Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

: My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment as I have to many of its predecessors. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, knows, it is the recurring amendment but I am not inhibited by that from expanding on the details of the amendment. It emerged from a conversation between the noble Lord and the legal agencies involved. I am fully aware of the points made by the noble Baroness in responding to our debate on 17 January and in subsequent correspondence. The Minister referred to the information provided in all removal centres and to the IND information pack. She also mentioned on-site legal advice provided by the various legal services of which I am well aware. However, this does not address the fundamental argument which we made in Committee about detainees’ regular access to justice as a human right rather than an available service. We made the point strongly that the experience of the specialised legal agencies such as BID is that many detainees are not taking advantage of these services for reasons that have already been explained by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and others. Many have no legal representation. We are not now bringing forward the original arguments in favour of regular hearings that the Government, having introduced them in 1999, have already rejected on grounds of economy and practicability. The proposal under the amendment is much more practicable and might therefore appeal to the Minister. It is that she considers simply making use of the duty rota currently being piloted by the Legal Services Commission, by extending it to have a duty legal representative available one or two days per week for detainees who have no legal representation and who wish to challenge their detention before an immigration judge. Duty legal representatives could thus not only advise detainees on bail but also represent them at bail hearings. This could be done, for example, in the IRCs which have asylum immigration tribunal hearing rooms attached and where immigration judges already attend on a regular basis at, for example, Harmondsworth, Colnbrook and Yarl’s Wood. Last October, the LSC itself accepted that there was insufficient legal representation in removal centres. Having a special interest in Haslar, I know that there are difficulties with obtaining adequate advice there and, I understand, at Lindholme. However, the other IRCs mentioned have a rota on two days per week and there is a large demand for this service. There are on-site AIT courts close to Harmondsworth and Colnbrook and also at Yarl’s Wood which has on-site hearing rooms. I understand that both sets of hearing rooms are currently in use and have judges sitting five days per week. This should meet previous government concerns about the complexity and cost of providing access to the bail procedure. I know that the Minister did not say this herself but her colleagues in another place have referred continually to complexity and cost. A bail hearing is much cheaper than a substantive asylum appeal and may of course offset the cost of detention itself. Finally, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector’s reports over the past two years contain overwhelming evidence showing that barely half of detainees are making bail applications. I will quote briefly from two examples. Out of 26 detainees seen during an unannounced inspection at Dover last July, only eight said that they had applied for bail and four of those had made their own bail application without a representative. From a survey of detainees at Tinsley House in November 2004, only 6 per cent of respondents had received a visit from a legal representative against a benchmark of 46 per cent. The report stated that the number of requests for help to find a representative had risen by more than 50 per cent in the past year but its ability to match need with supply had severely diminished because of the shortage of legal aid practitioners. A similar story was told at Campsfield, Haslar, Lindholme and several other centres. Some of these people are detained for months without any legal representation. I am sure that by now the Minister will be well aware of the problems that detainees have for these and other reasons previously explained