Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

One of the issues that has not been mentioned—very briefly—is the suitability of the accommodation and the facilities to accommodate the needs of pregnant women. How can the places promised for detention—barges, barracks and even marquees in the middle of runways—be suitable for pregnant women? The power is created in this Bill and any promises from the Minister that implementation will be different are not sufficient when the power is being taken under the Bill. We need time-limited safeguards on the face of the Bill.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I have not spoken earlier on the Bill, but I hope the House will forgive me for speaking for a couple of minutes now.

This debate takes me back 25 years to when I chaired a hospital trust. Pregnant women prisoners from Holloway were brought in wearing handcuffs and were chained to beds when receiving treatment and giving birth. We fought a battle with exactly the people who are supporting this amendment to stop that practice. It left me with an overwhelming long-term view that, in all but the most exceptional circumstances, pregnant women should not be in prison in the first place—and those were pregnant women who had been convicted of crimes. Here, we are talking about the detention of people who have not been convicted of crime in that way: they are migrants who are extremely vulnerable. It would be a terrible, retrograde step to take away the protections they have at the moment, so I support the amendment.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, enforced equality, no matter where, cannot be right. To say that everybody must be treated precisely the same under this Bill—which is the only substantive argument that has been advanced—is something that I just could not accept.