Alternatives to Child Detention

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate. The issue is important not only because of the numbers of children who are detained, but, sadly, because it symbolises how far the Labour Government had gone, in some aspects, from the ideals that motivate many millions of the party’s supporters.

When I raised the issue on the Floor of the House about two years ago, I was one of the first people to do so. I have visited Oakington detention centre and Yarl’s Wood, and I have had two debates on the Floor of the House about children in detention. As hon. Members will have heard earlier, and as they will certainly have read in the documentation, no reputable organisation defends this practice, which almost certainly puts us in breach of the European convention on human rights. All reputable organisations—whether it is United Nations organisations in this country, Save the Children, the Refugee Council or Liberty—are united in opposition to this practice.

The practice of detaining children is wrong in principle. What are we doing detaining children in custody when they have committed no crime? Hon. Members might be surprised to know that when I discuss the issue with friends and colleagues in foreign legislatures—even those in third-world countries—they are surprised that Britain, of all countries, detains children indefinitely. When looking at these issues, we must always remember that the history of empire means that people look to Britain to set an example, but we are not setting one on this matter.

Detention was wrong in principle, and it was almost certainly in breach of a number of human rights conventions, but it was also wrong in practice. I know that because I have visited the detention centres. Ministers will tell us about the improvements, and they will tell us that everything is the parents’ fault because they should have left when they were supposed to. However, when we go to the detention centres to meet the families and the children, particularly if we have children ourselves, it is brought home to us on a level that we cannot put down on paper—even in excellent reports such as those by the Home Affairs Committee—what it means to children to be detained and deprived of their liberty. However wonderful the facilities, the children cannot run outside as far as the eye can see. As far as they are concerned, they are behind four walls. They have almost certainly been brought into detention in traumatic circumstances, such as after a morning raid, and they find themselves locked up for reasons they can scarcely comprehend—and locked up, in their view, is what they are. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who will speak for the Opposition, I have actually visited the detention centres and the children. Detention is a restriction of children’s liberty, and they face the trauma that that entails.

There are also issues about the conditions, some of which were dealt with by the Labour party when it was in government, but some of which were not. At Yarl’s Wood, in particular, there is an inflammable atmosphere. We have just had riots, and there have been all sorts of problems. Most recently—earlier this year—women were on hunger strike. Part of that inflammable atmosphere has to do with the underlying tension about the fact that children are detained at Yarl’s Wood.

Party colleagues will say that the parents chose not to go home at the first time of asking, so they are responsible for their children’s being in custody. Whenever I raise the issue on the Floor of the House, I hear that it is not the Government’s fault and that the parents are responsible, but where in the practice of justice and in the way in which this country is run are we in the business of punishing children for what their parents have done?

[Keith Vaz]

There is another issue, which I raised in my speech. Why do people have to wait so long for their cases to be dealt with? Does my hon. Friend agree that dealing with cases in a more timely fashion and clearing the Home Office backlog would help to make the system more humane? She is absolutely right about the detention of children, but the reason why we have so many cases is that they are not being dealt with quickly enough.

[Ms Abbott]

My right hon. Friend has great experience as a constituency MP. He probably does more immigration casework than any constituency MP, and he has been doing it for 23 years. Added to that is his experience as the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. He makes an excellent point: the delays help to create an intolerable situation for people trapped in the system.

I am one of the longest-serving Members of the House present today, and I remember when detention centres were introduced. The House was told that they would be used only for short periods while we fast-tracked cases and deported people. Had the House been told that children, in particular, would be in these centres for months—there have even been cases of children being in them for nearly a year—it might have taken a very different attitude. A system that was meant to be used for short periods of detention while people’s cases were fast-tracked has turned into one—I have visited the detention centres myself—in which people and their children are held in limbo. That is one of the things that make this practice so unacceptable.

As I said, the detention of children is wrong in principle; it is wrong because it is an infringement of their liberty. It is also wrong because, in a way, we are making children and families suffer for the issues in our system, and the delays are very much part of that. We set a very poor example to other countries and other jurisdictions if we cannot construct a system in which it is not necessary to detain children.

The purpose of the detention centres, apart from expediting removals, was to act as a deterrent. There has been a strong feeling over the past 13 years that the grimmer and more exacting we made the regime for asylum seekers and immigrants, the less likely they were to come here. However, people must recognise that, for better or worse, the push-factors behind people migrating and seeking asylum are very great, and the idea that turning the screw one more time will see numbers drop has proved false.

We need to focus as never before on having an efficient and speedy system, because my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and I have spent 23 years struggling with the delays. In the long run, we also have to deal with the circumstances in people’s countries of origin that make them think, in their desperation, that they will chance their arm by coming to this country.

