Immigration Act 2016's bank checks paused after fears Windrush citizens may have been targeted
The Home Office announced last week that immigration checks on bank accounts are to be suspended in the wake of the Windrush scandal, Sky News reported on Wednesday.
As we reported on EIN last September, the Government brought forward legislation under the Immigration Act 2016 that required banks and building societies to carry out quarterly immigration checks on millions of current accounts from January 2018.
Image credit: UK GovernmentA Home Office spokeswoman told Sky News last week: "After careful consideration we have decided to temporarily reduce the scope of the checks being carried out on bank accounts. It is right, in light of Windrush, that we review existing safeguards to ensure that those who are here lawfully are not inadvertently disadvantaged by measures put in place to tackle illegal migration."
Last Tuesday, the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that banks had been asked to suspend the closure of accounts which checks had identified as belonging to migrants who were in the UK illegally.
"One thing we have done is that I understand, if I have the dates right, at the start of this year—again, I do not have the number—letters in the thousands were sent to banks on individuals where the Department believes they are illegal migrants and to close their bank accounts. What I have instructed officials to do is to contact those banks again and ask them not to go ahead with that until I am more comfortable that we have it right," Javid said.
According to Sky News, Windrush citizens may have been targeted in the measure, though it is unclear how many bank accounts, if any, had been closed.
Corey Stoughton, Advocacy Director at Liberty, told Sky News that she welcomed Javid's announcement.
"The hostile environment means placing a border on every corner. It's turning public services like hospitals or private actors like landlords and banks into border guards, wherever a person turns. What we're starting to see is a growing realisation that this is the wrong approach," she said.
Immigration checks on bank accounts is the third "hostile environment" measure to be lessened or suspended in recent weeks. A data-sharing agreement between the NHS and the Home Office was significantly restricted earlier this month, while in April the Department for Education ended the collection of nationality and country of birth data for school children in England.
Labour's Diane Abbott was quoted by The Guardian, however, as saying that a temporary U-turn was not sufficient and the hostile environment policy as a whole must be ended permanently.