It will surprise no one to know that the Liberal Democrats will eventually vote against the Bill. In Committee it feels as if we are polishing the absurd. We do not want to do it, and we do not want to be talking about this Bill. That is not the same as saying that we do not want to solve these problems.
I would like to start by trying to take a little of the heat out of the issue if I can. The suggestion that Members on the Opposition Benches do not want to tackle the small boats problem is categorically not true. I have heard no one on the Opposition Benches say that they agree that a criminal should be allowed to stay here. No one here is defending the traffickers or not supporting the Home Office in deporting people who deserve to be deported. In fact, we are saying that the Home Office should be doing it better and faster. We should start by recognising that.
We should also recognise that this Bill is partly about the local elections. People have asked, “Why are the Government so scared of scrutiny?”. I do not think they are; I think they just want to get the Bill out now, because otherwise it will not make the printers for the local election leaflets that will drop in the next few weeks. I am sorry to be cynical, but that, I think, is what is happening here.
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The problem is that the big issues that need tackling are enormous, and I wish that the Government would grapple with them. I found myself agreeing with the
Home Secretary—it felt uncomfortable—when she said that the first issue is the global factors that are pushing people around the world: climate change and instability, which has increased over the past 20 years. A combination of those two things is the cause of global migration. Most people do not seek to leave their region. Many of them do not speak another language, for example. The majority of refugees are not even in Europe but in next-door countries. Just look at what has happened recently in the disaster zones in Syria and Turkey; they want to be in the surrounding areas. Then there is this tiny number that are coming over here in small boats, and boy do we not want that to happen. No one here wants that, so let us start with that point.
However, I put it to the Government that doing things such as reducing our aid spend from 0.7% to 0.5% or going backwards in any way on any of our climate change commitments will not help that aim. I also put it to them that they are partly responsible for this issue. It is about Home Office inefficiency. They want to blame the pandemic, but it is not just about that. It started before then and it has become worse and worse. The pandemic worsened the situation, but the Government need to accept that inefficiency is fundamentally part of the problem. There is a managerial aspect to this issue that needs to be addressed.
I will focus my remarks on something very local. I start by putting on the record my thanks to the Minister for meeting me about my concerns about Campsfield House, a detention centre in Kidlington which the local community campaigned to close. It was shut down in 2017 entirely due to a Government plan to reduce the size of the detention estate, but now the plan is to reopen it. I will get to my key points in a moment, but the main thing to remember is that there are people inside these centres. I cannot convey what they feel as well they can, so I want to tell Allan’s story.
Allan was a refugee from Uganda who came to the UK and stayed at Campsfield House. He said:
“I was imprisoned in Campsfield for 9 months, though I did not know how long I would be held. One of the hardest parts of the detention is the uncertainty of not knowing how long you will be there. While you are there you are not treated like a human. Conditions at Campsfield were at times inhumane, with people resorting to hunger strikes, self-harm, and tragically even suicide.
You are given a number and referred to by that number rather than your name. When you meet people from outside the centre, you are perceived and treated as if you are a risk to society—a dangerous criminal—when all you are trying to do is reach safety and build a life.
While I was at Campsfield I saw many people struggle to cope with depression and a system designed to break people down. My way of coping was to join a legal reading group, where we taught ourselves immigration law and supported each other to appeal against our detention. I was eventually released from Campsfield in February 2015 when my legal battle was successful.
I was granted refugee status later that year, and I have since returned to being a carer in the community. My daughter is now at university”.
Treated like a criminal, referred to by a number—that is the reality that I worry we are going back to.
I have had assurances from the Minister that things will not be like that, but I am yet to see anything concrete in the plans for Campsfield to suggest that. The horrible things that happened to those individuals leak out into the community. Every time we have a suicide, it is in the Oxford Mail, and my worried constituents
write to me about the situation. While people may not be concerned right now, the proliferation of detention in this way will have a negative impact on my community. It also has an impact on the third sector and on my constituency casework—and I will take on those cases, because Oxford is proud to be a city of sanctuary.
I am an MP who will help those people regardless, because I think it is our job, but that is not going to solve the problem. If everyone who crossed the channel last year had been detained for 28 days, we would have had 9,161 people to house; Campsfield will house 400 and Haslar in Gosport can house another 600. The cost is eye-watering: Campsfield costs £170 million. I put it to the Minister that surely that money would be better spent on 700 Home Office caseworkers to process claims and make a dent in the backlog. I welcome the fact that the Government have started to do so; I do not understand why it took so long, but let us do more. Let us employ even more, because that is the answer.
If we are to have 1,000 more in detention, what will our new baseline detention rate be? How many people are we planning to have? What are we trying to do? Surely we want as many people processed and deported as quickly as possible. I am with the Minister when he wants to find the criminals. I am with the Government when they want to work out who should not be here and send them back, but I am so worried that that is not what will happen, because we have indefinite detention in this country. We are the only country in Europe that has it. My experience, having been the MP for an area with a detention centre, is that we do not keep to the 28 days, as we should. We do not even keep it to months; some people were there for five years.
I am afraid that I have no faith in this Government to deliver an efficient asylum system that will help those people. Let us focus on what they can get right, let us stop the political posturing and let us stop forgetting that these are real human beings. I genuinely think that on child detention, we are on the wrong side of history. It is a stain that it ever happened; it is a stain that it happens now. The fact that one third are children should be enough for the Minister to turn around and say that we will have a “do no harm” principle and assume that everyone is a child until proven otherwise. I do not want a single child to be held in detention, and I am rather shocked that the Government do not feel the same.