Points of Order

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his brief and precise point of order. He has corrected the record. There is a distinction between the two words, and I am sure that his point will have been taken into consideration.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (IGC)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister’s answer to my question just a few moments ago regarding the unreliability of statistics was actually misleading. I accept that she may inadvertently be misleading the House, but she will know that I only got the answer on the numbers because I pointed out to her that a previous Minister had been asked the very same written question and gave the answer. As I said, I waited seven months, but the Minister did not give me an answer because she was unsure of the statistics. I do not know whether it is incompetence, inadequacy or what.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I appreciate the right hon. Lady’s point, but she will know that it is not a point of order for the Chair; it is a point of debate. The right hon. Lady has asked a question and the Minister has given an answer. It is not for the Chair to adjudicate as to whether any answer is acceptable or pleasing to the Member who asked the question. It is the Minister’s answer and I will give her the opportunity to expand on it if she wishes to do so.

Immigration Detention: Victims of Modern Slavery

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

The UK ended the routine detention of children in immigration removal centres in 2010 and enshrined that in law under the Immigration Act 2014. It is worth noting that, in the last year of the previous Labour Government, 1,100 children were held in detention. However, in some cases, individuals without documentary evidence of their age who are detained as adults subsequently claim to be children. When that occurs, our revised interim policy states that they will be afforded the benefit of the doubt and released into the care of social services until a further assessment of their age has been made, unless their physical appearance and demeanour very strongly suggest that they are over 25 years of age. Home Office policy means that such cases may be counted as under-18s for the purposes of data collection, but the hon. Lady is right that we should not be detaining children, and we have put in place steps that will prevent that from happening. Where there is an age-dispute case, the benefit of the doubt will always be afforded to the individual.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (IGC)]

I have repeatedly raised issues regarding victims of torture in immigration detention and asked questions on the number of Sri Lankan nationals granted refugee status after having previously been removed to Sri Lanka. Last November, the Minister said that there was no specific information available. It was only by pressing the Minister during a meeting in May that I was finally provided with the data requested—seven months after I asked the initial question. Why do we have to go to such lengths to pry information from the Home Office? Why do the Government withhold important data from public scrutiny? Where is the accountability and transparency in this situation?

[Caroline Nokes]

The right hon. Lady will have heard my previous answers about the importance of relying on published statistics that can be properly verified. Relying on information that turns out to have come from aggregated sources, which then transpire to be inaccurate, is a very dangerous route to go down.

Oral Answers to Questions

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

It is not just anecdotal information that tells us that people are finding it easy and quick to apply; we know that most applications are settled within one to four working days. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been tireless in pursuing the issue raised by my hon. Friend, and we are very hopeful that the app will be available on Apple devices in the autumn.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Change UK)]

There is a significant eastern European community in Enfield and other parts of London. Sections of the Bulgarian, Romanian, Polish and Roma communities can be hard to reach, and some have limited English language skills. Community representatives are concerned about individuals who have worked in the grey economy as cleaners or handymen, or for unscrupulous employers, being able to supply the right paperwork. What further steps is the Department putting in place to support these communities and to ensure that everyone can access, and apply to, the scheme?

[Caroline Nokes]

The right hon. Lady will be aware that the Home Office has provided up to £9 million of grant funding to 57 voluntary and community-based organisations specifically to help the vulnerable people to whom she refers. I was pleased to visit the East European Resource Centre and to have the opportunity to speak to a group of long-standing UK residents about the support available. She references the grey economy; we do not wish to see anybody working in the grey economy, but we recognise that there will be those who do. The Home Office is absolutely prepared to accept a wide range of evidence of people’s stay in the UK, including tenancy agreements or letters from health providers with whom they have been in contact. This is absolutely about working with individuals. The EU Settlement Resolution Centre is up and running, and is incredibly well staffed. I was pleased to visit it, to see the help that it can give to individuals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point about investment in our border. However, I had a quick discussion with the Home Secretary, who does not have the same recollection of what he announced at the weekend. I am sure that if the right hon. Gentleman writes to the Home Secretary, the Home Secretary will set out the position.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Change UK)]

I was horrified to read that a Hezbollah bomb factory storing three tonnes of explosive materials was discovered in north-west London in 2015—three and a half years before the Home Secretary fully proscribed the antisemitic terror group. Why did the Government wait so long to act? Why were the public and MPs not informed, given the debates that we have had on this issue?

Serious Violence

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Change UK)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker). I can only agree with the urgency that he injects into this debate and the focus that he brings to it. We hope to see exactly that focus from Government.

I want to read to the House an email I received that is very similar to emails I get on a very regular basis. It is from the north area basic command unit, Haringey and Enfield. It says:

“Dear Partner,

Please find details of a stabbing which occurred about 1347h on Tuesday 14 MAY 2019.

Venue: Durants Park, HERTFORD ROAD, ENFIELD, MIDDLESEX, EN3 5AJ

Victim: Male 17 years

Call received from the ambulance service, that a man had been stabbed. Victim was found with stab wound to his upper left leg and was conscious. He was taken to RLH”—

Royal London Hospital.

The next information usually says one of four things: if he is fortunate, his injuries are declared non-life-threatening; his injuries are life-changing; he is critical; or his injuries have proved fatal. I receive that email regularly, and often the victim is younger than 17 years of age. I very rarely received emails like that before a couple of years age.

Many of my constituents tell me how worried they are about the rise in serious violent crime in Enfield. On Saturday morning, I held a community meeting on Enfield Island Village that was very well attended because it was specifically about serious violent crime, and particularly youth crime. There is huge concern among people for not only their own safety but that of young people, who are lying stabbed or dead on our streets. They have very good reason to be concerned. Stabbings and shootings relating to drug dealing and county lines activity, as well as muggings and robberies, have seen violent crime in Enfield soar by more than 90% since 2010—yes, 90%. If I had said 10 years ago that that would be the case, people would have thought it was a massive exaggeration.

Last year, more than 20 violent crimes against the person were committed every day in the borough of Enfield. Enfield has the third highest level of serious youth violence in the capital, and we have a problem with gangs, county lines, knife crime and organised crime. I know from meeting the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, that tackling serious violence in Enfield is a top priority for the police. We have seen the deployment of extra officers from the Met police’s violent crime taskforce and the Territorial Support Group to help make our streets safer, but frankly, if an area qualifies for deployment of police from those two groups, it has a very serious problem on its streets. We should not have to rely on those specialist services. We need visible neighbourhood policing at the heart of our communities, because the best way to cut crime is to have more bobbies on the beat.

