policy, despite the judge ruling that it was causing landlords to “discriminate against potential tenants on grounds of nationality and ethnicity” and was having “little to no effect” on controlling immigration.

The IPPR report also finds that, while the policies are intended to encourage people living in the UK without immigration status to leave voluntarily by making it harder for them to get jobs, rent property, open bank accounts, and access welfare and other vital public services, voluntary returns have fallen significantly since it was introduced.

An analysis of government data reveals that around 12,000 more people without immigration status were voluntarily leaving the UK independently of the Home Office in 2012 than they were in 2018.

This echoes the findings of a National Audit Office report in June, which revealed that the Home Office had no evidence to show that its hostile environment policy was achieving its aims.

The government has recently disassociated itself from the term “hostile environment”, now referring to it as the “compliant environment” – but the IPPR’s review reveals that most policies that caused the Windrush scandal were still in place.

The think tank argues that inflicting significant hardship is inherent in the design of the hostile environment, and that when implemented, the policies push people into poverty, facilitate discrimination against minority ethnic groups, wrongly affect those with legal status and risk public health and safety.

Amreen Qureshi, IPPR North researcher and the report’s lead author, said: “The hostile environment is a policy based on ideology, not evidence. Our report finds that it has forced people into destitution without encouraging them to leave the UK, highlighting both its poisonous impacts and its ineffectiveness. It doesn’t work for the Home Office, it doesn’t work for people without immigration status, and it doesn’t work for our society.

“Yet this policy continues to be implemented at the cost of human rights, human dignity and human life. Deep reform is called for, and this should start at the Home Office.”

Marley Morris, IPPR associate director who leads the think tank’s work on migration policy and is a co-author, said the government’s hostile environment measures “endangered public health and safety, fostered racism and discrimination, and mistakenly affected many with legal permission to be in the UK – including many in the Windrush generation”.

The report comes after the coronavirus pandemic prompted renewed concern about the hostile environment, after charities and MPs warned undocumented migrants were dying from the virus because they were too afraid to seek help.

In one case, a Filipino man known as Elvis died from suspected coronavirus last week after not accessing healthcare for fear of being reported to the Home Office, according to campaigners.

Responding to the the IPPR’s findings, Chai Patel, legal policy director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “The hostile environment has devastated the lives of the Windrush generation. It has pushed people into destitution and risk of dying during the pandemic, as we saw with the case of Elvis who died too scared to go to hospital.

“Now, more than ever, Priti Patel must learn the lessons of Windrush – as she promised she would – and scrap the hostile environment.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The Windrush generation suffered unspeakable injustices and institutional failings spanning successive governments over several decades.

“The government is implementing the findings of the Wendy Williams’ Review.”