Immigration (Guidance on Detention of Vulnerable Persons) Regulations 2024

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Mobarik (Con)]

My Lords, less than a year and a half ago, this House debated one of the most draconian powers of the state: the power of administrative detention. Noble Lords may remember that my concern then was with the wielding of this power over children and families, including lone children who arrive in this country without anyone caring for them.

When we debated the Illegal Migration Act in spring and summer 2023, what was at stake was the length of time for which children could be administratively detained. Let us remember that this is the deprivation of a child’s liberty, not after a trial in a court of law but purely at the convenience of the state. Alongside noble Lords from across this House, I defended the time limits on child detention, legislated in 2014 by a Conservative-led Government. I ask the Minister: what happened to those time limits when the Illegal Migration Act was passed in July 2023? The time limits were removed for children falling under the Illegal Migration Act’s scheme, reversing the much-heralded ending of child detention a decade prior.

Some concessions were made, for which I was grateful, so that regulations would have to be laid before the UK Government could detain unaccompanied children, and so that unaccompanied children facing removal could apply for bail earlier than adults. However, the power to detain children without time limit was nevertheless put on the statute book for children falling under the Act’s scheme—that is, those who had family with them.

To date, the relevant provisions at Section 2 and 11 of the Act have not been brought into force. Indeed, under the new Government, the Illegal Migration Act scheme and the idea of the duty to remove have now been abandoned. Given that the scheme will not come to pass, its detention provisions are redundant. It is now time to reapply the time limits on locking up babies and children. The forthcoming border security, asylum and immigration Bill provides the perfect opportunity to do so, but beyond repealing child detention provisions in the Illegal Migration Act scheme, the Government must also closely consider what is happening to children and families who are detained within the 24-hour, 72-hour and one-week time limits of the Immigration Act 2014. This is especially important because the Government intend to remove 14,500 people by February and have not indicated whether this will include children.

Fifty children were detained on the year to June 2024, 29 of them in Yarl’s Wood short-term holding facility and 10 in Gatwick pre-departure accommodation. A recent report from the independent monitoring board that looked into detention conditions in family pre-departure accommodation at Gatwick called for this detention centre to be closed. The report uncovered that since 2017, 48 families have been held in the family PDA as part of the Home Office removals process, with only six of those removals going ahead. Detaining families for removal must be re-examined, with the utmost concern given to the welfare of children at all times.

Moreover, there are other children who end up in detention because they are mistakenly treated as adults. There are profound issues with visual age determination at the port of entry by UK Border Force officials. Reports and testimonies from children who ended up in adult detention, sharing rooms with unrelated adults, or even imprisoned, have been well documented. Charities share that they are concerned that de facto children are routinely detained. A joint report by the Helen Bamber Foundation, the Humans for Rights Network and the Refugee Council uncovered that at least 1,300 refugee children were placed in unsupervised adult accommodation and in detention in an 18-month period from January 2022 to June 2023 after being wrongly age-assessed on arrival in the UK.

I know that noble Lords share my concern about depriving infants and children of their liberty and the effect that has on them psychologically, medically, educationally and developmentally for the rest of their lives. In this new Parliament, I look forward to working with noble Lords to ensure that this extreme power of the state is used with great care.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for enabling us to have this debate. I was, as usual, in church yesterday and as usual had a cup of tea with some of the people in that parish afterwards. I was introduced to a young man, probably in his thirties—I will not name him as I did not have a chance to seek his permission. We exchanged a few words and he moved on, and then the ladies I was talking to explained that he had first come to them three or four years ago as an asylum seeker. He had become a member of that church, had grown in his faith and had become much loved in that community, and then he disappeared for several months. When he came back, it turned out that that was because he had been held in detention. The good news is that just a few weeks ago he received his right to remain in the UK and is now back in his church and being a stalwart member of that community. That is just one Sunday. It is not unusual in a city such as Manchester.