The creation of safer neighbourhood teams helped to cut violent crime across the country by over 40%, but those invaluable teams are now much reduced and under existential threat because of this Government’s irresponsible decision to slash police budgets. Since the Government were elected in 2010, the Met police’s budget has been cut by £850 million. Despite the recent police funding settlement, the Met is still expected to make further savings of £263 million over the next four years, against the backdrop of rising crime. As we have heard, the National Crime Agency director has warned this week of the “staggering” scale of organised crime and lobbied Ministers for a doubling of the agency’s budget to tackle the threat. The staggering scale is no surprise to me or my constituents; I see it in these emails, we see it every day and we hear it from young people.

Politics and governing are always about choices and priorities. When the Government force such staggering cuts to the police budget and fail to invest in the frontline, they are making a clear choice and reducing the priority they place on keeping us safe. The wholesale restructuring of London’s policing and the merging of boroughs’ resources, as in Enfield and Haringey, is a direct consequence of those cuts. That would not have happened if the resources were there to do otherwise. How is Enfield expected to cope properly with the surge in violent crime when we have lost more than 240 uniformed officers from our streets in the past nine years? That is just one London borough.

Our police are doing the best they can under very difficult circumstances, but when they are spread so thinly, they can only do so much. Over recent months, we have seen shocking cases of schoolchildren in Enfield Town being mugged, including students from Enfield Grammar School and other local schools. The headteachers, the local police and the council are working hard to keep pupils safe, but parents are at their wits’ end. These are secondary schoolchildren, and parents feel the need to take them to school and bring them home to keep them safe. Groups of parents have started patrolling the area after school to protect their children and deter criminals. They should not feel they have to do that—it is not their job—but I pay tribute to them for taking this action to try to secure their children’s safety. They deserve to know that the police services will be there when they need them.

When Ministers respond to this point, will they desist from always pointing the finger of blame solely at the Mayor of London for a lack of resources? It is the Government who have shifted the burden of police funding from the Government grant to the council tax, hitting the poorest the hardest. To fight violent crime there is little choice but to increase the policing element of the council tax, but I am afraid this cannot fill the gap in funding that has been opened up by the Government’s cuts agenda. Better resourced policing will play a major part in tackling serious violence. The Government must provide more support for other services, too. Huge Government cuts to our local authority, health services, youth services and public health budgets are massively compounding the problem.

North Middlesex University Hospital is at the forefront of dealing with the fallout from serious violence. In 2018 alone, the hospital treated 1,457 victims of assaults, including stabbings and gunshot wounds. It has had to ramp up its security spend, installing more CCTV and hiring overnight security guards in its already busy A&E department. Every penny that is spent on these interventions is money diverted away from essential patient care.

Leading crime prevention charities such as Safer London and excellent projects such as the Godwin Lawson Foundation and the Jubilee centre are working in Enfield, alongside local schools, in providing early intervention programmes and mentoring schemes to educate and support young people. However, as we have already heard from the hon. Member for Gedling, these organisations are working on shoestring budgets, and they need funding and support to scale up and focus on their work, rather than continually having to go out with the begging bowl. It is the first responsibility of Government to protect and safeguard the lives of their citizens.

I want to pay tribute to Inspector Paul Dwyer and PC Mansbridge of Enfield and Haringey police, who work with our young people in the north area basic command unit of the Met. Recently, they organised a charity youth football tournament, with 200 young people taking part in seven-a-side matches all day long, and the day communicated an anti-knife crime message.

We are proud of our young people, but we are not giving them the chance they need. I hope that Ministers will think long and hard about the issues that have been raised today by me and so many colleagues. They need to make it a priority to tackle serious violence and put the funding of our police, councils and public services back on a sustainable footing. Over the past nine years, we have seen this Government’s policy put the safety of our communities at risk. Enfield residents have the right to feel safe and be safe in their homes and in their neighbourhoods, and to know that their children are safe inside and outside school and in their parks, and to know that they have good activities—with good adult role models looking after them—that they can take part in. That is what we need; it is not rocket science. We all know it, and we need this Government to step up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, regulation and decriminalisation are not in the review.

In the long term, it is only by offering stability and opportunity in young people’s lives that we can hope to tackle serious violence. Last year, the Home Secretary announced the 10-year, £200 million youth endowment fund. The fund is to be locked in for the next 10 years and invested to leverage up that investment. It is going to fund interventions and projects, evaluate what works, and act as a centre of expertise.

In conclusion—

[Joan Ryan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

I must continue because I am conscious of the courtesies to the House, unless you are happy for me to give way, Madam Deputy Speaker. You are, so I will.

[Joan Ryan]

First, I thank the Minister for agreeing to meet Yvonne Lawson of the Godwin Lawson Foundation from my constituency, who lost her young teenage son to knife crime two years ago.

Nearly all hon. Members have talked about partnership working and great little projects on the ground, but all of us have also said that local authorities, which are the drivers at local level, are absolutely struggling because of the lack of resources. Does the Minister accept that local authorities’ ability to push forward partnership working is severely handicapped by the continuing lack of resources and ongoing cuts?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady. I am always very happy, of course, to meet those who have lost loved ones, as her constituents have, particularly those who are extraordinary in being able to found charities to help tackle serious violence.

The point of the violence reduction units is that they are bringing all the partner agencies together. As I say, we are investing £35 million from the £100 million available. I should add that that £35 million will be invested in VRUs and police forces that are most affected by violent crime—between 10 and 20 forces nationally. The details are being finalised. This partnership working will enable local authorities to play their part, in addition to the increased funding they are getting, as announced by my colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Criminals are buying children’s lives, and their misery, for the cheapest of prices. It is sometimes a new pair of trainers or a few pounds a week—and of course that is before the drug debts are called in. We have to offer them more. That is why, following the Prime Minister’s summit, I will be working with businesses to create opportunities for young people to provide them with a route away from violent crime.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford set out, no young person should grow up without hope, prospects or opportunities. There is an alternative to a life of violence. If we work together, we can offer young people a chance to make something more of their lives and stop the senseless killing. We can—and, if we all work together, we will—offer them a dream of a future.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of serious violence.

Knife Crime

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Gentleman rather highlights the reason we changed the voluntary guidance for police officers, in that we do not believe that a one-size-fits-all approach helps. Listening to communities where young people have been stopped and searched without reason—as they see it—we are very conscious that that can harm relations between the police and the community. That is why we have encouraged the use of intelligence-led, targeted stop and search. I refer to the answer I gave earlier about the huge benefit of body-worn cameras in this space, because the public and the police have that extra reassurance that searches being conducted are in fact lawful.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Ind)]

Why are the Government not making a real and substantial funding commitment now to address this issue, as requested by the Home Secretary? If it is a matter of priorities, why have they agreed to give £20 million of taxpayers’ money to test alternative arrangements to the Brexit backstop—a fool’s errand—while refusing to give our police an extra £15 million to tackle the knife crime crisis and save lives? We need visible neighbourhood policing at the heart of our communities. There should be a one-off fund for a surge in temporary officers targeted at knife crime hotspots, as police forces are requesting.