After 23 years of immigration and asylum casework, I would add that we also need to deal with some of the so-called immigration and legal advisers who prey on our constituents and give them false advice and false hope. Often, it is not the would-be immigrants or asylum seekers who put themselves on the path of collision with the authorities, but the advice they get from people who are feeding off them and making money out of them, even though they have little money to spend.

In the immediate term, we need to deal with the ongoing inefficiencies in the system and bear down on some of the lawyers and so-called immigration advisers. Although we are obviously very constrained, we also need, in the very long term, to create the right conditions in people’s regions of origin so that it is not necessary for them to flee here. That is the way to deal with the system.

Successive bodies and individuals have tried to get past Governments to deal with this issue. It was a particular preoccupation of a previous Children’s Commissioner and it is a preoccupation of the chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, who did a comprehensive report on the issue two or three years ago. As I said, every reputable organisation that has looked at this has said that the detention of children is wrong in principle and detrimental to children in practice. Medical work has been done on the consequences of the stressful situation for children, and it is very alarming. I have said before, including to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch, when she was a Minister: how can we, the politicians, agree to keep children in circumstances that would horrify us if they were proposed for our own children?

It must be wrong to punish children for the alleged infractions of their parents. There must be a better way than that. The way, of course, as the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) said, is not to split families but to bear down on the aspects of the system—whether the advice that is given or the speed with which cases are dealt with—that lead to people being in such a plight. What has been happening is wrong. There must be a way forward that does not involve splitting up families.

I have raised the issue time and again in the House and in questions, and I have visited detention centres, not because there are votes in worrying about the children in those centres but because I felt that what was happening was wrong, and that there must be a better way. It gives me no pleasure to say that it has taken a new Government to take a fresh look at the question. I hope they will not let the tribulations of office and its practical difficulties deflect them from ending what has been this country’s shame: the detention of innocent children in detention centres.

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[Ms Abbott]

I urge the hon. Gentleman to be persistent. I had to be, but we cannot have MPs in effect being barred from going to such institutions. Otherwise, we are left to wonder what they are trying to hide.

[Dr Huppert]

Indeed; I plan to be persistent. I accept the fact that unexpected circumstances sometimes mean that things must be cancelled. One deferral is fine, but if the arrangement keeps being deferred I shall be more concerned, and shall certainly raise the matter here.

To move on to the issue of children, we heard earlier from the hon. Member for Croydon Central about the effects of detention on mental health; we have heard about its effects on physical health and overall well-being, and about the future that we are providing for the children in question. It is hard to see how any of that fits with the UK Border Agency’s statutory duty under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 and the way in which it is supposed to treat children, or with article 37 of the UN convention on the rights of the child, which states that detention should be used only as a last resort and for the shortest possible time. It would be hard to say that that is being carried out.

Another issue is the advice and help that the children and their parents get. I had planned to speak for longer and to discuss legal aid for Refugee and Migrant Justice, but early-day motion 191 on that topic was discussed on the Floor of the House today, so I shall not take up time with it now; nevertheless, it is essential that we provide the right support to people.

The way in which we deal with age-disputed children is also a real issue. With very young children things are clear for all concerned. They are children, and there is no doubt. They should not be detained. We need to provide much more family-friendly and child-friendly solutions. There is a concern about children who claim to be, say, 17; it is hard to tell whether such a claim is honest. We need a clear, fair process to try to establish the age of those people. In many cases it will not be hard. We need a clear routine that appears fair and does not seem—as in so many cases that I have been made aware of—like arbitrary justice, with decisions being made semi-arbitrarily, based on various factors, about whether the truth is being told. It is hard on teenagers who are already in very difficult circumstances to tell them that there is no way for them to interact sensibly with the process.

The question was raised earlier whether we should punish children for the sins of their parents. I do not see seeking sanctuary in this country as a sin or something worthy of punishment. It is worthy of rapid decisions about whether people are genuine sanctuary seekers, who should be coming to this country—and we should open ourselves as we would hope other countries would, to support people in need—or whether there is something false about the story, in which case things are different. In any event, punishment is not the route. Trying to control the people coming to this country by being as nasty as possible to them while they are here is not worthy of this country. There are other issues that must be dealt with, and international development is clearly the right process for that, as has been mentioned.

The UK Border Agency needs to work faster. I am constantly coming across cases that have taken years to process, and that gives rise to questions about how fairly and rapidly the system works. The aim must be to reach a decision quickly and fairly about whether people are genuine sanctuary seekers, so that if they are not they go, and if they are they can stay. At the moment, it takes far too long. Competence is a serious issue in relation to the UKBA in several wider respects, which have even affected people who came to work for me in my former profession, from such places as the USA. There is something fundamentally wrong, in my experience, with the way the agency operates.

