Immigration Centre Detainees: Pay

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, it is important to recognise that immigration detainees have lawfully had their right to work in the UK, if indeed they ever had one, curtailed by virtue of an immigration decision or by the decision to detain them. Therefore, their position regarding pay rights is not the same as for people who are not subject to immigration detention.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, a freedom of information request to the Home Office in 2014 apparently found that in May that year hundreds of detainees had been paid £45,438 for 44,832 hours of work. If that work were not done by detainees in the immigration centre “volunteering”, as the Government seem to describe it, presumably it would have to be done in total or in part by paid staff of Serco or whoever is running the centre. If the figures I have cited for one month are correct, that suggests that the saving from using detainees at £1 per hour, compared to paying employed staff on the minimum wage, would be in the region of £300,000 a month. Who gets the benefit of this apparently considerable financial saving each month? Is it the Government or the firm running the immigration centre who reap that financial benefit?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, it is important to recognise that the work undertaken is entirely voluntary. It is not to supplement the work of the contractors. Contractually, the IRC providers must make a minimum number of opportunities available for detainees to participate voluntarily in this paid activity. As I explained to the noble Baroness, detainees’ position regarding pay rights is not the same as for those who are not in detention.