[Victoria Atkins]

I assure the right hon. Lady that when we have spoken to the commissioner and her commanders about this, they say that that is exactly what they are doing on the streets of London. They are surging numbers where they are needed in hotspot areas. If she has particular issues, she should please let me know or speak to the Mayor of London. On the wider point about funding and resources, I am afraid that, as I say, I cannot comment further at this stage, but we are very clear that, with the help of police and crime commissioners, the extra £970 million next year will help with some of the issues that she raised.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I will make some progress, but I will come back to the right hon. Lady.

The Home Secretary stated in his letter to the shadow Home Secretary:

“Hizballah, as a political entity in Lebanon has won votes in legitimate elections and forms part of the Lebanese Government. It has the largest non-state military force in the country.”

In last January’s debate, the Security Minister said:

“We believe that the best way to weaken Hezbollah in the region and further afield is to have a strong state of Lebanon. The stronger the state of Lebanon, which represents multi-faith groups, has a democracy and Speakers of Parliament and recognises the individual religious minorities in the country, the weaker Hezbollah will be. It is not in our interests to have a weak, fractured Lebanon.” —[Official Report, 25 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 512.]

He is of course correct about that.

I totally appreciate the strong views on this matter, and it has previously been the view of the Foreign Office for many years that the proscription of the political wing, which is part of the elected Lebanese Government, would make it difficult to maintain normal diplomatic relations with Lebanon or to work with the Government there on humanitarian issues, including those facing Syrian refugees in part of the country controlled by Hezbollah. The Home Secretary said in his remarks about ongoing diplomatic engagement with the Government of Lebanon that he would be looking at whether it is compliant with the order. I would appreciate him setting out in more detail how that engagement is to continue.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Ind)]

I just wanted to say to Opposition Front Benchers that British officials can still meet their Lebanese counterparts. As the Home Secretary will perhaps confirm a little later, the explanatory notes to the Terrorism Act 2000 clarify that the arrangement of “genuinely benign meetings” with proscribed groups is permitted. Such meetings are interpreted as those at which the terrorist activities of the group are not promoted or encouraged, for example, a meeting designed to encourage a designated group to engage in a peace process. I think that covers the point that the hon. Gentleman has just made.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am very grateful for the intervention and I am sure the Home Secretary will come back to that in due course. The reason I raised the issue of proscription—

--- Later in debate ---

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Ind)]

May I unequivocally welcome today’s announcement from the Home Secretary? I pay tribute to all those in this House and beyond who have worked long and hard to achieve this result. I would like to thank the cross-party Back-Bench coalition that supported me in the debate I led on this topic in January 2018, despite opposition from both Government and Opposition Front Benchers. In particular, I wish to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Dame Louise Ellman) for her sterling efforts to ensure proscription and end the annual travesty of the flags of an antisemitic terror group being paraded on the streets of London.

As the Community Security Trust rightly argued last year, the artificial division between Hezbollah’s so-called military and political wings, one that Hezbollah itself denies, was highly damaging to social cohesion and community relations. It is thus very disappointing, but I am afraid not surprising, to hear the words of the Opposition Front Bencher today. I hear that the Opposition are not opposing the order, but I really think they should be supporting it. However, I thank the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) for the listening ear he gave when we met after last year’s debate.

Today’s step is not simply a blow against terrorism and antisemitism; it furthers the cause of peace. Let us be clear that Hezbollah has no desire to be part of any meaningful dialogue or peace process in the middle east. Opposition Front Benchers do not need to take my word for it, because Hezbollah has repeatedly and consistently made its aims and intentions very clear. It vehemently opposed the Oslo peace process and has fought any normalisation of relations between Israel and Arab countries. In its founding manifesto in 1985, Hezbollah says of Israel:

“Our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognise no treaty with it, no cease-fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”

On numerous occasions, most notably in 1993, 1996 and 2006, Hezbollah has sought to provoke conflicts with Israel, and it is readying itself for war once again. It now has an estimated 120,000 to 150,000 rockets and missiles—an arsenal larger than that of many states—and an army of 45,000 fighters. At the end of last year, in a further violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701, a number of cross-border terror tunnels were discovered. It is all part of Hezbollah’s plan of attack, called “Conquering the Galilee”, to launch assaults inside Israeli cities and towns, which Hassan Nasrallah publicly boasted about only last month.

It is not just the people of Israel to whom Hezbollah poses a direct threat; it is heavily implicated in the war crimes of Iran and the Assad regime in Syria, having participated in battles in Aleppo and the killing of more than 1,000 civilians in the Ghouta district in the eastern suburbs of Damascus. It has destabilised Lebanon, bringing conflict to its people and murdering its political opponents, and it has conspired with its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps masters to attack western, Israeli and Jewish targets throughout the middle east, Europe and South America.

I know that this is not the direct responsibility of the Home Secretary, but I now urge the Government to do more to work with our allies and friends in the region to counter the pernicious influence of Iran, the barely hidden hand behind Hezbollah and the source of so much of the violence, sectarianism and terror that plagues the middle east.

Knife Crime Prevention Orders

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Whether there will be more police officers on the beat in my hon. Friend’s constabulary is a matter for his police and crime commissioner. We have quite rightly devolved decisions about local policing to commissioners who are elected locally, because they best understand the needs of their local community. Tomorrow, we are debating the new police settlement grant, in which the Government are proposing to deliver a further £970 million to the police, with the help of police and crime commissioners, and I am sure that my hon. Friend and colleagues across the House will support that extra money.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

In 2015, amendments were introduced to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill by my constituency predecessor with, I think, the best of intentions. They stated that anyone caught carrying a knife twice would face a mandatory sentence. Since that time, knife crime in London has reached an all-time high, with a total of 14,987 such offences. In the past year alone, Enfield has seen a 20% increase in knife crime and we now top a league table that we never wanted to top because of our level of serious youth violence. I am not opposed to these powers, but I do not think that they are the solution. As many have said, the massive reduction in our neighbourhood policing teams and the huge cuts to local authority budgets, which have decimated our community safety units and youth services, are where the biggest part of the problem lies. The police need those partners to be properly funded. If they are not, we are not going to solve this problem.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, who has questioned me assiduously through parliamentary questions on the prevalence of county lines. In relation to the mandatory minimum sentence, 65% of offenders sentenced under the new second strike legislation receive an immediate custodial sentence. Before the legislation, the figure was 48%. It is important that, even with the mandatory minimum sentence, the courts should have the ultimate discretion, and they are obviously using it in particular cases. On her wider point about funding, Opposition Members will know that I do not like to labour this point, but we had to make some very difficult decisions in 2010 because of the economic situation that we inherited from the last Labour Government—[Interruption.] I say that as a fact, because those spending decisions are made over a long term and we had to make some very tough decisions. However, I hope that she will gain confidence and that she will help to inject a further £970 million into the police accounts when we vote on our police settlement tomorrow. We hope that, with the help of police and crime commissioners, that funding will make a real difference to policing locally.

