Immigration Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness D’Souza)]

The original Question was that Motion A be agreed to, since when Amendment A1 has been moved to,

“leave out from ‘House’ to end and insert …‘do insist on its Amendment 84’”.

The Question, therefore, is that Amendment A1 be agreed to. I should inform the House that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment A2 by reason of pre-emption.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, many of your Lordships will have negotiated a variety of agreements and arrangements, been involved in the toing and froing of proposals and counterproposals, and experienced the feeling of, “Okay, enough, let us move on”.

I do not equate that with this issue. I am realistic enough to understand where the Government have got to, but it is not far enough. From my privileged, comfortable position, compared with the asylum seekers, the subject of these amendments, I cannot leave it there. I do not feel, in the words of the noble and learned Lord, that I have done my job and done more.

I want to make it clear that I support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. To deprive an individual of liberty for the purposes of immigration control should be an absolute last resort. It should be comparatively rare and for the shortest possible time. At the last stage but one of this Bill, the Government introduced their amendment for automatic judicial oversight. We heard then references to detainees still being able to apply for bail and to access legal advice at any time, and so on. That painted a picture which, though technically correct, did not accord with the realities described to me over the years.

The noble and learned Lord introduced the automatic hearing after six months as a “proportionate response”, and said that earlier referral might result in work for both the tribunal and the Home Office at a time when an individual’s removal from the country was planned and imminent. So I was pleased last night that the Minister in the Commons, “after careful consideration”, moved a reduction from six months to four months to reflect the fact that the vast majority are detained for fewer than four months.

At the end of last December, on the latest figures that we have, 2,607 people were detained. Of these, 530—roughly 20% of the detainee population—had been detained for less than four months but longer than two months. Those are the numbers that my amendment is about, although they are 530 individuals, not just faceless numbers.

The impact of immigration detention, which is not a sanction—it is not punishment for wrongdoing—is considerable and reference has rightly been made to the particular impact on mental health. I look forward to Stephen Shaw’s further work and hope that it will ameliorate conditions, but there must always be a significant impact. I do not know, though I can speculate on, the Government’s reason for moving from the proportionate six months to four months, but if they can move, I suggest they can move further. In the mix of assessing what is proportionate, the impact of administrative detention must be a significant factor. Let us reduce it as much as possible. That is why I propose two months.

I take this opportunity to say, too, that in all this I do not want to lose sight of the objective of improving the whole returns process. Alternatives to detention with case managers who are not decision-makers would be more humane, less costly and more efficient. There is plenty of experience of that in other countries. An improved returns system would reduce the burden on tribunals and the Home Office. It may be trite but it is true that efficiency is much of the answer. I hope noble Lords will be sympathetic to my proposal to reduce it still more, and take us further on the journey that the Government have led us on with regard to the period when there must be an automatic judicial oversight of each individual’s position.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

In the Commons last night, the government Minister confirmed that the Government accepted that there should be judicial oversight of administrative immigration detention, and that was why they had previously tabled a Motion, the effect of which would be that individuals would automatically be referred to the tribunal for a bail hearing six months after their detention began, or, if the tribunal had already considered whether to release the person within the first six months, six months after that consideration.

That amendment was not accepted in this House, which again carried a Motion providing for a 28-day period of administrative immigration detention, after which the Secretary of State could apply to extend detention in exceptional circumstances. The Commons has again rejected the amendment from this House and has instead passed a government amendment reducing the timing of an automatic bail referral from six to four months, since, apparently, the vast majority of persons are detained for less than four months. Will the Government confirm that that bail hearing after four months of detention will be automatic and will not depend on the individual in detention having to initiate the application?

This is an issue which this House has already sent back to the Commons twice. Consideration obviously has to be given to the role of this unelected House in the legislative process as a revising Chamber, inviting the Commons to think again in a situation where the elected Commons and the Government have made some movement—albeit not enough to meet the views of this House—on the length of administrative immigration detention without automatic judicial oversight.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, although I would say to her that there are rules about transporting animals.

In the Commons, as the noble Baroness said, the Minister referred to—and indeed relied on—the guidance providing for “very exceptional circumstances” to meet expectations. However, guidance can of course be changed much more easily than primary legislation, and it is easier not to follow. I share the concern of the noble Baroness that the legislation must not weaken the process.