We need to end child detention as quickly as possible. I am delighted that that is in the coalition agreement. It is a fantastic aspect of the coalition that we can finally end such an awful thing. We owe the people of this country better than child detention, and I look forward to our fulfilling our aim in that respect.

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[Meg Hillier]

I worked with two Home Secretaries who were robust in defending the Home Office’s need for resources for several areas, but, as the Minister will find out in his new role, resources are always challenging in a Department such as the Home Office. There are many priorities, and every time resources are put into one area, there is a risk that another area will bubble up, as I believe he with his greater experience dealing with these matters in Parliament will know.

Resources were always an issue, but it was not as simple as that. Often, local authorities did not want cases decided as quickly as they could have been because of the challenge of then housing and providing for families. There had to be some negotiation so that families who were able to stay were properly provided for in local authorities.

[Ms Abbott]

Would my hon. Friend agree that delays, which bear on child detention, are part of a process that feeds on itself? The more delays there are, the more people have shoddy legal advisers who tell them, basically, to play for time. If at some point we could bear down on the delays, it would save us money in the medium term.

[Meg Hillier]

I believe that my hon. Friend would agree that, as constituency MPs, we have seen reductions in the delays. I certainly am seeing that, and the figures that the Government can provide will show that they have reduced. Yes, as she rightly says, there is a self-propelling, negative cycle.

The hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) raised some questions about the Opposition’s position, and I shall make that clear. Actually, the approach of the Government is very much the approach that was under way as the previous Government left office.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said that she has visited detention centres and seen what goes on there. I, too, have visited them, and that was one reason I was keen, as the Minister then responsible, to have a review and to work with organisations that had an interest in the matter. As I communicated to her and, in particular, to the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who is now the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and who was very interested in the matter, I was frustrated that a great deal of energy was being spent on argument and disagreement, not solutions. Any solution would not have solved the problem overnight. Do Members not think that in the past 13 years the Government would have stopped detention overnight if it were that easy? It is not that easy, and that is the reality of government.

[Ms Abbott]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Meg Hillier]

Could I make some progress, please? Let us be clear that Yarl’s Wood also houses foreign national prisoners, not just families with children. We should get it into the debate that families with children are not the only people housed there.

I worry that my hon. Friend has forgotten our conversations in which I explained my plans to revisit some of the issues surrounding children in detention. Some work was done by previous Ministers responsible for immigration to improve support for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, create expert local authorities that were able to deal better with those children, and create a children’s champion within the UK Border Agency.

At the end of last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Mr Woolas), who in the past had focused more widely on the issue of children in the immigration system, spoke to me about his desire to see a particular ministerial focus on the issue of children in detention. He asked me to take on that responsibility. As I have said, I wanted to look at the whole picture, and I began that process by meeting a number of organisations involved, and the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire and the former Member for Bedford, because of their particular interest in this matter. Out of that meeting, held under the Chatham House rule—I will not name those who were there, although hon. Members would not be worried about that—we came up with the view that early legal advice was important, and that the early legal advice project already under way needed to be boosted. I subsequently met the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and ensured that we worked closely with it, because of its desire to see a difference in that area. That was a helpful partnership and I also worked with local groups.

[Ms Abbott]

I remember our conversations with great clarity. My hon. Friend is a good friend and colleague, but we took diametrically opposed views on the issue of children in detention. I thought that it was wrong, and I have always thought that. One argument is that there is a problem because this is not an easy matter, but the real Home Office position was revealed in many statements, which claimed that ultimately, children in detention were not the responsibility of the Government but that it was the fault of their parents. Behind that lies a narrative on immigration that suggests that the more punitive the system is made, the less likely people are to abuse it.

[Meg Hillier]

I disagree with my hon. Friend. Perhaps I could remind her that we both agreed that we should not let the better be the enemy of the good. I was attempting to improve the system, and I am pleased that we are now seeing further steps along those lines. A better take-up of assisted voluntary return was a particular issue, and I pushed hard for third parties to do that. The Government felt that it was not always appropriate if such matters were dealt with by the person who was deciding on the immigration claim, and I hope that that will be a major part of the review. Excess baggage is not a new issue, but it is an equally important one to help people settle back. We need a clearer process in which people know from the beginning what the options are, and work on that with community groups has been important. Removal directions should be provided in the community. Those things are all part of the plan and the intense work that the UK Border Agency was beginning to undertake, prior to the election.

The previous Government were learning from the best models from abroad, and the new Government are continuing with that. However, we must recognise that even those models from abroad—in Australia and Sweden, for example—allow for children to be detained under difficult circumstances. I refer the House to an Adjournment debate from 10 February 2010, in which I flagged up some of those issues, although at that point I had not met a number of the groups.

