No, I want to get this on the record. A society in which people can be asked for their documentation to prove their identity and status.
Under the Bill, immigration officers will be able to use physical force for all their powers. I have been involved in cases that concern the exercise of physical force. In one case a person was killed, and in others people have been seriously injured as a result of the physical force used in removals. Time and again, concerns have been expressed to the Government about the lack of training for those staff and about the brutality that has taken place as a result, and yet in this Bill we are extending the use of physical force to all immigration officers in exercising their powers.
Many fear, and I do too, that with the removal of the directions notices, so there is no clear process of informing people when they are to leave the country and what their destination is, we are going back to the process of dawn raids where vans turn up and drag people and families out of their homes. One of the first cases I dealt with after being elected as a Member of Parliament involved an elderly lady who came to my constituency surgery because the family next to her had been dragged out of their house at 6 o’clock in the morning, children and all. She went into the house, obtained the children’s teddy bears and followed the van to Harmondsworth so the children at least had their toys. Is that the society we are returning to as a result of this proposed legislation?
I believe that the Bill will result in the escalation of detention. It will make it more difficult to challenge detention, to obtain bail and to secure appeals. As was
said earlier, a third of appeals usually win, with nearly 50% winning entry clearance appeals. The Bill will mean that more people will be detained.
What is detention like? I refer people to the report of the independent monitoring board of Harmondsworth. These are volunteers appointed by the Minister, reporting to the Minister. Its latest report, from April 2013, is worth reading. It says that many people handle detention stoically, but that many others suffer intense distress. Many are mentally ill. They self-harm. We have had suicide attempts time and again in Harmondsworth and in Colnbrook. At the last count, last year 125 people were assessed under rule 35 by doctors who found that their health was suffering so badly that they should not be detained. Many Members know what rule 35 is: it means that the person should automatically be released. Of the 125 people so designated by doctors in Harmondsworth last year, only 12 were released. One was released because of ill-health, went to Hillingdon hospital and died soon after. That is what detention means. That is the type of suffering the Bill will increase, yet 20% of people in the detention centre get released back into the community. Some have been detained for a long time. I refer back to the report published in April. Two of those people had been detained since 2008, and 38 had been detained for more than a year. For many people, detention is not just a short-term measure before removal.
I am concerned about what the Bill will mean for the wider community. Nearly 50% of my constituents are black or people of colour. The Bill will mean that any person who is black, is of colour or who just looks foreign will be challenged. They will be challenged by bank managers and landlords, and by the vicar if they want to get married. They will also be challenged if they apply for legal aid. I find that offensive. I voted against identity cards in this House when my own Government brought them forward. The Bill will yet again bring the process of ID cards forward. There will be no ID cards for white people; it will be ID cards for black people, people of colour, or people who look slightly foreign or who have a foreign accent. That is what the Bill will do.
I find it offensive that the Bill will push more people to the margins. In my constituency, I have enough problems with Rachmanite landlords as it is, with people living in appalling overcrowded conditions and being charged too much. The Bill will create a shadow market, where people who are unable to secure accommodation through some landlords will have to go to others with higher rents. There will be a system of blackmail for those rents by those landlords.
What if people cannot get a roof over their heads? Where do they go? On to the streets. This is an immigration policy of destitution, isn’t it? Let us be frank about that. If people cannot get a roof over their heads, they go on to the street or are forced out of the country. I deal with many people who would like to leave the country, but cannot even get their papers out of the black hole of the Home Office.
The banks, the landlords, the driving licence agency and so on will be only the first step in this process of introduction of these pass laws. We know from leaks from the Department for Education, which were exposed in The Guardian earlier this year, that the Government wanted to introduce this sort of system by having teachers check the nationality of their pupils.