Drug Trafficking: County Lines

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) for securing this debate and for the helpful and useful seminar he pulled together last month.

I asked to speak in this debate because I secured a similar debate in Westminster Hall in January, and I am pleased that there is now a debate in this Chamber. In the past year alone we have seen an 85% increase in violent crime in Enfield, which sounds unbelievable. My hon. Friend is right that such county lines criminal activity is increasing week on week. It is an amazing business model, and the children who are involved in it are both victims and perpetrators. The National Crime Agency has warned about this for the past three years in their reports to Government, and the Government are very late in coming to this issue.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Child criminal exploitation is on the rise, and it is putting huge demands on our police services. Some 19,000 children were off-rolled in our schools last year, and the Government do not know where 10,000 of them are. Does she think the Government should be investigating the causal link between those two things?

[Joan Ryan]

Absolutely. This is a hunting ground for those seeking to recruit and groom children into this criminal activity—this business model.

I will not take much time, because we want to hear from the Minister. The serious violence strategy and the national county lines co-ordination centre are welcome steps in the right direction, but they are late and are not enough.

There are some fantastic projects in my area, including the Godwin Lawson Foundation, which goes into schools to educate young people and to support teachers. The North Enfield food bank and Jubilee centre has early intervention programmes and mentoring schemes. Those things work, but organisations do not have the capacity to scale up, which is what they need to do. A multi-agency approach is needed.

We have seen £161 million slashed from our local council budget alone, we will see £1 million taken out of our local public health funding by 2020, and we know that the Government have cut £22 million from the capital’s youth services, which makes it almost impossible to scale up the things that work. We need much more action, but action can only happen if it is resourced. This is a scandal and we need to protect these children, who are vulnerable and are leaving Enfield with every orifice stuffed with class A drugs to sell in areas such as my hon. Friend’s constituency. We know that these people are applying the same county lines model in their home area. They are not just leaving London boroughs to do this; they are doing it in London boroughs and outside. That accounts for this rapid growth. Please, Minister, we need more resources to deal with this.

Immigration Detention (Victims of Torture)

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered immigration detention of victims of torture and other vulnerable people.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate and hon. Members from all parts of the House who supported the application.

I also thank the 131 Members who signed my early-day motion on immigration detention last December. It is the eighth most supported EDM in the current Session, which I think signifies the amount of concern on this matter. I am also grateful to the 118 and 114 Members respectively who supported my other two EDMs that prayed against the Government’s delegated legislation on these matters. Those were debated in a Delegated Legislation Committee last week, at which some hon. Members here were present.

I will return to the substance of those statutory instruments later. That the Home Affairs Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights are also currently investigating issues relating to immigration detention indicates the scale of concern across the House regarding current Government policy.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate. I know she is aware of it, but I draw other colleagues’ attention to the joint inquiry of the all-party parliamentary groups on migration and on refugees, which involved a number of Members from both sides of the House, including a former Conservative Cabinet Minister. Our recommendations were adopted by the House, albeit without a vote.

We recognised through our inquiry the impact of immigration detention on some of the most vulnerable people, hearing evidence of those who had been through trauma having that trauma multiplied through the experience of detention. We concluded that, as well as a different approach to vulnerable people, there should be a statutory time limit on indefinite detention. Will she join me in hoping that, when the Government look at immigration in the pending White Paper and the immigration Bill, they will also consider the whole impact of immigration detention?

[Joan Ryan]

I know that those APPGs do valuable work. After seeing examples of the harm caused to vulnerable adults by immigration detention—I am sure we will hear more today—I hope the Government will pay more serious attention to this than their legislation from past years demonstrates, particularly since the introduction of the adults at risk policy in 2016.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests relating to the support I receive for my work on asylum and immigration. Does she agree that, for those who have already suffered torture and persecution in their home countries and who flee here for security, to have that pain compounded in detention, with abuses against them carried out by those who detain them, is the ultimate outrage and something of which we should be deeply ashamed?

[Joan Ryan]

Absolutely. I will later ask the Government whether they are not ashamed of the harm caused in their name and which it is within their gift to change—not only is it within their gift, it is under the instruction of the High Court.

The debate provides an important opportunity to scrutinise these matters and to call on the Government to honour their promises to improve the protections for identifying and securing the release of vulnerable adults at risk in immigration detention. The debate also enables us to refer to there being no time limit for immigration detention, unlike in nearly all other European Union countries. That adds to the lack of protection, to the suffering and to the likelihood that the serious mental health harm being inflicted will increase suicide attempts.

The debate is particularly pertinent because the new Home Secretary has pledged to review the Home Office’s hostile environment policy—admittedly because of the Windrush scandal. The 70th anniversary of the arrivals on the Windrush is currently being debated in the main Chamber. I am sure that, as they arrived, they did not expect what has happened recently. The example of what has happened to the Windrush generation should be a warning to the Government that we do not raise these issues to make party political gains; we raise them because there is a humanitarian need and a human rights cause that the Government should not need reminding that they need to address, given what has happened with the Windrush scandal.

The treatment of vulnerable people in our country’s immigration detention system should be an important part of the Home Secretary’s review. It is the considered judgment of esteemed organisations, such as Freedom from Torture, Medical Justice, the Helen Bamber Foundation and Bail for Immigration Detainees, that the current safeguards and the Government’s proposed changes to the law have failed to provide, and will fail to deliver, adequate protection to vulnerable people. That view is held across the board.

[Paul Blomfield]

My right hon. Friend mentioned a number of organisations. Has she also seen this week’s report from the British Red Cross, which specifically and very helpfully proposed that the Government adopt a vulnerability screening tool, to provide more effective screening of individuals prior to the decision to detain?

[Joan Ryan]

I absolutely agree. As I am sure the Minister will mention, because it came up in the Delegated Legislation Committee just a few days ago, the Government consider they have done that. However, given caseworkers’ comments on the training, it is evident that that screening is precisely the problem in many ways. It is not clear to caseworkers how to identify those who are vulnerable or powerless. Those terms are too vague, and the catch-all simply says that the list of identifiers is not exhaustive, which in itself is not good enough.