I wish this approach well, as it is the way in which the previous Government attempted to deal with the situation. However, it was not easy, and I am a little puzzled. Today the Minister reiterates an announcement of the end of children being detained, and he re-announces a welcome review that was already under way. In his opening speech, he clearly highlighted the likelihood of detention immediately prior to a flight. I refer back to my point about what would happen in the case of a late legal challenge; that is an issue that needs to be tackled and supported by the whole legal process. The Minister also mentioned the Afghanistan centre for Afghan teenagers, and I wonder whether that marks a division in the coalition, especially given the remarks made by the hon. Member for Cambridge.

[Damian Green]

I am grateful for the unanimous support for this policy from all sides of the Chamber.

[Ms Abbott]

First and last time.

[Damian Green]

Absolutely. This is the second time this week that something has happened to me that I suspect will never happen again. I attended the Citizens for Sanctuary summer party where, as the new Minister for Immigration, one expects to get brickbats, but instead I was given a bouquet. I suspect that that will be the last time, so I thought that I would enjoy it while it lasted. This debate is a metaphorical conclusion of that experience.

I am grateful to hon. Members from all parties for their contributions. The only comment that verged on the slightly churlish was the conclusion reached by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who was attempting desperately to find splits in the coalition. I am extremely pleased and proud to be advocating our policy, which was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. The hon. Lady will toil in vain if she seeks to find splits in that area.

A number of important practical points were raised and questions asked in the debate, and I will now deal with those. First, let me say that I was remiss in not thanking the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch for all the expertise and personal kindness that she showed when she was in government and I was in opposition.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) rightly mentioned the review by the Home Affairs Committee. As he said, he recognises many of the ideas that the Government have put forward, as many were mentioned in past reviews by that Committee. I look forward to further expert contributions from the Committee. He also went through some of the statistics for children in detention, which I think bear greater examination. He mentioned the figure of just over 1,000 for the number of children in detention in 2009. If that annual figure is broken down, one finds the slightly depressing fact that the numbers go up as we go through the year: the figure for the third quarter is higher than that for the second or first quarters.

As the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch said, the central difficulty is about what should be done at the end of the process if a family simply refuses to go. Detention under the system that we are getting rid of was not necessarily effective. Of the 1,068 children who departed from detention in 2008-09, only 539 were removed and 629 were released back. There are clearly difficulties with the efficacy of removal and with taking away detention as an option—something that we are doing for all the reasons that have been advanced during the debate—but even with detention, more children were released back into the community than were removed. The old system was not particularly effective, and I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Leicester East for stating the actual figures, as they illustrate that fact tellingly.

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[Damian Green]

I am grateful for that clarification. The position was not entirely clear.

The point was rightly made about access to local authority services. Local authority social services are embedded at Yarl’s Wood; they are there permanently.

My final point about the statistics is that the figure was more than 1,000 and it is now five, so we are doing our best, even in the interim phase while the review is going on, to keep the numbers to an absolute minimum.

Various Members on both sides of the Chamber brought up the issue of delays, which lead to problems in the system. I think that I was being invited by the right hon. Gentleman to give a new time scale for the end of the legacy. Given all his experience, he will excuse me from making such commitments in my second outing at the Dispatch Box, but he will know, from having sat through many of these debates with me in the past four years, that like him, I have been very exercised by the problem of delay.

I dare say that those who were Ministers in the previous Government would not dissent from the basic proposition that the long delays embedded in the system lead to many of the associated problems that we see. Bearing down on those delays and getting rid of the old legacy, as it has been called, as fast as possible is clearly a high priority. That will have beneficial spin-offs throughout the asylum system and, indeed, the wider immigration system.

At various stages, the debate drifted into a general immigration debate, and it is perfectly reasonable that the same points apply in that context. The fewer delays we have, the more likely we are to avoid the problems that we have seen, although it is a fair point—it was made by Ministers in the previous Government and will be made by me—that not every delay in the system is caused by the system. Not every delay is caused by the border agency. Some delay is caused by the legal processes that people have the right to go through and do go through.

[Ms Abbott]

On the question of delays, one thing that successive Ministers in the previous Administration never understood is that if we, in a panic—usually occasioned by the tabloid press—bear down on one aspect of the system, all that does is displace pressure to another aspect. That is why we were never successful in dealing with delays overall. We bore down on one thing—Romanian ladies in headscarves—and then got a bulge of children who claimed to be 18 but were not. So I beg, in a non-party political way, for a strategic, all-embracing approach. That in the end will produce the desired result.

[Damian Green]

I agree with that point and will seek to take the friendly advice that the hon. Lady offers across the Chamber in that regard.