UK Parliament / Open data

Immigration Bill

Proceeding contribution from Paul Blomfield (Labour) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 1 December 2015. It occurred during Debate on bills on Immigration Bill.

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), whose contribution represents the cross-party consensus on this issue, as does the breadth of support from both sides of the House for new clause 13.

I will severely reduce the remarks I was going to make because I am keen that the Minister should have the full opportunity to respond, but I want to underline the breadth of support for engagement in the inquiry—which I was privileged to be vice-chair of and which Sarah Teather led—to which the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) referred. We had Members from all parties and from both Houses, with a depth of experience that was reflected in the involvement of a former Law Lord and a former chief inspector of prisons. We were unanimous, having heard evidence over eight months, that the introduction of a time limit on indefinite detention was overdue. That was reflected, as other Members have said, in the will of this House when we debated the matter on 10 September.

3.15 pm

New clause 13 seeks to reflect the will of the House in the Bill. It is not a particularly controversial proposal and would bring this country into line with most other countries in Europe. This is not a party political proposal, because our concern is about the growth of the detention estate in the UK, which happened under successive Governments—my Government as well as the Conservative Government—and needs to be addressed.

I would like to share one of the many stories we heard that highlight the problem. We spoke to a detainee who was in detention at the time of our inquiry, a young man from the disputed territory on the Cameroon-Nigeria border. He told us that he had been trafficked to Hungary as a 16-year-old, where he was beaten, raped and tortured. He managed to escape and eventually made his way to Heathrow—using a false passport, because he was desperate. That passport was discovered on arrival and he was detained. We asked him how long he had been detained and he said, “For three years”—three years in an immigration removal centre. That detention conflicts with the three stated aims of the Home Office—that those who have been trafficked should not be detained, that those who have been tortured should not be detained and that detention should be for the shortest period.

With new clause 13 we are trying to reflect the will of the House in addressing that problem. I accept that the Minister also wants to address it, because indefinite detention does not simply have an impact on those detained—we heard powerful evidence about the impact on their mental health and the sense of hopelessness when people do not know how long they are to be held for, which they said made detention worse than prison—but is also expensive, costing the taxpayer more than £36,000 a year.

We recognise that the recommendation to introduce a time limit will mean a fundamental culture change and a reliance on methods other than detention to manage the process, so we looked at other countries that are doing this successfully, such as the United States and Australia. Indeed, some people are quick to hold up Australia as a model of a country with hard-line immigration policies, but it is developing much more effective alternatives to immigration detention. There is also a precedent in the UK, whereby the coalition Government, committing to reduce the number of children detained, introduced the family returns process. That process worked, leading to a dramatic fall in the number of children detained, with no increase in absconding.

There are therefore powerful arguments at every level for a shift in policy. I hope the Minister will commit in his response to seeking to limit and reduce the time that people spend in detention.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
603 cc205-6 
Session
2015-16
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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