Immigration: Removal Centres

Baroness Bryan of Partick Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, unpublished management information shows that the longest-serving person currently detained has been held for three years and that the longest period of detention since 2014 is six years and eight months. That individual was released in October 2017. In each case the detainees were foreign national offenders convicted of very serious offences, including serious violence and serious sexual offending. I am confident that our reforms will prevent such long periods of detention being necessary, while not lessening our determination to remove foreign national offenders.

[Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the law does not allow indefinite detention. It is our view that a fixed, arbitrary time limit on detention would actually serve only to encourage individuals to frustrate the removal procedures in order to reach a point at which they would have to be released.

[Baroness Bryan of Partick]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, for that rush of enthusiasm. I visited Dungavel detention centre in south Lanarkshire when it was a prison and as prisons go, it was not such a bad place. Since it became a detention centre, however, it has changed considerably. It is surrounded by barbed wire and looks much more like a prison for serious offenders than a place to house people who could be vulnerable and could be there without knowing how long they are to be detained. Why has it been necessary to make conditions worse for asylum seekers than they were for prisoners?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I refute the point that conditions for asylum seekers are worse than for prisoners. The detention estate has reduced by some 40% in recent years, so we are holding far fewer people in detention, and 95% of individuals who are asked to leave the country because they are not here legally do not actually find themselves in the detention estate.