Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Horam Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 57, 59 and 60 in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Neuberger and Lady Hamwee, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. I also express broad support for the other amendments in this group. The amendments reflect the concerns of the British Red Cross together with many other organisations, and I am grateful to them for their help. Together, the amendments would place restrictions on who could be accommodated in the accommodation centres proposed under Clause 12 and for how long, the numbers to be accommodated in a centre and the sleeping arrangements, and would ensure that if children were ever accommodated in those centres, they would not be prevented from attending local maintained schools.

Under Clause 12, as signalled in the new plan for immigration, accommodation for asylum seekers will move from what has been the dominant dispersal model, in which asylum seekers are housed in local communities, to accommodation in reception centres, using a power provided by the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. No detail has been provided, so one purpose of the amendments is to try to elicit more detail than was provided in the Commons. In particular, how many accommodation centres are planned, and where? Will they be purpose-built or will they use existing sites such as Napier barracks? What criteria will be used to decide whether such existing sites are designated as accommodation centres or contingency accommodation?

What the Government have made clear is that they will use Napier as asylum accommodation for a further five years, and that this will allow testing and piloting to inform the final design of how accommodation centres will operate. In view of the High Court judgment about the inadequacy of the accommodation provided, and having sat on an inquiry held by the APPG on immigration detention into quasi-detention centres, I find the idea that Napier could provide the model for future accommodation centres profoundly worrying.

The evidence we received—both from stakeholder organisations and from those with experience of living in Napier or in another centre, now closed—was overwhelmingly negative. Typically, such centres are in remote areas. This spells isolation and a lack of easy access to support services. It is not conducive to integration. On the contrary, it creates what HOPE not hate describes as “targets of hate”. It warns that the use of such centres is likely to lead to increased harassment of asylum seekers.

As noted in the joint evidence from Doctors of the World, the Helen Bamber Foundation, Forrest Medico-Legal Services and Freedom from Torture, the use of dormitory-style accommodation means a total lack of privacy. This can be particularly problematic for LGBTQ+ residents. It also results in serious sleep deprivation for many. The impact of this deprivation on mental health and well-being was described very powerfully in evidence to the inquiry by those with experience of Napier barracks.

The use of former military barracks can be retraumatising for those who have suffered abuse and torture. As a dozen organisations, including Doctors of the World, the Helen Bamber Foundation, the BMA and various royal colleges warned the Home Secretary in a joint letter, this makes them inappropriate for people seeking asylum. They also warned that the kind of accommodation centres envisaged represent a real public health risk and impede adequate medical care.

It was clear from our inquiry and from the experience of a range of health and refugee organisations that such accommodation is bad for mental and physical health. It undermines any sense of agency and hope. According to the Helen Bamber Foundation,

“the use of institutional accommodation of this type is extremely harmful to survivors of torture”

and its features

“have the same impact as open prisons with groups of people with little to motivate or occupy themselves becoming increasingly desperate.”

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Refugee Council has warned:

“Proposals to extend these forms of accommodation are ill-thought out and dangerous, and undermine the UK’s duties to support and protect those making asylum claims.”


It advised that international examples of the use of congregated settings, including in the Republic of Ireland, have shown that this kind of accommodation is completely inappropriate for housing those seeking asylum.

The amendments will not prevent the use of such accommodation centres—the power for which stems from earlier legislation, as I said—but they would go so way towards addressing their most inhumane features. Amendment 57 would, with some additions, give legislative force to what is supposed to be current policy—of not housing groups with particular vulnerabilities in such accommodation. Our inquiry, British Red Cross research and the experiences of stakeholders all indicate that, all too often, people with vulnerabilities are housed in such accommodation. It is therefore essential the safeguards are spelled out in the legislation. In the absence of such legal safeguards, what assurances can the Minister give that the use of accommodation centres will be accompanied by more robust screening and protection than exist at present?

With regard to children, in the Commons Committee, the Minister assured Members that the Government had “no intention” and “no plans” to accommodate children. Welcome as such assurances are, they are far from a cast-iron guarantee. We need to spell it out in the legislation. I do not see why the Government would resist this—if this is their intention. I invite the Minister to give an absolute assurance on the record.

Without a firm—preferably legal—guarantee, Amendment 60, which assures children’s access to local maintained education facilities, is still needed. At present, Section 36 of the 2002 Act prevents a child who is resident in an accommodation centre being admitted to a maintained school or nursery. Section 29 allows for education to take place within the centres. The prior information notice for accommodation centres, published by the Government last August, includes provision for education services. It surely cannot be in the children’s best interests to segregate them from children in the local community in this way.

Amendment 56 would limit the number of residents in any one centre to 100. The larger such centres are, the less the residents feel that their humanity is recognised and the more likely the centres are to attract hostile attention and to work against social cohesion and integration. In the Commons Committee, the Minister said that such a limit would undermine a key objective of resolving asylum cases more quickly on site. It is not clear how it would do so. Could the Minister please explain?

