Immigration: Detention

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, this has been one more milestone in the long immigration debate. I thank my noble and learned friend for setting it out today, and congratulate him on his valediction. I shall miss his good sense and good humour, as will so many of our colleagues.

I have been involved in a number of previous inquiries and reports by all-party groups, some on immigration, some on Africa. They have all been good examples of best parliamentary practice, in which the general public, outside groups, NGOs and refugees themselves can engage with MPs and Peers. This report is therefore another outstanding example. Many of the recommendations coincide with those of the Independent Asylum Commission—mentioned by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham—which offered a way forward, as does this report. However, I am sorry to say that apart from improved conditions for children and families, which have been welcomed, the Home Office still seems to be travelling with blinkers on. It has focused on immigration largely from the point of view of its effect on numbers, the impact on the British economy and on our way of life, and much too little on the situation of the refugees and migrants themselves.

I speak as a patron of Friends Without Borders in Portsmouth, which is concerned about inmates in Haslar IRC. Haslar has had quite a good HMI report recently, but it is unfortunately due for closure in a few weeks. I am aware of the wide discontent around the issue of length of detention. Most people who work closely with detainees feel strongly that there should be a maximum period of 28 days. Detention Action’s report last October pointed out that indefinite detention was a “uniquely British phenomenon”—and it is not one of which the UK can be proud. In 2013, over 900 migrants left detention after spending more than six months inside. Visitors to Haslar are perturbed, for example, by the case of an Indian national who was detained in October 2009 and released two years later, in December 2011. He was then returned to Haslar on 20 February 2013 and is still in immigration detention in Haslar another two years later. The point is that the Home Office did not remove him from a removal centre between 2009 and 2011, nor between 2013 and 2015. Yet he is not a danger to society in any way. There are many such cases, even just in Portsmouth. Another man was first detained in February 2013, then redetained last December. Three others in Haslar have been detained for long periods of 10 months, nine months and seven months. All those are from war-torn countries and the Home Office has not been able to obtain travel documents for them.

As at 31 December 2014, of the 3,462 people detained in immigration removal centres in short-term facilities, there were 20 cases of detainees who had suffered the longest recorded lengths of detention, over 700 days, and one of these was for 1,793 days. One or more long periods of detention for any person, without any time limit or sense of the length of the tunnel that you are in, is injurious to mental health, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Hamwee, said. We can add to that the fact that most detained asylum seekers have already endured persecution followed by long, hazardous journeys and, perhaps, torture. Yet these people are victims, not criminals; they are asylum seekers who have already been through an ordeal. There should be other checks on detention. For instance, people have argued for years for automatic bail hearings, and for proper notice of the reasons for detention. Is Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules about safeguarding torture survivors being effectively applied?

We are said to be a generous country with a good record on asylum, yet the rhetoric as we approach the general election is that we are too generous because we cannot meet our immigration targets, including the student targets. Yet if we look at the wider situation in the Middle East, we are way down the list. Out of millions of Syrians in exile we have accepted only a handful of refugees, and Europe as a whole has taken less than 30,000 of the 120,000 that the UN would like us to take. Against that background, I hope that the Home Office will look more closely at its policy towards detention and take this opportunity to use the report to bring people of good will together to act on the recommendations and come up with more community-based solutions.