After many years of delay, the Home Office released a landmark review of its hostile environment policies in February.1Overarching equality impact assessment [EIA] of the compliant environment, Home Office, 9 February 2023. These policies (now called the ‘compliant environment’ by the Home Office) are the measures introduced in 2014 to make life impossible for people unable to prove their right to live in the UK. The policies, including threats of prison for landlords and employers who rent to or employ people who cannot prove their status, run borders through our communities and have been fiercely resisted since their introduction.

The review was ordered by civil servant Wendy Williams, who has led independent investigations into the causes of the Windrush scandal and the irreparable harm done to Britain’s Black communities. She asked the Home Office to conduct a review back in the summer of 2018, after the shocking revelation that Black and brown Britons had for years been facing dismissal from their jobs, eviction from their homes, detention and even deportation because they could not prove their status.

Nearly five years later, the review is finally here. The Home Office has often been accused of attempting to mark its own homework over Windrush. This particular piece of homework has been handed in inexcusably late – and the Home Office seems to have given itself an F.

The review’s findings are stark. The ‘compliant environment,’ it found, has a disproportionate impact on people of colour. In other words, the Home Office’s own review found that its policies discriminate against people on the basis of race. A shocking revelation – even more shocking, then, that the policies are not being immediately suspended. In fact, this government is instead extending policies that have been proven to be discriminatory.

The Home Office evaluation of right to rent provides further insights into its own understanding of the racism caused by its policies.2Right to rent scheme: phase two evaluation, Home Office, 9 February 2023. Right to rent is the policy that means landlords face up to five years in prison, or an unlimited fine, if they rent to someone who can’t prove their status. Unsurprisingly, in an ever more competitive rental market in which landlords and lettings agents have the power to veto tenants at will, multiple studies (and the UK Court of Appeal) have found that this policy causes racism and discrimination.

The Home Office evaluation agrees. One in 10 landlords surveyed said they knew of instances in which landlords had discriminated against tenants as a direct result of right to rent. Overall, there were higher levels of discrimination reported in England than in Wales. The difference when it comes to renting? Right to rent doesn’t exist in Wales.

Of those surveyed, 14 per cent also said they would not want to rent to someone without a passport. Lots of documents other than passports can be used to prove a person’s right to rent – that such a worryingly high proportion of landlords appeared not to know how people can prove their eligibility suggests that outsourcing immigration checks to members of the public wasn’t the most sensible idea to start with.

This government pays lip service to ‘righting the wrongs’ done to the Windrush generation and their descendants – and yet every single policy that caused the harm remains in place. The key finding of the hostile environment review is damning: hostile environment policies increase levels of discrimination in our communities. When even the Home Office’s own review is coming to that same conclusion – and yet the government is still hell-bent on extending those discriminatory policies – it’s clearly time to act.