Windrush generation to be given ‘free citizenship’ Government announces

The Home Secretary has announced that members of the Windrush generation will be given "free citizenship"

The Home Secretary Rudd has said that she will waive the fees associated with becoming a full British citizen.

And she promised that they would not be required to show documents they don’t have.

She told the House of Commons: “We were too slow to realise there was a group of people that needed to be treated differently”.

Ms Rudd told MPs that no one from the Windrush generation had so far been wrongly deported.

She said: “It was never the intention that the Windrush generation should have been disadvantaged by measures designed to tackle illegal immigrants”.

The Home Secretary promised to put right the wrongs inflicted on the Windrush generation and where people have suffered loss “they will be compensated”.

She said that compensation would be administrated by an independent person.

And she outlined that those who are not part of the Windrush generation but arrived after 1973 and before 1988 would also be given access to the Windrush taskforce.

But she acknowledged: “None of this can undo the pain already experienced”.

Her statement follows the prime minister’s announcement on Friday that the Government will pay compensation to long-standing UK residents whose migration status was challenged.

Some Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK during the post war period have had problems accessing health care and benefits because they don’t have the documentation to prove when they arrived in the UK.

Those who came to the UK before 1973 were granted automatic citizenship.

But because many have never applied for a passport and their landing cards have been destroyed they have struggled to prove their status.