Our Amendment 216 in the form of a new clause provides for an independently chaired report on immigration detention, including, among a number of other issues, looking at introducing a statutory limit on time in detention.
Detention takes place in what are called immigration removal centres. They are, as the name implies, intended for short-term stays. That, though, is not how they are always used now. The use of detention has expanded rapidly over the last two decades. In 1993, 250 detention places were available in the United Kingdom. At the beginning of last year, the figure had reached just over 3,900. The number of people starting detention in the year to June 2015 was just over 32,000—up 10% on the previous year. Yet Home Office policy is that detention should be used sparingly.
In the last Parliament, an all-party group looked at immigration detention. We are unusual in this country in having no limit on administrative detention for immigration purposes. The recommendation of the all-party group calling for the introduction of limits on indefinite immigration detention was endorsed by the House of Commons last September. Included in
the evidence heard by the all-party group, which had parliamentarians from both Houses, and in which opposition members were in a minority, was a case of a young man who had been raped, tortured and trafficked before arriving in this country. He had been detained for three years in an immigration removal centre. The inquiry also heard evidence which reflected reported incidents of deaths and of allegations of sexual assault in immigration removal centres.
Home Office-stated aims are that those who have been trafficked should not be detained, those who have been tortured should not be detained, and that detention should be for the shortest possible time. There is clear evidence that these aims are not always achieved. The all-party group inquiry into immigration detention heard evidence that detention was worse than being in prison, since people in prison do at least know when they will be getting out. People in prison have also been convicted of an offence, unless they are on remand awaiting trial. For people in immigration detention, the uncertainty can be hard to take. Their life is in limbo. They are not told a great deal—or, indeed, perhaps anything—about how long they will have to stay, and they do not know whether they will be deported.
There is, I agree, little sympathy for people in immigration detention, which is precisely why the present situation goes on and on. The view, expressed to me again in a conversation two days ago—last Saturday, is that those coming to this country are doing it only for the benefits they can obtain and for the use of our National Health Service. Unfortunately, too many of those in a position, and with the power, to influence public opinion on this issue choose to use their position and power to reinforce, rather than refute, that impression.
The all-party inquiry heard from medical people with knowledge in this field that the sense of being in limbo in immigration detention, and the hopelessness and despair it generates, leads to deteriorating mental health. One such witness said that those who are detained for more than 30 days have a significantly higher level of mental health problems. In the first three quarters of 2014, 37% of those detained were detained for longer than 28 days, even though 28 days reflects best practice in other countries. Home Office guidance provides for detention to be used only as a genuine last resort to effect removal.
The inquiry also heard from a person with knowledge as a team leader at the prisons inspectorate that lack of any time limit encourages poor casework and ineffective procedures. The evidence this person gave was that a quarter of the cases of prolonged detention that the prisons inspectorate had considered were the result of inefficient casework rather than because it was inappropriate for people to be released.
Despite these places being called immigration removal centres, most people who leave detention do so for reasons other than being removed from the United Kingdom. According to government statistics, more than half the detainees are released back into this country. The system would therefore appear not only potentially damaging for those involved but expensive and a poor use of resources, since detaining someone costs £36,000 a year, with the overall cost being, as I
understand it, just over £164 million—or some 165 times the figure the Government used in this House the other week to justify the new offence of illegal working because of the greater opportunity it was considered it would provide to secure more money under the Proceeds of Crime Act—namely, just under £1 million.
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Having a time limit would not only bring an end to the prospect of indefinite detention but would change the culture within the system, which arises when there is no limit to the length of time someone can be detained, without any independent outside check on or review of whether that continuing detention is justified and proportionate in the light of all the circumstances. Decisions to detain and for how long are taken as an administrative or executive decision, with no automatic judicial oversight. Yet we are not talking about people who are detained because they have committed criminal offences.
There needs to be a wider range of community-based alternatives to detention, enabling people to remain in communities while their cases are being resolved or when arrangements are being made for them to leave the country. According to the Home Office’s own evaluation, the family returns process, designed to reduce the number of children detained, has resulted in most families being compliant with the process and no increase in absconding.
Following a visit to Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre last year, the Chief Inspector of Prisons said that the rigorously evidenced concerns that have been identified in an unannounced inspection provided strong support for the calls for time limits on administrative detention. He went on to say that a strict limit should now be introduced on the time that anyone can be administratively detained.
Not only have we heard the views of the all-party group inquiry report on immigration detention and the views of the Chief Inspector of Prisons; there is now also the government-commissioned report on immigration detention and the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons, by Stephen Shaw, the former Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.
In the Commons debates on this Bill on immigration detention, the Minister referred to detailed analysis being conducted by the Home Office; to coming back to the Commons in the new year, before the Bill had passed through both Houses; to setting out the broader piece of work the Government are undertaking; to responding to the Shaw report before the Immigration Bill had started its Committee stage in the House of Lords; and to setting out proposals for a new detained fast-track. I am not clear whether the documentation we have had so far from the Government is intended to have met all those undertakings, or whether there is more to come. No doubt, the Minister will clarify that point when he responds.
As far as the report commissioned by the Government from Stephen Shaw is concerned, the remit was to conduct an independent review of policies and procedures affecting the welfare of those held in immigration removal centres. Bearing in mind that the remit did not refer to considering the central issue of a statutory
limit on detention, it had a surprising amount to say on the issue of detention and its impact—perhaps to the concern of the Government.
For his report, Mr Shaw commissioned a review by Professor Mary Bosworth of the evidence linking detention with adverse mental health outcomes. Mr Shaw said that he regarded her review as,
“a study of the greatest significance”.
Two of Professor Bosworth’s key findings were, first:
“There is a consistent finding from all the studies carried out across the globe and from different academic viewpoints that immigration detention has a negative impact upon detainees’ mental health”.
Secondly:
“The impact on mental health increases the longer detention continues”.
Mr Shaw himself also said:
“Most of those currently in detention do not represent a serious (or any) risk to the public, and many represent a very low risk of non-compliance because of their strong domestic links to the UK”.
He also said:
“Ideally, voluntary returns options should be exhausted, and a community-based approach attempted, before detention is considered”.
In his conclusions, Mr Shaw stated:
“Most of those who have looked dispassionately at immigration detention have come to similar conclusions: there is too much detention; detention is not a particularly effective means of ensuring that those with no right to remain do in fact leave the UK; and many practices and processes associated with detention are in urgent need of reform”.
He ended by saying:
“Immigration detention has increased, is increasing, and—whether by better screening, more effective reviews, or formal time limit—it ought to be reduced”.
One assumes from that that Mr Shaw does not regard a formal time limit on immigration detention as being beyond the pale, as apparently do the Government, who, in their Written Statement on Shaw, referred to,
“the potential abuse of the system that arbitrary time limits would create”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/1/16; col. 28WS.]
In his report Mr Shaw also recommended that, in common with individuals who have been trafficked or tortured, there should be a presumption against detention for victims of rape and other sexual or gender-based violence; that for pregnant women it should be an absolute exclusion; and that for those suffering from serious mental illness the words,
“which cannot be satisfactorily managed in detention”,
should be removed from the enforcement instructions and guidance.
The Government gave a response to Stephen Shaw’s report in a Written Statement on 14 January 2016. In it they said that they accepted,
“the broad thrust of his recommendations”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/1/16; col. 26WS.]
That of course is as long as a piece of string. In order to clarify the Government’s position, perhaps the Minister could say which of Mr Shaw’s 64 recommendations the Government accept and which they do not. I beg to move.