Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Bishop of Gloucester Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I move Amendment 64 and will introduce Amendment 65. One is consequential to the other so I will take them together. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Baronesses, Lady Sugg and Lady Gohir, for their invaluable support, and Women for Refugee Women for all its work on the amendments.

The amendments do no more than restore the status quo ante by limiting the detention of pregnant women to 72 hours, extendable up to a week with ministerial authorisation. This aim is supported by the JCHR, Children’s Commissioner and many organisations.

The existing time limit represented a compromise put forward by the then Home Secretary Theresa May in response to your Lordships’ House voting time and again for the absolute exclusion of pregnant women from detention, as recommended in the government-commissioned review by Stephen Shaw, former Prisons and Probation Ombudsman. Shaw based his recommendation on what he considered to be the incontrovertible evidence of detention’s deleterious effects on the health of pregnant women and their unborn children. His verdict was referenced in a recent letter to the Times from, among others, the CEO of the Royal College of Midwives and the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, calling on us to oppose the removal of the detention limits.

I still await an answer to the question I posed in Committee, citing an unanswered letter from the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody to the Home Secretary. Has the Home Office

“carried out a full assessment of the risks linked to the indefinite detention of pregnant women”?—[Official Report, 7/6/23; col. 1494.]

Given that the limits on detention for pregnant women were introduced only seven years ago, and it has been admitted that very few have come over in small boats, there must surely be strong grounds for this change in policy. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, exposed so skilfully in Committee, we have been given the flimsiest of justifications, lacking any evidential base. For example, in Committee the Minister declared that he was

“happy to repeat … that we must not create incentives for people-smuggling gangs to target pregnant women or provide opportunities for people to exploit any loopholes”.—[Official Report, 7/6/23; col. 1504.]

Could the Minister explain what the Government have in mind here? Are they suggesting that women might deliberately get pregnant to avoid unlimited detention or that people smugglers will be scouring refugee camps for pregnant women?

To be fair to the Minister, he tried to persuade us that pregnant women would be treated well on a case-by-case basis. But let us remember what Theresa May said in 2016:

“This new safeguard will ensure that detention for pregnant women will be used as a last resort and for very short periods”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/4/16; col. 679WS.]


For a safeguard to be effective, it needs the backing of law. Discretionary case-by-case consideration is simply not enough to ensure the protection of women in very vulnerable circumstances. We can see this from what was happening before the time limit was introduced. Previous Home Office guidance stated:

“Pregnant women should not normally be detained”.


However, under this guidance, nearly 100 pregnant women were detained in 2014, with one-third held for over a month and four held for between three and six months. The gulf between policy and practice has been closed only with the implementation of the statutory time limit.

The Minister also insisted that pregnant women will be protected through categorisation as adults at risk level 3. Yet during the passage of the 2016 Act, the Government ultimately recognised that this approach provided insufficient safeguards. Why are they now arguing the opposite? The Minister further tried to reassure us by pointing out that

“it will be open to pregnant women to apply to the First-tier Tribunal for immigration bail after 28 days”

or that

“a writ of habeas corpus”—

which, as pointed out in Committee, is very limited in its application—could

“be made at any point”.—[Official Report, 7/6/23; col. 1505.]

But these are women who are likely to be very stressed and may already be traumatised by what they have been through, with damaging effects on their unborn baby. Twenty-eight days in detention is a long time, particularly in the context of a pregnancy.

How realistic is it to expect them to have to engage with the legal system for protection that they receive automatically now? If they did so, why would the Government want to spend time and money on what should be unnecessary legal challenges? This is all in the context of what the JCHR has described as a severe restriction on judicial supervision.

When we debated a similar amendment in Committee, not only did all those who spoke give it unequivocal support but I was aware of a number of noble Lords sitting on the Government Benches and the Cross Benches who were supporting the amendment in silent solidarity. That was quite something, given that it was well past midnight. While I feel passionately about the amendment, it is a very small cog in the wider wheel of the Bill. It is one which the Government could easily concede without undermining the Bill’s objectives, as much as I disagree with them. I very much hope that the Minister will remember what is at stake for pregnant women and their unborn children and will do the right thing today. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who expertly outlined why the amendment is needed.

I will not repeat all the points made, but this is an issue of dignity for a highly vulnerable group. I will highlight one or two things that have been said. There is no evidence to suggest that the current 72-hour time limit on their detentions resulted in lots of pregnant women making the crossing. The Government have previously conceded that the adults at risk policy would not adequately safeguard pregnant women, and, in response, the 72-hour limit was brought in. We have research from prior to the introduction of this time limit that highlighted the inadequate healthcare for detained pregnant women. It is hard to believe that any healthcare arrangements would therefore relieve the stress of detention and the damaging impact on both a pregnant woman and her unborn baby.

We have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on the number of medical organisations and people who are opposed to removing the 72-hour limit. I join with them by strongly supporting this amendment, and I urge noble Lords to do likewise.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, to which I have added my name, because this Government are compromising the safety of pregnant migrant women and their babies.

To date, the Minister has not provided evidence that the numbers will increase if women are not detained. I wrote to the Minister and last week he acknowledged that, since January, no pregnant migrant women have arrived in this country illegally. Evidence has also not been provided that housing a few handfuls of migrant women, who have probably arrived over several years, will provide a danger to our society. For those reasons, I urge the House to support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.