Immigration Detention

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I join all those who have welcomed this report. I am chair of the all-party group on human trafficking and modern slavery, and this issue concerns us because so many of those in detention have been victims of trafficking.

I will start by quoting an email from a constituent. She is not a victim of trafficking or a refugee. She is the wife of an EU citizen who is working in the UK, so she should have the right to stay here. I firmly predict that she will eventually be allowed to stay, but the Home Office is currently maintaining that hers is a sham marriage. She was detained for more than 50 days, and she wrote to me about three weeks ago. Forgive her English:

“Today I want to bring something in your acknowledge about how detention centre’s life effect mentally. According to me home office don’t bother about people’s life, they leave them in detention centres for die…I am nearly became a mad person while in centre because I am so much upset and depressed. I am feeling scared at night, I can’t sleep even for an hour, you know when am close my eyes then am feeling that I won’t be able to open my eyes again or if I will open may be I will be blind. I am going to mad. I am totally has been die after death of my uncle and grand mom. I went 3 to 4 times in healthcare to see doctor for depression but they just saying you have to wait few days for doctor appointment. I don’t know why they not taking it seriously as my condition is not good. You know I haven’t had any food since Saturday not at all. Even not tea. Please I want to go to my husband and parents. I can’t die like this. Why this people can’t see my condition. I can’t stay here any more not even a single moment. I am not a animal.”

This is not a woman who lacks family support. Her husband is here legally and is supporting her. She has other family here supporting her. Unlike most of the very vulnerable people in detention, she is not a victim of previous cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, yet we can hear from that message to her MP how desperate the experience of detention made her feel.

I shall not comment on everything in this excellent report. The one part of it that has the best chance of making a difference to the Home Office is the proposal for a legal limit on detention. The lack of a legal framework means that that most inefficient of Departments feels that it has the right to continue to be inefficient and to let people suffer as a result of its inefficiency.

I am particularly concerned about victims of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, victims of trafficking and victims of torture who are detained. The Helen Bamber Foundation reports that in the two months since the suspension of the detained fast track, which was suspended because it was found to be illegal, 108 people have been referred to the foundation. In 97% of cases prima facie evidence was found of torture or ill treatment having been suffered. That should have prompted immediate release. There are currently appalling delays before rule 35 reports are made, and officials from the Home Office reject those reports because they say there is no independent evidence or people did not disclose early enough.

I am grateful to the Minister, who wrote to me in August saying that he intends to work with NHS England to consider how to improve the timeliness of medical examinations and rule 35 report production, but the Helen Bamber Foundation tells me that it has not had any consultation about how that will be done. We all know that that is the most expert group in the whole country on victims of torture.

It is desperately urgent that we get these problematic matters sorted out. Even the British Medical Association, which does not often brief Members of Parliament on immigration issues, has provided us with a sensible paper containing practical recommendations, including that rule 35 reports should be written

“only by clinicians with relevant medical experience or appropriate training in identifying, documenting, and reporting the physical and psychological sequelae of torture.”

It is obvious that that should happen. I do not believe that the Minister does not think it should happen, but because there is no legal framework which ensures that that is delivered, and because in practice there is no accountability, which is what it comes down to, the Home Office’s system can get away with allowing appalling delays and amateur, inexperienced Home Office officials to say, “There’s no independent evidence that you were raped”—gosh, what a surprise!—or “There’s no independent evidence. Those scars on your body could have been caused by something else.” Such things have regularly happened to people who have been victims of trafficking and torture.

The onus is on the state to identify potential victims of trafficking. That is our legal obligation, rather than requiring the potential victim to disclose. It is clear from the Helen Bamber Foundation that the experience of being in detention makes it harder for people to deal with the impact on their mental health and harder for people to disclose. Therefore the Minister must make it clear how he will ensure that in future people who have been tortured and people who are been trafficked do not suffer further through the actions of the Home Office, and that we as a state make sure that they can overcome that victimhood.

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[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly in this very important debate. As other hon. Members have done, I commend—as best practice for other all-party groups to follow—the work of the groups that produced the report during the last Parliament. I am grateful for its acknowledgment of my former colleague Sarah Teather’s leadership in this area during her time in the House.

