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Home Office makes U-turn on immigrant bank and NHS checks

The Home Office has put on hold its controversial policy that was forcing banks to check up on thousands of immigrants’ accounts, in the wake of the Windrush scandal.

As part of creating a ‘hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants, from January 2018 banks and building societies were expected to examine quarterly the accounts of people they believed could be illegal immigrants. If their suspicions were correct, the Home Office would then instruct the institution to shut down that account. Up to 70 million accounts were under consideration.

Some individuals had been wrongly identified as liable for removal or deportation because they are over-stayers, failed asylum seekers or those who have absconded from detention. As a result, their access to services has been wrongly denied.

A survey in 2016 showed that data or administration mistakes accounted for 10 per cent of banking errors, regardless of the account holders’ status.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: ‘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.’

The Home Secretary Sajid Javid told a Home Affairs Committee: ‘Letters in the thousands were sent to banks on individuals where the department believes they are illegal migrants, 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.’

It is thought that the DVLA, DWP and HMRC will also be checked for inaccuracies relating to people from Commonwealth countries.

This is the second immigration-related U-turn that the government has had to make regarding data sharing this month.

Earlier in May, the Home Office postponed indefinitely its instruction to the NHS to hand over patients’ details in order to see whether they were here illegally.


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