Immigration Detention: Victims of Modern Slavery

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer to the Urgent Question from the Shadow Home Secretary in the Commons yesterday. Government Written Answers on 20 December last year and 19 June this year stated that where there are reasonable grounds to believe that an individual may be a victim of trafficking or modern slavery such individuals shall not be detained, but that there are no central records of such persons. However, the Government indicated yesterday, following a freedom of information request, that, contrary to the interpretation a reasonable person could put on the Written Answers, they did know of 507 individuals who had been detained.

The Government said that the 507 who received a positive reasonable-grounds decision while in detention were then subsequently released within a few days in most cases. But for how long had they already been detained before they received that decision, and why in those 507 cases were trafficking and enslavement signs not picked up and resolved prior to any detention? It does not seem right that victims of trafficking and modern slavery should be locked up as immigration offenders at all. Why was the factual information apparently obtained from the FoI request withheld, presumably knowingly, from the Written Answers in December 2018 and last month? Will the Government explain the justification for, and reasoning behind, the troubling assertion by the Immigration Minister in the Commons yesterday that,

“a Freedom of Information request will elicit different data to that which is available in parliamentary questions”?—[Official Report, Commons, 17/7/19; col. 861.]

How in a democracy can a Government be held to account when they apparently knowingly seek to withhold some available factual information being sought through a parliamentary question?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Lord for his questions. He asked why victims of modern slavery were not detected prior to detention. Quite often, Home Office staff pick up the fact that people are victims of modern slavery. It is not the case that the 507 individuals were detained after getting positive reasonable grounds. As stated clearly in the FoI response, the figure relates to people who had positive reasonable grounds when entering detention or while in it. Further analysis of the figures shows that, of the 507 people in question, 479 received the positive reasonable grounds decision during a detention period. Of those, 328—68%—were released within two days of that decision. In total, 422—88%—were released within a week of the positive reasonable grounds decision. Of the 57 who were detained for eight days or more following the positive reasonable grounds decision, 46—81%—are foreign national offenders.

On the data and the differences in the figures, my right honourable friend the Immigration Minister was absolutely correct to say that there is no central record of those who received a positive conclusive grounds decision and are detained under immigration powers. While the information might be available from the live Home Office case information database, known as CID, it would be for internal management only. For example, some data may be incomplete, and every FOI response is caveated as such.