The family of a Windrush man denied British citizenship on the grounds that he failed a good character requirement are suing the Home Office to try to change legislation, arguing the rules are racially discriminatory. The high court hearing was prompted by the experiences of Hubert Howard, who was still fighting for British citizenship from his intensive care bed as he was dying in hospital a year ago. The Home Office sought to deny him citizenship despite the 59 years he had spent continuously in the UK, because of a minor offence committed in 2018. He was convicted of common assault after an incident in his doctor’s surgery when he grabbed papers from the receptionist, the court heard. Howard was granted citizenship three weeks before his death after the Home Office reversed its position, but the judicial review against the department’s initial decision, submitted in early 2019, has been continued by his daughter Maresha Howard Rose. Howard’s lawyers argued that the Windrush scheme was unlawful because the good character requirement for citizenship should have been waived. The scheme was launched in 2018 to rectify historic injustices towards the Windrush generation, who came to the UK legally from Commonwealth countries before 1973. In the 1980s there was a government programme to register Windrush-generation people, allowing them to acquire British citizenship irrespective of whether they were of good character. At the time officials said there was no need to register, and at least 8,000 people did not. Many of those who never formally naturalised, were, like Howard, later wrongly classified as immigration offenders. The high court heard that the Home Office’s insistence on the need for applicants to meet a good character requirement before being granted British citizenship was unlawful and racially discriminatory, “because the Windrush generation is disproportionately comprised of black and Asian Commonwealth citizens”. Howard arrived in Britain aged three from Jamaica in 1960 and never left, working latterly as a “highly regarded” caretaker with the Peabody housing association. He first applied for a British passport in 2005 but was refused, and as a result he was unable to travel to Jamaica to visit his critically ill mother or attend her funeral. He was dismissed from his job in 2012 because he was unable to prove he was not in the country illegally. The impact of the refusal of citizenship over a protracted period “cannot be understated”, Phillippa Kaufmann QC said. “He lost a job where he was established and valued, following which he was unable to seek further employment from 2012, resulting in him accruing substantial debt.” In 2018 an allegation was made that he had grabbed paperwork from the doctor’s receptionist’s hand and in the process grabbed her middle finger, written submissions made to the high court stated. A fine and a 12-month suspended sentence were imposed and Howard’s application for British citizenship was refused on November 2018 because of the conviction. The court heard that there were no figures to indicate how many Windrush applicants had been refused citizenship because of the good character requirement, but it was said that the numbers were likely to be “relatively small”. Sir James Eadie QC, representing the Home Office, argued in written submissions that the Windrush scheme did not discriminate against the rights of the Windrush generation and that the maintenance of the good character requirement was justified. “The Windrush scheme was introduced to deal with the unintended consequences for the Windrush generation of the application of compliant environment policies,” he said. It was not introduced as a “general reform of immigration law”. The hearing before Mr Justice Swift is due to continue next week and it is expected that he will reserve judgment to a later date.