I was also puzzled to read in the government amendment that the person who authorises the detention —I shall come back to that—must have regard to the woman’s welfare, not, as the Minister said last night at column 486 of Hansard, “due regard”. As we have heard, the current equivalent guidance is not effective enough and I do not see that there will be any impact from putting pregnant women into a separate category within the guidance. I agree with the point made by David Burrowes and the noble Baroness about Amendments (a) and (b), rather than (a) or (b). I, too, had two points of concern about interpretation. The noble Baroness has referred to the phrase “apart from this section”. I read this as applying to the person with the power to authorise, but I do not know what,

“a person who, apart from this section”,

means. I hope the Minister can help me.

The other question concerns the term “shortly” in paragraph (a) of Amendment 85E. The Secretary of State needs to be satisfied that,

“the woman will shortly be removed from the United Kingdom”.

In this House we are accustomed to the term “shortly”. It is something of an Alice in Wonderland term: it means what it is meant to mean on the occasion when it is mentioned. Will the Minister help us by providing greater precision?

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall detail the House only briefly. I am most concerned about this issue. I fear that the Government have completely overlooked a very important point. You are not just detaining a pregnant woman, you are detaining the foetus inside that pregnant woman. The effect on that foetus is something about which science is increasingly concerned. The recent science of epigenetics tells us clearly that the foetus at certain stages during pregnancy is extremely vulnerable to the environment of the mother. Indeed, I have been involved in this area of research at Imperial College, and I shall refer briefly to research going on not only at Imperial but at the University of Singapore, which I shall visit later this week, and McGill University in Canada, among other places.

It turns out that at a certain stage in pregnancy, if a woman’s stress hormones, particularly cortisol, are raised, the effect on the foetus may be profound. Working after the ice storm in Ontario some years ago, Michael Meaney undertook cognitive tests on infants aged five, who had effectively been interned within their own houses because of the darkness and lack of electricity over a period of time. He found significant cognitive impairment. There is also some evidence that after massive stress to the mother, some children may behave aberrantly when they grow up —particularly, for example, being more aggressive.

Unfortunately, at this stage the science is not absolutely clear but there is a massive amount of evidence from work on rodents and some other animals. The evidence from human work is increasingly that certain stages of pregnancy—for example, once the foetus is identifiable in the uterus, usually at around 22 to 26 weeks—are a particularly vulnerable time. That is when stressing a woman may have a severely adverse effect.

For that reason, the Government need to recognise that they may be responsible for a heritable effect on that child and possibly even on the grandchildren of the mother. Until that is firmly worked out, I beg the Government to consider that internment, if it must be done at all, must be done only under the most serious circumstances. We cannot go back for women who have previously been detained in prison and other places, but in future we must make sure that we make law which is humane and amendable, so that we cause the minimum amount of damage to future generations.

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[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect, the noble Lord makes my point for me. It is questionable whether there is any distinction to be drawn between exceptional, properly understood, and very exceptional or most exceptional. That is what lies behind the manner in which this provision has been drafted. Nevertheless, to dispel doubt in the minds of others, it has been said in the guidance that, as a matter of policy, the term “very exceptional” may be applied when approaching the application of this provision to the detention of pregnant women.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I wish to pursue this issue. There must be a difference, otherwise it would not be necessary to use the word or the distinct phrases. Are the Government not in danger of falling foul of their own legislation by applying guidance that is different from the legislation?

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[Lord Keen of Elie]

I had rather summed up, but I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Winston, that of course there are elements in the journey of such a person that will cause stress. Detention may be a factor in that but, in the round, we have to come to a reasoned conclusion as to how we deal with unlawful entry into the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Hamwee]

Can I make the Minister an offer? He is obviously as uncomfortable as I am with the drafting of this clause. Can we find a way in which to get it to mean what—whether we like it or not—he is telling us that we ought to understand it to mean early in the next Session? Let us tack it on to something that will come to us fairly shortly.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect to the noble Baroness, “It means what I say—it does not say what I mean” may be her line, but that is one that we shall take into consideration.