Immigration Detention

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

I do indeed. It underlines the urgency of today’s debate and the need to address the issue. Nobody, especially not the Government, wants to see the immigration detention estate expanding, but without a shift in policy along the lines recommended in the report, it will be an inevitable, deeply distressing and disturbing reality.

The UK is alone in the EU in not having a maximum time limit on detention. That lack of a time limit was a constant theme in the evidence we received during our inquiry and one on which we received some striking testimony. Time and again we were told that detention was worse than prison, because in prison people know when they will get out. As one former detainee said:

“The uncertainty is hard to bear. Your life is in limbo. No one tells you anything about how long you will stay or if you are going to get deported.”

A team leader from the prisons inspectorate told us that the lack of a time limit also encourages poor working.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Like others, I commend the hon. Gentleman for his work, and I am grateful to him for his comments about my former colleague Sarah Teather, who did tremendous work in this area in her time here. On the lack of a time limit, does he think that inadequate access to legal representation is one of the reasons why people end up in open-ended detention in that way? The briefing supplied to us today by Bail for Immigration Detainees points out that 11% of those detained have never had any legal representation at all.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I very much agree with him. That was a feature of the evidence we received. Addressing that issue is important to ensure justice and speed in processing applications, which is in the interests of everybody.

I mentioned poor working in the consideration of cases, and the representation we heard from the prisons inspectorate suggested that, in one quarter of the cases it had looked at, prolonged detention was the result of inefficient case working. Therefore, having a time limit is not simply about justice and humanity; it is about ensuring a focus in the system and changing the culture. Medical experts also told us that the sense of being in limbo—the sense of hopelessness and despair—leads to deteriorating mental health. One expert from the Helen Bamber Foundation told us that those detained for more than 30 days had significantly higher mental health problems.

Although they are called immigration removal centres, we found that most people who leave detention do so for reasons other than being removed from the UK. That is an important point. According to the latest immigration statistics, more than half the detainees released are released back into the country, so this is not just about the impact on those detained; it is also about cost and the good use of public money. It costs some £36,000 a year to detain somebody for 12 months, so a huge amount of taxpayers’ money is being spent on detaining people who we will eventually release into the UK anyway.

Our central recommendation is for a maximum time limit set in statute, not simply to right the wrong of indefinite definition, but to change the culture endemic in the system. We settled on 28 days, not only because it reflects best practice from other countries, but because it is workable for the Home Office, given that in the first three quarters of 2014 only 37% of people were detained for longer. It also reflects the evidence of the mental health impact on those detained for more than a month. We also recommended that decisions to detain should meet the aims of the Home Office’s own guidance—that is, taken more sparingly and only genuinely as a last resort to effect removal. Deprivation of liberty should not be a decision taken lightly, nor should it be taken arbitrarily. Currently, decisions are taken by relatively junior Home Office officials, with no automatic judicial oversight. With no time limit, it has become too easy for people to be detained for months on end, with no meaningful way of challenging their continued detention.

The introduction of a time limit and the reduction in the reliance on detention would represent a significant change. In order to detain fewer people for shorter periods, the Government will need to introduce a much wider range of community-based alternatives. In our report, we give a number of examples of those alternatives, from places as different as the United States and Australia, which is often cited as an example because of its tough immigration system, as well as Sweden, which we visited in the course of the inquiry. These alternatives allow people to remain in communities while their cases are resolved, including when making arrangements to leave the country. These alternatives are not only more humane, but cost less and have a higher compliance level.

There is a UK precedent. When the coalition Government committed to reducing the number of children detained, they introduced a family returns process, which the House of Commons Library described as designed

“to encourage refused families to comply with instructions to depart from the UK at an earlier stage, such as by giving them more control over the circumstances of their departure.”

It worked. There has been a dramatic fall in the number of children detained, and the Home Office’s own evaluation of the scheme found that most families complied with the process—with no increase in absconding.

There are a number of other recommendations in the report; others will refer to them, but let me briefly cover them. We recommend that pregnant women and victims of rape and sexual violence should never be detained, and that the shocking harassment and abuse experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex detainees must be addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly in this very important debate. As other hon. Members have done, I commend—as best practice for other all-party groups to follow—the work of the groups that produced the report during the last Parliament. I am grateful for its acknowledgment of my former colleague Sarah Teather’s leadership in this area during her time in the House.

In looking at the scale of this problem, the surveys recently carried out by the Bail for Immigration Detainees group are interesting. During the most recent survey period, 216 people left detention after more than 12 months. It is worth reflecting on the sheer scale of that. My greatest concern is that, ultimately, only 38% of such people were required to leave the country. Therefore, the system is not just inhumane, but inefficient. It is not doing the job that we as taxpayers require it to do.

When I see such figures, I inevitably draw on my own professional experience. Before I entered Parliament, I was a criminal court solicitor, like the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes). I started my professional career as a procurator fiscal depute. We worked to very strict timetables in Scotland. Any prosecutor remanding people on such a scale and getting convictions for only 38% of them would have found themselves in some difficulty with their superiors.

It is worth comparing how we treat those detained for immigration purposes with how we treat other people in our community whom we detain in the criminal justice system and the mental heath system. In neither case do we detain people without a time limit or any sort of judicial supervision of their detention. Frankly, if we rightly apply such a standard for our own people, why should the standard be different for those who come here fleeing persecution in other countries?

That brings me to the point about the availability of legal representation that I made in my intervention on the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). I have no doubt that the lack of access to legal representation contributes to making many cases last longer than the 12-month period identified by BID. At the time of the last BID survey, only 50% of people had representation when they were interviewed, and 11% never had any representation. We all know why: these people come from countries with very different legal systems and access to justice is on a very different basis, if indeed there is much state-provided justice at all. In addition, there are the difficulties of language and the mental health problems that inevitably arise, as the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) said. We can understand the importance of getting proper representation to people in such situations.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The constituent I quoted was unable to access legal representation because she could not afford it. It was a case of paying the council tax or paying a lawyer. In the end, she succeeded in her bail bid by representing herself, which is one of the things we need to help people to do.

[Mr Carmichael]

Indeed. I was very struck by the constituent’s email that the hon. Lady read out. It is clear that that lady has significant language difficulties. Nobody in such a situation should be left having to represent themselves before a court or tribunal. These are exactly the sort of people for whom legal aid is designed and is absolutely necessary.

If I could make only one change, it would be in relation to the need for a time limit. In my time as a prosecutor, when we detained somebody or remanded them in custody, they had to be brought to trial within 40 days on a summary complaint or within 110 days on an indictment. Those were very demanding timescales to meet, and it could be very difficult to do so, particularly for complex crimes. However, such people were given priority because they had been deprived of their liberty. If that is how we treat people suspected of a crime, I see no reason why we should treat people seeking refuge any differently.