Immigration Centre Detainees: Pay

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hamwee]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review rates of pay for work undertaken by immigration centre detainees.

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

My Lords, paid work is provided in immigration removal centres as a means to meet the recreational and intellectual needs of detainees and to relieve boredom. The work is not compulsory. All policies and processes are kept under review, and an internal review of the rate of pay of detainees is under way.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept the irony of providing menial, albeit voluntary, work—as she says, it is to meet detainees’ recreational and intellectual needs and provide relief from boredom—when asylum seekers are not allowed to work at all? Is the rate of £1 an hour for people who have committed no crime something that as a society we can be proud of?

[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.