In looking at the scale of this problem, the surveys recently carried out by the Bail for Immigration Detainees group are interesting. During the most recent survey period, 216 people left detention after more than 12 months. It is worth reflecting on the sheer scale of that. My greatest concern is that, ultimately, only 38% of such people were required to leave the country. Therefore, the system is not just inhumane, but inefficient. It is not doing the job that we as taxpayers require it to do.

When I see such figures, I inevitably draw on my own professional experience. Before I entered Parliament, I was a criminal court solicitor, like the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes). I started my professional career as a procurator fiscal depute. We worked to very strict timetables in Scotland. Any prosecutor remanding people on such a scale and getting convictions for only 38% of them would have found themselves in some difficulty with their superiors.

It is worth comparing how we treat those detained for immigration purposes with how we treat other people in our community whom we detain in the criminal justice system and the mental heath system. In neither case do we detain people without a time limit or any sort of judicial supervision of their detention. Frankly, if we rightly apply such a standard for our own people, why should the standard be different for those who come here fleeing persecution in other countries?

That brings me to the point about the availability of legal representation that I made in my intervention on the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). I have no doubt that the lack of access to legal representation contributes to making many cases last longer than the 12-month period identified by BID. At the time of the last BID survey, only 50% of people had representation when they were interviewed, and 11% never had any representation. We all know why: these people come from countries with very different legal systems and access to justice is on a very different basis, if indeed there is much state-provided justice at all. In addition, there are the difficulties of language and the mental health problems that inevitably arise, as the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) said. We can understand the importance of getting proper representation to people in such situations.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The constituent I quoted was unable to access legal representation because she could not afford it. It was a case of paying the council tax or paying a lawyer. In the end, she succeeded in her bail bid by representing herself, which is one of the things we need to help people to do.

[Mr Carmichael]

Indeed. I was very struck by the constituent’s email that the hon. Lady read out. It is clear that that lady has significant language difficulties. Nobody in such a situation should be left having to represent themselves before a court or tribunal. These are exactly the sort of people for whom legal aid is designed and is absolutely necessary.

If I could make only one change, it would be in relation to the need for a time limit. In my time as a prosecutor, when we detained somebody or remanded them in custody, they had to be brought to trial within 40 days on a summary complaint or within 110 days on an indictment. Those were very demanding timescales to meet, and it could be very difficult to do so, particularly for complex crimes. However, such people were given priority because they had been deprived of their liberty. If that is how we treat people suspected of a crime, I see no reason why we should treat people seeking refuge any differently.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

On behalf of the hon. Members for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and my own behalf I thank all the Members who have contributed to the debate. I am delighted to say that there were too many speakers for me to mention individually. All the speeches were characterised by powerful stories and strong arguments. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) is right: we have stumbled into this situation under the auspices of successive Governments, and we all have a responsibility to resolve the position and sort it out.

We have heard from 25 speakers representing four parties on both sides of the House, and there has not been a dissenting voice on our central recommendation.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Paul Blomfield]

I do not think that I have time, but I give way briefly.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Does my hon. Friend share my disappointment that, although the Minister referred to Stephen Shaw’s report, we still do not know when it is going to be published, and we do not know what consultation will take place with medical experts and organisations representing people whose mental health is suffering in detention about the consequent conclusions of the Home Office?

[Paul Blomfield]

Yes I do, and I am also concerned about the fact that the remit of the report is too narrowly drawn.

Our central recommendation is for a statutory limit on immigration detention. The cultural change that that will produce—an end to the presumption to detain, and the development of community-based alternatives—will restore humanity and justice to the system, and it will be more efficient and effective.

I hope that the Government will take account of the debate. The Minister set out the Home Office’s policy and, indeed, the law on indefinite detention. The problem is that the reality does not match it, and I hope that he will acknowledge the need for change.

Let me end by joining others in thanking Sarah Teather for her work. I also thank all the detainees who gave evidence to us, many of whom have watched the debate today. I hope that they will see the difference that their contribution has made, and I commend the motion to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House supports the recommendations of the report of the Joint Inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration, The Use of Immigration Detention in the United Kingdom; has considered the case for reform of immigration detention; and calls on the Government to respond positively to those recommendations.