[Kate Green]

I am sorry to intervene on my right hon. Friend again. Does she agree that one deficiency of the current arrangements for identifying vulnerable individuals is that, at that very first stage, Home Office staff rely on Home Office information and do not obtain other objective evidence, which might support their making a better decision?

[Joan Ryan]

Absolutely. All the evidence tells us that there are major problems with the screening, and all the expert organisations that have commented on this situation, including the Red Cross, tell us that the Government’s changes will not provide the protection that should be provided.

Long-standing Home Office policy has required that vulnerable people, including those with independent evidence of torture, should not be detained unless in exceptional circumstances, but in practice many are. We know from extensive medical evidence that immigration detention can seriously harm the mental health of detainees, particularly those who have previously suffered from ill treatment, and the conditions of immigration detention can be appalling. In a series of findings between 2012 and 2015, the High Court said that the Government’s immigration detention system amounted to “inhuman and degrading treatment”.

In 2015, undercover reports by Channel 4 News inside Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth immigration removal centres revealed abuse of detainees and references to medical mistreatment. When the then Home Secretary, now the Prime Minister, commissioned the former prison and probation ombudsman Stephen Shaw to conduct a review into the welfare of vulnerable persons in detention, his damning report, published in January 2016, found that safeguards for vulnerable people were inadequate and that detention was used too often and for too long.

The Government responded by drafting and implementing their adults at risk policy, which incorporates the detention centre rules and the guidance on detention of vulnerable persons. However, that flagship policy, which is intended to safeguard vulnerable adults by routing them away from or out of detention, is not working—far from increasing protection for vulnerable detainees, it has increased the risk of harm.

In its initial 10 weeks of implementation, the adults at risk policy was applied incorrectly in almost 60% of 340 cases. From January to September 2017, Freedom From Torture’s medico-legal report service received 101 referrals for suspected torture survivors in immigration detention, and 14 of its treatment clients were detained between January 2016 and November 2017. Torture survivors continue to be detained.

The guidance on the detention of vulnerable persons raised the threshold for a decision not to detain by increasing the evidentiary burden on the vulnerable individual. As a result, the release rate following a rule 35 report—designed to screen torture victims out of detention—has fallen dramatically. In quarter 3 of 2016, before the policy was introduced, 39% of those with a rule 35 report were released. In quarter 1 of 2018, that number had fallen to 12.5%.

I urge the Minister to publish more detailed information and data on the functioning of the adults at risk evidence levels and the rule 35 process. Since the adults at risk policy was introduced, how many people have been categorised as an adult at risk under levels 1, 2 and 3, and how many within each of those categories resulted from a rule 35 report? I hope all the scribbling going on among officials and by the Minister herself means that we will get some answers to these questions today.

For each of the adults at risk categories, how many people were subsequently diverted from detention—in other words, not routed into detention? How many were released from detention as a result of a rule 35 report and under which categories? I hope we get some answers today, but I certainly intend to correspond further with the Minister and will consider parliamentary questions as a means to get more data on those matters.

Although it might be the case that the overall number of people in detention is decreasing, there were still more than 27,000 people placed in immigration detention last year. When I reveal that figure to people, they are shocked. I do not think the general public realise how many people are held in immigration detention and they are horrified when they hear that number.

In 2017 alone, 11 people died in custody. Detainees are dying at a faster rate in immigration detention than we have seen before. According to Freedom from Torture,

“statistics for 2017 show that 446 people self-harmed to an extent that they required medical attention. This constitutes a 30% increase over the last two years, which is even worse when we remember there has been a reduction in how many people are detained. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons has noted that there has been a significant increase in deaths in detention, particularly self-inflicted deaths: in 2017 there were at least five self-inflicted deaths in immigration removal centres compared with only three in the previous five years.”

There were 2,272 people on formal self-harm watch last year. That constitutes approximately 8% of the detained population, or almost one in 10.

Last September, the BBC’s “Panorama” programme investigated conditions in Brook House immigration removal centre and exposed a culture of abuse and widespread instances of self-harm and attempted suicides by detainees. In its most recent inspection report on Yarl’s Wood, published in November 2017, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons found that vulnerable women were still being detained, despite

“professional evidence of torture, rape and trafficking, and in greater numbers than we have seen at previous inspections.”

It concluded:

“The effectiveness of the adults at risk policy...was questionable”.

I would go further: this catalogue of failings shows that the Government’s policy is not fit for purpose.

Let us remember that, despite all the evidence, the Government are not changing their policy. We did not see that in the delegated legislation a few days ago. They are not making changes because they have listened or seen the evidence for themselves; they are doing so because they were pulled into the High Court and told that they must make changes.

The analysis that the policy is not fit for purpose was borne out by the ruling of the High Court last year in a case brought against the Home Office by Medical Justice and seven detainees. It found that the Government’s policy unlawfully imprisoned hundreds of victims of torture. That was due to the Home Office’s deeply regrettable decision to narrow the definition of torture so that it refers only to violence carried out by state actors, and excludes vulnerable survivors of non-state abuse. We discussed that in the Delegated Legislation Committee, and I made the point then that the definition excludes anybody tortured—I am sure we can all come up with our own groups—by Hezbollah, ISIS, Daesh, Hamas or whoever. It excludes all those people and encourages states to outsource torture to their proxy groups. I cannot believe the Government are not aware of that.

We need a change. During the Delegated Legislation Committee last week, it was galling to hear the Minister say:

“The adults at risk policy represents a proportionate and rational way of carefully balancing the vulnerability considerations against immigration considerations.”—[Official Report, Third Delegated Legislation Committee, 6 June 2018; c. 12.]

Will the Minister clarify how the policy is proportionate and rational when, according to Medical Justice, it has

“fundamentally weakened protections for vulnerable detainees, leading to more rather than fewer being detained, for longer”?

How is it proportionate and rational to propose amending the detention centre rules and guidance as set out in the Immigration (Guidance on Detention of Vulnerable Persons) Regulations 2018 and the Detention Centre (Amendment) Rules 2018, when Medical Justice, which brought the successful litigation against the Home Office, said that the changes will not deliver inclusive, protective and effective detention safeguards for vulnerable people? Medical Justice brought the litigation and the High Court agrees with it. The Government now propose changes, but again Medical Justice says that they will not deliver the required outcome. It beggars belief that the Minister and the Government are not listening.

