PRITI PATEL’s promises to build a “compassionate” culture at the Home Office rang hollow today as campaigners highlighted her refusal to lift policies harming migrants during the Covid-19 crisis. 

The Home Secretary pledged to make “sweeping reforms” to the department in response to the Windrush scandal to meet the recommendations of an independent review into the scandal. 

But her promises of a “people first” approach to immigration failed to convince migrant-rights campaigners. 

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants’s legal policy director, Chai Patel, said: “Priti Patel says she cares about ‘people, not cases,’ but if she did then she would have responded to calls during the pandemic to scrap ‘no recourse to public funds’ conditions for destitute migrants and to scrap NHS charging for those dying because they were too scared to seek healthcare. 

“She hasn’t, and her failure to take the urgent action needed over the pandemic speaks far more than any of her promises for the future.”

The Home Secreary told MPs on Wednesday that a review of Britain’s hostile environment immigration policies would also be carried out. 

But civil-rights group Liberty argued that reviewing the policies, which led to the wrongful deportation of British citizens, does not go far enough and called for them to be scrapped altogether. 

Campaigners also highlighted her department’s failure to compensate the majority of Windrush victims. 

According to the most recent Home Office figures from May, just 4.7 per cent of applications for compensation have been granted payments. 

Windrush campaigner Patrick Vernon said: “Several Windrush victims have already died without receiving compensation for the injustice they faced.

“Windrush survivors need immediate compensation, as well as full and urgent implementation of all 30 recommendations in the lessons-learned review. The victims of the scandal should not have to wait any longer for justice.”