Lord Ramsbotham
Main Page: Lord Ramsbotham (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that point. I understand that it is the practice for caseworking to start before the end of the sentence, but that it is the travel documentation which often delays matters for two main reasons. The first is that it depends on the compliance of the individual, which sadly is not always forthcoming, and secondly, because the level of identification required varies from recipient country to recipient country. Having said that, we are looking closely at how what the noble Lord suggests can be done because clearly it would tackle head on the genuine problems which the report highlights.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, expanding on the question put by my noble friend Lord Hylton, as Chief Inspector of Prisons I recommended as long ago as 2000 that all prisoners with deportation included in their sentence should have the deportation procedure completed while they were in prison so that they could be taken straight to the airport of departure. It should not be left so that they have to go into a detention centre and have the process started all over again. The problems noted in Brook House have been repeated over and over again in detention centres where disaffected ex-prisoners are quite the wrong people to put with immigration detainees who are there while their ordinary applications are processed.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord says and, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, we are looking closely at how we can achieve what he suggests should be done. As I have said, there are some problems that can delay matters, principally in the area of travel documentation, but we are looking at this closely.