I did not get a satisfactory response to the question from the Minister in the Committee last week. However, I received a letter from her yesterday—finally responding to a letter that I wrote to her at the end of March, expressing my concerns about immigration detention matters. Given that I wrote my letter two and half months ago, it would have been useful to have the Minister’s response prior to the Delegated Legislation Committee last week. The time lag is unacceptable. In her response, the Minister claimed again that

“the policy we have in place, which will be enhanced by the amendments we lay before Parliament, is rational, sensible and balanced, and provides vulnerable people with proportionate levels of protection.”

What does “proportionate levels of protection” mean? Proportionate to what? That feels like a huge step back from the Government’s commitments in the adults at risk policy. Certainly, it is not what Stephen Shaw had in mind. Drawing on medical evidence, Shaw said in his report’s conclusions that

“detention in and of itself undermines welfare and contributes to vulnerability. I need hardly say that a policy resulting in such outcomes will only be ethical if everything is done to mitigate the impact”.

We should be seeking maximum levels of protection for vulnerable people—not proportionate levels. Can the Minister please clarify today what she means by “proportionate levels” of protection?

The Minister also said in her letter that her

“officials have engaged with a range of NGOs and inspectorates in producing and developing the Statutory Instruments.”

I do not know what criteria the Minister uses to judge adequate levels of engagement with outside organisations, but I know that the NGOs are not happy with the way the Minister and the Home Office have conducted the so-called consultation. Freedom from Torture, Medical Justice and others have said that the Home Office failed to consult appropriately or to consider relevant evidence. How can it be, to use the Minister’s words, “proportionate and rational” of the Government to ignore the advice of expert organisations when drafting the statutory instruments, and proportionate and rational of the Minister to run the risk that the Government will face further court action, by ploughing on regardless of criticism?

When the High Court ruled against the Government last year, it placed no obligation on the Home Secretary to define torture in the new policy. Medical Justice and Freedom from Torture cautioned that the new torture definition set out in the Detention Centre (Amendment) Rules 2018 was unnecessary, inappropriate and too complex for caseworkers and doctors to apply to specific cases. That is the very point raised by my hon. Friends. Last week, the Minister said that she did not accept that assessment. I ask her to check again. Organisations commenting on the Home Office training to accompany the new adults at risk guidance said that

“it is quite obvious that the caseworkers did not understand the torture definition”.

They stated:

“The training focuses very closely on distinguishing between victims of assault and victims of torture, rather than on identifying vulnerability. The training kept creeping back to notions of detention and physical restraint in the language used to explain the definition, and it was clear there was no common understanding of what severity or powerlessness means in the examples used.”

I hope that we do not hear those points referred to in court at some time in the next 12 months, but I fear that we may.

Freedom from Torture and Medical Justice said that

“even when applied correctly, the definition of torture will exclude a group of victims of severe ill-treatment who do not fall within the other indicators of risk”.

I ask the Minister to look at the matter again. I urge her to replace the current categories of torture and sexual or gender-based violence with a more inclusive category, modelled on the detention guidelines from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, namely victims of torture or serious physical, psychological, sexual or gender-based violence or ill-treatment.

NGOs have stipulated that the new catch-all provision in the revised guidance on the detention of vulnerable persons

“does not adequately mitigate the risk of excluding from the protection of the safeguard those known to be at risk of harm in detention.”

Their concerns have been ignored by the Government. NGOs, as well as a cross-party group of parliamentarians, also called on the Government to wait for the publication of Stephen Shaw’s re-review of the welfare of vulnerable people in immigration detention before laying the statutory instruments before Parliament in 2018. That was mentioned in Committee last week and I am afraid that the response was far from satisfactory. I am not even sure that I count it as a response at all. It held no water.

The request to wait for the re-review is perfectly sensible. The High Court did not demand that the Home Office should respond to the court order before Shaw published, so that is not an adequate answer. We are now in the bizarre situation where Parliament must consider the revised definition of torture and the amended guidance separately from the findings of the Shaw re-review. It would have been much better to give the Home Office, parliamentarians and expert organisations the benefit of considering the changes in the light of the full insights from Shaw. Given that the statutory instruments are not due to come into force until 2 July, I urge the Government to withdraw them so that a proper consultation can be carried out on the basis of Shaw’s recommendations. Last week, the Minister said in Committee that Stephen Shaw’s new report had been given to the Home Office at the end of April—a matter of a few weeks after the statutory instruments were tabled—and that it will be published with the Government’s response later in June. I ask the Minister to reaffirm when it will be published. Can she guarantee that it will be this month?

The Home Secretary said in a recent written statement to the House on the Windrush scandal that it was

“fundamentally important that the lessons from this episode are learned for the future, so that this never happens again.”—[Official Report, 24 May 2018; Vol. 641, c. 53WS.]

However, it is very difficult to have any confidence in Home Office Ministers when they are demonstrably unwilling to learn the important lessons on how to increase protection for victims of torture and other vulnerable people in immigration detention. Freedom from Torture, Medical Justice, the Helen Bamber Foundation and Bail for Immigration Detainees could not be clearer:

“Under current arrangements the Adults at Risk policy does not work to ensure that fewer vulnerable people are detained for shorter periods of time. It is already failing and the proposed changes will exacerbate the problem.”

It is their considered and expert judgment that a terrible situation is going to be made even worse.

The Government should be ashamed, yet at no stage have I heard the Minister offer any kind of apology to the victims of torture and other vulnerable people who have suffered under the policy. It is a prime example of the hostile environment that flourished when the Prime Minister was Home Secretary. The adults at risk policy was drafted on her watch. I know that the Minister has been in her post only six months, so I urge her to apologise on the Prime Minister’s and the Government’s behalf for the torment that so many individuals have faced.

However, an apology alone will not be sufficient. We need a fundamental review of immigration detention policy. We need a policy devised with consideration, care and compassion for victims of torture and other vulnerable people. We need a more humane approach, which should also include an end to indefinite immigration detention. I urge the Minister to reflect and act on the concerns that I have expressed and to commit to engaging far more constructively with parliamentarians and NGOs on these important issues. I look forward to her response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I do not have a great deal to add to the eloquent speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). Like them, I have been absolutely devastated by some of the stories I have heard of what has been happening to vulnerable people, who have committed no crime and who are locked up by the state when they have already suffered unimaginable trauma.

I became aware of just what that means for individuals at the St Bride’s Destitution Project, which is run with the British Red Cross at St Bride’s church in my constituency. It is a drop-in for refugees and asylum seekers, many of them destitute, to find company or to get some advice, food or clothing.

While I was there on a visit, a lady came in who had just been released from Yarl’s Wood and sent all the way back to Manchester that afternoon. That was not the first time that this had happened to her, because one of the features of our detention system is that people are in and out, in and out. We have a cat and mouse situation of taking people into detention, deciding they are vulnerable or do not pose a risk, releasing them and then—later in the protracted process of handling their claim for status—bringing them back into detention again.