The other part of the amendment would ensure that residents were not required to share sleeping accommodation with anyone to whom they were not related. This reflects a recommendation made five years ago by the Home Affairs Select Committee—that room-sharing should be phased out across the asylum estate. It would help address lack of privacy and public health concerns.

The Minister was rather dismissive of this in the Commons Committee, but he did not seem to appreciate what it is like for people seeking asylum to be housed in dormitory-style accommodation, as opposed to sharing a bedroom in accommodation in the community. It is all very well saying, as he did, that torture survivors receiving treatment should not share sleeping quarters, but in practice, all too often, inadequate screening means that torture survivors and others who are vulnerable do so.

Amendment 59 would remove the power given to the Home Secretary in Clause 11 to increase the maximum period for which someone can be accommodated. At present, there is a limit of six months in most cases. The Explanatory Note gives no indication as to how the new power might be used, other than to argue that it provides flexibility. The UNHCR has expressed concern that, unless there are necessary safeguards and support services, prolonged accommodation in such centres is likely to harm well-being, increase the need for future support and delay refugee integration. The 90-day limit in the amendment reflects current practice at Napier. We know the damaging impact on mental health caused by the absence of any clear time limit. It should not be replicated in accommodation centres.

In conclusion, I will quote from residents of Napier and of Penally, which is now closed. One told the APPG inquiry:

“When I arrived, the fear completely overwhelmed me. The design of the camp was oppressive, the high fences, the sheer numbers of people, the security who … looked like they were from the military. It was terrifying and I could feel it through my whole body. It reminded me of the military camps in [my home country]. I was in complete shock for the first few days. I did not sleep at all … It reminded me of [my home country] and I could not function.”


Another suggested:

“It would be difficult to design a system that more perfectly delivers despair and deteriorating human health and mental capacity than these asylum camps.”


A third said:

“I did not feel like a person when I was there.”


These quotes show quite clearly the experience of dehumanisation. The JCHR suggested, in one of its reports on the Bill, that such dehumanisation and distress are not inevitable in accommodation centres. It also made it clear that it was imperative that the Government learn from the poor treatment of asylum seekers housed in former military barracks. The amendments in this group give the Government the opportunity to demonstrate that they have learned from the overwhelming evidence of the damaging impact of such accommodation. I beg to move.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly welcome my noble friend’s initiative in building and setting up reception centres of this kind. I appreciate that the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and others, are, in effect, probing amendments to find out more about the Government’s exact intentions. I fully understand that. It is perfectly reasonable.

I do not think that the noble Baroness objected to the principle of reception centres of this kind. At the moment, first of all, people are visited on local authorities, which are asked to accommodate them. Inevitably, these are not local authorities in London and the south-east, where accommodation costs are very high, but in areas such as the Midlands, the north-west and the north-east. I come from the north-west, so I know it particularly well. Here there is the largest concentration of people of this kind in council flats and so forth. They are, in effect, in competition with local people on the council waiting list, who may be rather resentful if they find they are asked to wait rather longer because of the need to accommodate people who have just come across the channel on a boat. This is not conducive to good community relations, as well as being quite unfair on people who have long been resident in this country.

Secondly, if they cannot be accommodated by local authorities—indeed, it is increasingly difficult to find appropriate council accommodation because of the shortage of housing, even in areas such as the north-east and north-west—they are sent to local hotels. I know this particularly well because I happened to spend part of my youth in Southport. Southport has a splendid main street called Lord Street. The Committee may not know it, but it was visited by Louis Napoleon, the Emperor of France, when he was in exile in this country before he became the emperor. On the basis of Lord Street, he created the Champs-Élysées in Paris. In Southport we always think of the Champs-Élysées as being the French Lord Street.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these amendments and pay tribute to those whose names are attached to them, because they all raise important issues. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that there was something of a Freudian slip when he suggested that we were here dealing with illegal immigrants. Perhaps the tabloid newspapers are having too much of an effect on his view of what is happening.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

Surely in many instances we will not know the state of their claim when those people are accommodated in the reception centres. They will not know, and we will not know, what their status is.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

It was the assumption that we were talking about illegal immigrants. The vast majority of the people coming through are asylum seekers and have good reason to be seeking asylum.

The reason I got to my feet was not really to reprimand the noble Lord, Lord Horam; it was to raise a question that came from my own experience. When it became public that we had been evacuating judges and prosecutors from Afghanistan, because they were in mortal danger, to a lily pad—a temporary location—in Greece, the number of communications I received from people and families up and down the country with additional accommodation and offering to make it available to any of those seeking refuge from persecution was extraordinary. I know that the answer will be given from the Front Bench that of course we encourage people to contact a central line and to put their names down to say that they might make such an offer, but many of those who contacted me, where I gave them that advice, told me that no one had ever contacted them. I just wonder whether the good will of the British people who could offer accommodation is really being tapped into, rather than piling people into camps such as this one.