Also in Manchester, we have Pennine House, an immigration detention centre close to Manchester Airport. A few years ago, there was an absolutely damning inspection report into that facility. When the then Government made their response, it was “We’re going to ignore all the recommendations in this report”. What is the point of having a debate about regulations about how we are going to care for people in these places if, when it is not being done properly and when independent inspectors go in and say, “This is wrong. This is not what is supposed to be happening”, the Government just turn around and ignore them? I would be grateful if, in his response at the end of the debate, the Minister could give us some assurance that where those kinds of inspections take place and it is found that an immigration detention centre is not doing what it is supposed to do, there will be a requirement for those recommendations to be implemented in a timely fashion.

One of my priests has just come back from several months on sabbatical in east Africa. He is a gay man and he asked me whether he could spend three months working with people living in fear in countries where homosexuality, particularly male homosexuality, is a criminal offence. He sent me weekly emails, sometimes harrowing, sometimes encouraging, about what he was meeting there.

I know that a sizeable number of those who come to Manchester seeking asylum are from the LGBT community—I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for raising this earlier. They are at particular risk, not least because, when they are housed in a detention centre alongside other people, you might think, “Oh, they’re from the same country; they’ll get on together”. But, actually, the homophobia in some of these places is so severe that they are not safe. I do not see how anybody who is LGBT can be considered not vulnerable or considered safe in a detention centre.

The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, mentioned children a few moments ago. It would be nice to hear from the Minister whether we have now moved on from painting over cartoon characters in centres. How we care for the most vulnerable in our society really matters.

Above all, I am trying to get a sense of whether these regulations and the changes we are talking about today will create a regime that will promote and prioritise safety and well-being, as referred to earlier. I echo what my right reverend friend said: yes, everybody is vulnerable—these are people who have fled the most horrific circumstances, and they are all vulnerable and traumatised when they get here—but, to misquote George Orwell, all are vulnerable but some are more vulnerable than others. Today, we are thinking about the most vulnerable.

I end with Douglas Adams who, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, famously got a computer to come up with the answer to the ultimate question. The answer was 42. The trouble was, they had not worked out what the question was. I am left thinking: if these sorts of detention centres and regulations are the answer, what is the question? Is it genuinely a real risk that significant numbers of people will take flight? If so, where is the evidence base for that? Is it in order just to make the UK look a really unwelcoming and unfriendly place? If so, what is the evidence that that makes a difference to the numbers of people who come here and seek asylum? We might have the answer, but what is the question?

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for his Select Committee’s report and for highlighting some of the questions that the statutory instruments raise. I also thank the noble Lords and right reverend Prelates who have spoken.

I comment first on the context of the wider debate, which these statutory instruments seek to address part of. As we know, there has been an increase in illegal immigration, including by small boats. This is greatly to be regretted, from the point of view of the people themselves, as has been pointed out time and again in your Lordships’ House. These people cross the channel in small and unseaworthy vessels, endangering their lives and damaging every aspect of their medical and physical health.

The reduction of current levels of migration, legal and illegal, was—this is the political context, not the human context—a core aim of the previous Government and is indeed the stated aim of the present Government, in response to the democratic wish of the people. To meet the political aim, the Government use detention centres and have published both guidance and an impact assessment for the statutory instrument’s update for 2024. The core changes include guidance on removing references to the reduction of places, which was in the 2016 statutory instrument. The Secretary of State has greater powers to decide, and there will be an expansion of detention places.

We see, therefore, that there are two separate tensions in this debate. It is perfectly clear from the Home Office’s published guidance and statements that it seeks to balance the vulnerability risk for people who are detained against immigration factors, one of which is the likelihood to abscond and another is the potential danger to the public.

I share your Lordships’ concerns about the conditions of the detention centres, which certainly should be addressed. However, I do not oppose the use of detention centres to manage migration factors. Managing migration is in the interests of those who are victims of traffickers, and I applaud the new Government for doing their utmost to tackle the problem there. I know that they are continuing the work of the previous Government, but anything on that front is very welcome. That will help.

However, having detention centres will serve as a deterrent. It is harder to sell your wares to unfortunate asylum seekers and encourage them to cross the channel on small boats if there is a likelihood that they will be detained at the other end, unlikely to be able to abscond. It is as much in the interests of victims of traffickers as it is in the interests of a constitutional democracy, with Governments of both colours—blue and red—seeking to address the real concerns of the voters in this country and to manage both legal and illegal migration.