When that lady came in, she collapsed in front of me. She literally collapsed. Her legs gave way beneath her, not for a physical reason, but for the sheer relief of being out of detention. I have never seen anything like it. I was moved and horrified. The distress that lady felt and her relief at being out of that situation will stay with me all my life. What threat she posed to our community and society I cannot imagine. The threats were being directed by us, as a state, at her.

I endorse everything that has been said about the deplorable, inhumane way that we are treating people in detention, particularly about the failure of the process to screen out at the first stage people who should not be going to detention at all. I would also like to draw the attention of right hon. and hon. Members to the complete failure of the assessment process when people try to avail themselves of rule 35 inside our detention centres.

Women for Refugee Women produced a compelling report on the experiences of a group of women that it was able to talk to in Yarl’s Wood, some of whom had sought rule 35 reports. Sometimes those women had had to wait a considerable period even to have the assessment and the report prepared—women who present as highly vulnerable and are then told to wait days, if not weeks, until someone takes the time and has the capacity properly to assess that vulnerability. That would not happen in any other part of our public services. It should not happen to those vulnerable people.

Even when those women obtained a rule 35 report and it confirmed that they were survivors of gender-based or sexual violence, many of them were still kept in detention. I cannot understand how they were not released when it had been identified that those women had experienced something that any woman in this room will know would be torturous. We could not live with that. We would be vulnerable as a result.

We have to recognise that many of those who spend time in detention will be released and returned to the community. Some 56% of those in detention return to the community after a time.

[Joan Ryan]

That is a really interesting statistic—56%—and I thank my hon. Friend for making such a powerful contribution to the debate. Let us remind ourselves: Home Office policy is that people should be detained only in exceptional circumstance. How can that be being applied if 56% are then released?

[Kate Green]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and when she was talking about detention not being proportionate, I thought, “How can it be proportionate, when more than half the people who are detained are clearly not a risk that means we have to lock them up? If they were, they would not be returned to the community.” It makes no sense.

We need some clear answers from the Minister on the failure of the assessment process—or lack of process—before people are detained, and we need much greater insight into what the Government are doing to address the fact that in detention, the way of screening, assessing and dealing with vulnerable adults is still not working well, despite the adults at risk policy and the availability of rule 35.

Just today, I was sent a copy of the Independent Monitoring Board’s report on what happens when people are deported from detention centres. There, too, we have a catalogue of poor-quality treatment of people who are leaving the country and are therefore likely to be traumatised, angry and frightened. Although it is legitimate to remove them, we should do that in a way that is dignified and humane. The report makes it clear that we do not consistently do that. How can we hold our heads up in a civilised country if we have to shackle people unnecessarily, deny them access to private toilet facilities and leave them to get off a plane in their home country without any knowledge of what support they will have or what situation they are walking back into, and without any advice available?

At every stage of the process, our system shames us, especially in relation to the most vulnerable people who have suffered persecution, torture and abuse. I hope the Minister understands how much concern there is about the way our detention system works—not just among those of us who could be in the Chamber this afternoon, but across the House. Like my hon. Friends, I very much look forward to her response to that concern.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)]

It is, of course, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma.

I commend the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) for securing this debate on the immigration detention of victims of torture and other vulnerable individuals. As many Members will know, the right hon. Lady has been absolutely diligent on this issue. Of course, we have heard several times mention of the debate that she secured last week, having prayed against the two statutory instruments, which, to a large extent, provoked this discussion today.

I thank Members for their contributions to the debate, but I pay particular tribute to the expertise and knowledge of the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green). I certainly recognise their wealth of knowledge and the opportunities that they often provide to—for want of a better phrase—pick their brains and find common ground. That is important when we are discussing sensitive issues. We should find common ground when it is there to be found. I know that there will be many areas where we disagree, and I will undoubtedly cover them in due course, but it is imperative that when Members from across the House have expertise and knowledge, we seek to use it and learn from it.

There was certainly no intention in last week’s statutory instruments to make matters worse for vulnerable individuals and victims of torture, but I come back time and again to the judgment of October last year, which clearly gave us guidance and a steer that we needed to take action within a reasonable timescale to make our definition clearer. We have discussed the timing of the statutory instruments, but I go back to this point: we are duty bound as a Government to act within a reasonable timescale, and the judgment indicated we should do so.

I was concerned that if we waited for the Shaw re-review to come out, we would lose the opportunity to lay the SIs before the summer recess and that they would then not be laid until the autumn, potentially coming into effect more than a year after the judgment. In making his judgment, Mr Justice Ouseley had the benefit of the expert witnesses of Medical Justice, among others. He made it very clear that we as a Government had to act.

[Joan Ryan]

The Minister is being very generous, as she was in Committee. Did she give any consideration to simply going back to the definition that we had prior to the adults at risk policy, while we waited for the Shaw review? It was surely in her gift or that of her officials to talk to Stephen Shaw and ascertain roughly when the re-review might be available. Clearly he was very close to making it available. We could have taken a step back from the 2016 adults at risk policy, and then found ourselves with the Shaw re-review and in a position to do a full review to bring forward a policy that could command the support of the expert groups.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention. I want to address briefly some issues of timing and whether the most desirable outcome would be to seek to turn the clock back. I think she almost commenced some of her commentary this afternoon with a discussion of how the Shaw review occurred. We received his first review in 2016. It was started because previous policies were not working. We should accept his expertise and recommendations and learn from them.

I am not going to say this afternoon that I think the adults at risk policy is perfect. I regard it very much as a work in progress—something that we will seek to improve, adapt and amend. Do I at this point seek to turn the clock back? No, I do not. The right hon. Lady must wait for the publication of the review and the response we intend to make. I intend it to be very full and to provide as much information as possible, taking on board Stephen Shaw’s recommendations and ensuring that we make our detention policies better. I said last week and reiterate this afternoon that we will update our detention centre rules in the second half of this year. That gives us an opportunity to look at many of the issues that have been raised this afternoon.

Members will know—it has been alluded to this afternoon—that 95% of those who are here without the right to be so are in the community. Some 5% will be in detention at any one time. I am determined, and have been since I came in as Minister, to look at the alternatives to detention. We do so constantly. We can all understand that being in detention puts stress on individuals. For those who are vulnerable, those stresses will be exacerbated, and we have seen the evidence that indicates that. It is important, however, that we accept that it is Government policy that for those who have no right to be here and for whom alternatives to detention have not succeeded, may not succeed or may not be appropriate, there will remain a place for detention within our immigration system. It is important that we recognise that it is only when there is a realistic chance of removal within a reasonable timescale that individuals will be considered for detention, including by the new detention gatekeeper that was introduced post-2016 and post-Shaw. We should acknowledge that the detention estate has reduced. I have an ambition to continue to see it reduce, because that is absolutely the right direction of travel.

