The hon. Gentleman is right: any stay is damaging. If someone was psychologically damaged before they arrived, it is even more damaging. If they do not know how long they will be detained, it is even more damaging again. He may remember that we had huge battles in this House over 90 days’ detention without charge, with the great defeat of Blair. We are now talking about detention of three months, four months, five months and three years.
3.15 pm
The hon. Gentleman is right: these people are damaged. As it turns out, the immigration system has a classification for these people. They are classified as adults at risk, and we are talking about those in categories 2 and 3. In May this year, the chief inspector of prisons found that 40% of the detainees then—the smaller, limited group—were in the “adults at risk” category; in other words, they were psychologically fragile people.
The Government claimed that people were held for more than four months only with a compelling reason. I called Bella Sankey, who works for the Detention Action group, and she told me:
“Detention Action supports victims of slavery and trafficking in detention who are routinely held beyond four months”,
and—this goes back to the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) made—
“The Government regularly pays out millions of pounds per year in unlawful detention claims for those held for four months or longer.”
Actually, it is bigger than it sounds. In the last five years, the Government have conceded 850 cases of unlawful detention. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield said that the total cost is over £20 million. Last year alone, the Government paid out £8 million. What could we have done to improve the asylum system with £8 million? Quite a lot, but they paid that out. By the way, while they were at it, they lost five article 3 cases—something that this Government had never done before 2010. The vast majority of detainees are not the villains that the Home Office would have us believe—just the reverse; they are the victims.