Summer Adjournment

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

It is a great honour to follow two such passionate maiden speeches. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Jared O’Mara) talked powerfully about the importance of inclusion and equality—I am sure that we all agree with him on that—and the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) talked passionately about her constituency. An aspect of her speech that particularly resonated with me was her opposition to the extreme Brexit towards which the Government are leading us.

I originally intended to spend my brief minutes talking about the immorality of indefinite detention. I will still talk about that, but I feel that before I do so, I must take the opportunity to say a few words about yet another decision that has been smuggled out on this last day before the recess, and about which many Members may not even know. The Government have just given the green light to more fracking at Preston New Road.

This is an absolute kick in the teeth for the local community, who almost unanimously oppose fracking in their back yard, and who have been fighting an incredibly strong campaign against it. However, it is not just a kick in the teeth for localism; it is an extraordinarily perverse decision, given the reality of accelerating climate change. The Government are locking us into a whole new fossil fuel industry at exactly the time when the experts are telling us that we must leave the majority of known fossil fuels in the ground.

We are currently in the middle of a heatwave, and more and more scientists are linking the freakish weather that we are currently experiencing with the likelihood of its happening more often as a result of climate change. The idea that now is a good time to give the green light to fracking, while making it more difficult, for example, to pursue renewable energy—as the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) was saying a few moments earlier—seems to be taking stupidity to new heights. I shall not spend any more time talking about fracking, because I want to talk about my recent visit to Yarl’s Wood, but I think it incredibly cowardly of the Government to smuggle this decision out when they know that people’s attention will be elsewhere, and when we cannot have a serious debate about it.

I recently visited Yarl’s Wood detention centre, having finally been granted permission following 18 months of trying to gain access. The visit was publicised to detainees, and it is difficult to communicate the desperation and heartbreak that I sensed in the 100 or so women who came to meet me. Each wanted her story to be heard. They wanted someone to know where they were, and they wanted to know that they would not be forgotten. They wanted something to be done about the mental torture that they were enduring day in, day out.

I use the term “mental torture” very deliberately. Imagine, Mr Speaker, living in the community where you have made your life and being required to report to the Home Office every week. Imagine that you do that religiously and never fail, and then one week, when you turn up to report as usual, you find yourself being randomly sent, with no notice, to a detention centre. You are given no time even to pack your clothes, and no time to tell anyone—your kids, perhaps. You are given no warning and no explanation. Imagine arriving at Yarl’s Wood and being given no information about the reason for your detention; about what, if anything, you have done wrong; or about how long you will be there. Months or perhaps even more than a year later, you may be released— again, with no warning or explanation. You are still required to make weekly reports to the Home Office. You are none the wiser about the reason for that arbitrary use of power against you, and you have no idea whether it will happen again.

This is intolerable, Mr Speaker, and it is happening on a daily basis in our country. Can you imagine how frightening it must be? It is cruel, it is inhumane, and it must stop. Many of the people to whom it is happening are vulnerable women. A recent research report published by Women for Refugee Women found that survivors of rape, trafficking and torture are still routinely being locked up in Yarl’s Wood. When Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons inspected Yarl’s Wood in 2017, it found exactly the same.

The Government’s adults at risk policy is supposed to reduce the number of vulnerable and at-risk people in detention, which the Shaw review identified as needing urgent action. The policy is not working. What I observed is consistent with the findings of HMIP, which is that

“the effectiveness of the adults at risk policy, which is intended to reduce the detention of vulnerable people, was questionable”.

That is, I think, a use of understatement.

The Home Office claims that progress on detaining fewer vulnerable people is difficult to measure because there is no way of assessing how many vulnerable people are detained. Many of the women I spoke to seemed incredibly distressed, and some had obviously been self-harming. Figures from the independent monitoring board at Yarl’s Wood show that levels of self-harm there more than tripled in 2017 alone. Yet I was told by Serco, which runs Yarl’s Wood, that out of 183 individuals detained when I visited, 29 adult women were defined as at risk level 1, and 43 at risk level 2, with none defined at risk level 3. For those who do not know what these risk levels mean, in a nutshell they identify survivors of torture, individuals with suicidal intentions, or those whose health is likely to be

“injuriously affected by continued detention.”

The claim of an absence of any category 3 people was, I think, disproved by the kinds of people we were speaking to, so I am not sure that even the way in which data is compiled is accurate. But even if it is accurate, this demonstrates the level of desperation of women who are being routinely locked up.

We heard a statement today from the Home Secretary, who said that he would look again at the whole issue of indefinite detention. May I use my last five seconds to urge him to do so with the strongest amount of urgency because people’s lives are at risk and what is going on is intolerable?

[Several hon. Members rose—]