I reject the right hon. Lady’s suggestion that there is targeting of victims, and I reject the phrase “low-hanging fruit”. That is not a term I recognise or would use, but I know we can do better. One hears with absolute horror the case studies that she identifies and highlights so properly to us this afternoon. We must ensure we are not putting individuals who have been the victims of domestic violence at further risk. She has been diligent in her determination to reinforce that message to me.

We have also heard of the horrendous—I think that is the only word I can use—instances at Brook House. As a new Immigration Minister, the “Panorama” programme made extremely unhappy viewing. My private office provided me with the link and told me to go home that night and watch it. We have the Lampard review in place, and we have the reviews that are carried out in every immigration removal centre by the independent monitoring boards. I have been pleased to meet members of the monitoring boards and receive their reports. They are an important tool in understanding where we are getting things wrong and how we can do things better.

We will review the detention centre rules in the second half of this year, and I regard that as an important opportunity that we must seize. As Members will know, the Government work hard to encourage individuals to comply with our immigration rules and support those with no right to remain to leave voluntarily. A minority of individuals refuse to comply, and detention can then become a necessary tool for enforcing return.

Like the right hon. Lady, I would prefer that we did not have to use detention, but when people do not leave voluntarily, have no right to be here and frustrate attempts to seek their return from this country, we must use it. It is used sparingly, however, and we operate a strong presumption in favour of not detaining. Of those people with no lawful basis to stay in the UK and who are liable to removal, 95% are managed in the community at any one time.

For every individual who is detained, there must be a realistic prospect of removal within a reasonable timescale. In each case, we expect those making detention decisions to consider the likely duration of detention necessary to effect removal. The majority are held for short periods. Some 91% of those leaving detention in the year ending March 2018 were detained for less than four months, and 64% were detained for 28 days or less. Their welfare is of the utmost importance to the Home Office.

Where it is necessary to detain people to remove them, a number of safeguards are in place including the presence of healthcare staff in all immigration removal centres and residential short-term holding facilities; a comprehensive suite of published guidance and operating procedures to govern conditions in the centres and support the wellbeing of detainees; regular reviews of detention by increasingly senior officers to ensure that detention remains appropriate and to drive forward case progression; and independent judicial oversight of immigration detention.

The adults at risk policy implemented in September 2016 provides a further vital safeguard and was a key part of our response to Stephen Shaw’s review of the welfare of vulnerable people in immigration detention, which was commissioned by the Prime Minister when she was Home Secretary. Under the adults at risk policy, vulnerable people are detained or their detention continued only when the immigration considerations in their case outweigh the evidence of vulnerability. Detention decisions are made on the basis of all the available evidence. Cases are reviewed not only at regular intervals, but whenever new evidence comes to light.

As I mentioned a few moments ago, we were all deeply shocked by the events shown in the BBC’s “Panorama” programme about Brook House. The centre operator took swift action in response, suspending and then dismissing a number of members of staff, and, as I said, Kate Lampard has been commissioned to conduct an independent review.

The national referral mechanism is the existing process by which people in the UK who may have been trafficked, or people in England or Wales who may be the victims of slavery, servitude or forced or compulsory labour, can be identified and supported by the Government or other agencies. In addition, detention centre rules 34 and 35 help us to identify vulnerable victims.

The right hon. Member for Enfield North asked a very specific question about how many individuals are categorised as level 1, 2 or 3 under the adults at risk policy. I will write to her separately with the management information, but I want to put it on record that we are considering publishing that information as part of our response to Shaw. The adults at risk policy seeks to strike a balance between the risk of harm to the individual from detention and the immigration factors in their particular case. That is both sensible and reasonable, and ensures that those who are most vulnerable, and therefore most at risk of harm from detention, are not detained unless the immigration factors outweigh that risk. I believe that that is a proportionate approach, and if people are detained their welfare is, of course, of the utmost concern, including ensuring that the period of detention is as short as possible.

[Joan Ryan]

What the Minister has just said beggars belief in the light of the statistic mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham—

[Kate Green]

Stretford and Urmston.

[Joan Ryan]

Stretford and Urmston. Streatham is not very far away, is it? You would think, with my accent, I would have been able to get that right—I do apologise.

My hon. Friend talked about 56% of people being released back into the community. There clearly is a problem. It is not as the Minister says. I do not understand what confidence we can have if she cannot take account of that. Will she also confirm that the Shaw re-review will be published later this month?

[Caroline Nokes]

That is an important point about proportionality and the numbers who are released from immigration detention. We use detention to ensure that people who have no right to be here are returned to their home country. However, it is important that when additional information emerges and people demonstrate vulnerability, there is constant review. They can ask at any moment for consideration of immigration bail. That will be automatic after four months and every month thereafter. I accept that we do not make correct decisions all the time. I welcome the fact that when evidence emerges of vulnerability or of another reason it is inappropriate for somebody to be in detention, we are happy for them to be released into the community and for their case to be managed in a better way than detention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joan Ryan]

I thank hon. Members who have taken part in today’s debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) provided moving and powerful examples from her own experience. She and my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) fleshed out the human cost of the policy since 2016 and, I think, its cost going forward. I am grateful to the SNP Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), for his support and knowledge on this matter, both today and in Committee. The Front-Bench spokesperson for the Labour party, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), made a powerful case that demonstrated understanding, for which I am grateful.

I cannot deny that I am very disappointed in the Minister’s response. I do not expect her to stand here today and change policy, but I hope that she will go away and reflect on what has been said. I am sure that she will, and I hope that she will reflect to such a degree that we hear something different when we get the Government’s response to the Shaw re-review. I think we are seeing a change only because the Government were dragged into the High Court. The change has not occurred of the Government’s own volition, so perhaps we should not be surprised that we are not hearing the things that we think we should be.

It is no use talking about 95% and 5%. We are talking about 27,000 people—more than 4,000 women at any one time—suffering from an inhumane policy that contravenes many people’s human rights. I do not think we can say that the Government are doing it in the name of the people of this country. This is taking the low-hanging fruit to meet the immigration numbers, and it does not take account of how people are suffering.

The policy has to change. It will continue to be challenged, and I hope that we do not have to come back here in a year’s time. It will give us no satisfaction to say, “We were right,” given what the human cost will be between now and then. That could be avoided if the Government would but listen. Do not give lip service to abandoning the hostile environment—genuinely abandon the hostile environment.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered immigration detention of victims of torture and other vulnerable people.