Immigration Detention: Shaw Review

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement made in the other place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary.

“With permission Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on immigration detention. As the House knows, our immigration system is made up of many different and interconnected parts. Immigration detention is an important part of that system. It encourages compliance with our Immigration Rules; protects the public from the consequences of illegal migration; and ensures that people who are here illegally or are foreign criminals can be removed from this country when all else fails.

Detention is not a decision that is taken lightly. When we make the decision to detain someone, their welfare is an absolute priority. The Windrush revelations have shown that our immigration system as a whole is not perfect and that some elements need much closer attention, and there are lessons we must learn. That is why I welcome the second independent review by Stephen Shaw into immigration detention, commissioned by this Government, which I am laying before the House today. Copies are available from the Vote Office and on GOV.UK. I am very grateful to Mr Shaw for his comprehensive and thoughtful report. It recognises the progress this Government have made in reforming immigration detention since his last report in 2016, but it also challenges us to go even further.

As the review notes, we have made significant changes to detention in the UK in recent years. Over the past three years, we have reduced the number of places in removal centres by a quarter. We detained 8% fewer people last year than the year before. Last year, 64% of those detained left detention within a month, and 91% left within four; and 95% of people liable for removal at any one time are not in detention at all, but are carefully risk-assessed and managed in the community instead.

In his report, Stephen Shaw commends the ‘energetic way’ in which his 2016 recommendations have been taken forward. He notes that conditions across immigration removal centres have ‘improved’ since his last review three years ago. We now have in place the adults at risk in immigration detention policy to identify vulnerable adults more effectively and make better-balanced decisions about the appropriateness of their detention. We have also strengthened the checks and balances in the system, setting up a team of special detention gatekeepers to ensure decisions to detain are reviewed. We have also created panels to challenge the progress on detainees’ cases and their continuing detention. We have taken steps to improve mental health care in immigration removal centres and we have also changed the rules on bail hearings. Anyone can apply for bail at any time during detention. In January, we further changed the rules so that detainees are automatically referred for a bail hearing once they have been detained for four months. All of this is good work.

However, I agree with Stephen Shaw that these reforms are still bedding in and that there have been cases and processes that we have not always got right. Now I want to pick up the pace of reform and commit today to four priorities going forward.

First, let me be absolutely clear that the Government’s starting point, as always, is that immigration detention is only for those for whom we are confident that other approaches to removal will not work. Encouraging and supporting people to leave voluntarily is of course preferable. I have asked the Home Office to do more to explore alternatives to detention with faith groups, NGOs and within communities. As a first step, I can announce today that we intend to pilot a scheme to manage vulnerable women in the community who would otherwise be detained at Yarl’s Wood. My officials have been working with the UNHCR to develop this pilot, which will mean that rather than receiving support and care in an immigration removal centre, the women will get a programme of support and care in the community instead.

Secondly, the Shaw review recommends how this Government can improve the support available for vulnerable detainees. Mr Shaw describes the adults at risk policy as ‘a work in progress’. We will continue that progress, ensuring that the most vulnerable and complex cases get the attention that they need. We will look again at how we can improve the consideration of Rule 35 reports on possible cases of torture, while avoiding abuses of these processes, and we will pilot an additional bail referral at the two-month point, halving the time in detention before a first bail referral. We will also look at staff training and support to make sure that the people working in our immigration system are well equipped to work with vulnerable detainees, and we will increase the number of Home Office staff in immigration removal centres.

Thirdly, in his report Stephen Shaw also rightly focuses on the need for greater transparency around immigration detention. I will publish more data on immigration detention, and today I have commissioned the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration to report each year on whether and how the adults at risk policy is making a difference.

Fourthly and finally, I also want to see a new drive on dignity in detention. I want to see an improvement to the basic provision available to detainees. The practice in some immigration removal centres of having three detainees in rooms designed for two will stop immediately. I have also commissioned an urgent action plan for modernising toilet facilities and we will also pilot the use of Skype, so that detainees can contact their families overseas.

I am aware of the arguments made on time limits for immigration detention. However, as Mr Shaw’s review finds, the debate on this issue currently rests more on slogans than on evidence. That is why I have asked my officials to review how time limits work in other countries and how they relate to any other protections within their detention systems, so that we can all have a better-informed debate and ensure our detention policy is based on what works to tackle illegal migration, but is also one that is humane for those who are detained. Once this review is complete, I will further consider the issue of time limits on immigration detention.

The Shaw review confirms that we are on the right track in our reforms of immigration detention and that we should maintain a steady course. But Stephen Shaw also identifies areas where we could and should do better. My goal is to ensure that our immigration system, including our approach to immigration detention, is fair and humane. This is rightly what the public expect; they want rules which are firmly enforced, but in a way which treats people with the dignity they deserve. The changes that I have announced today will help to make sure this is the case. I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I cannot say that I have read the Shaw report. I was probably in a very similar situation to the Minister, in that I received it only an hour or so ago. Inevitably, that rather restricts what one can say about it. One thing that I have noticed is that, under the acknowledgements at the beginning and in the foreword by Stephen Shaw, there is a date: April 2018. Why is this report being brought to Parliament only in July 2018 and on the last day, effectively the last afternoon, before the Summer Recess? What exactly has been going on since then, if I am correct in thinking that he submitted his report in April 2018, which has prevented the report being published?

The report that we have—this second Stephen Shaw report into immigration detention—does not say that everything is right. It simply says that the situation is better than it was, which is a very different thing. The report is not quite the supportive document that the Statement seems to suggest. Let us look at one or two of the points made in the report.

Last year, it seems that 64% of those detained left detention within a month, and 91% left within four months. It depends on what one’s definition is, but detention was meant to be only for a short period of time, pending removal. Last year it was found that over half of those in immigration detention were released back into the community—a point made by Stephen Shaw in this report. So if more than half in immigration detention were released back into the community, why was their detention needed at all? The Government’s Statement says that,

“immigration detention is only for those for whom we are confident that other approaches to removal will not work”.

We are talking about large numbers of people who are detained and not removed but are released back into the community. A number of people seem to be detained who should not be, which is a point made by Stephen Shaw in this report.

Stephen Shaw comments on the issue of indefinite detention and time limits, saying:

“I have not directly considered the case for a time limit on detention”,


so we do not actually know what his view is on that issue. But he says in his foreword that,

“the number of people held for over six months has actually increased. The time that many people spend in detention remains deeply troubling”.

That is a point that I do not think was highlighted in the Government’s Statement on the report. Why has the number of people held for over six months increased? Do the Government agree with Stephen Shaw that the time that many people spend in detention remains deeply troubling?

Virtually all the population reduction in immigration detention has been on the male side, while the number of women in detention has fallen by a much smaller percentage. Yet there is a high level of vulnerability among women detainees—the very people one would have thought should not have been detained. Can the Minister say why that has happened?

The report deals at some length with the adults at risk policy. It was introduced by the Home Office and does not appear to be working properly in its objective of reducing the numbers of vulnerable people in detention. In his visits to immigration removal centres, Stephen Shaw found many people who he felt should not be there, and he comments in his report that,

“every one of the centre managers told me that they had seen no difference in the number of vulnerable detainees”,

and that in some cases the numbers had gone up. He also calls for,

“a more joined-up approach between the Home Office and its partners across Government”,

which, he says,

“applies particularly to the Ministry of Justice”.

In the section in the report on alternatives to detention, Stephen Shaw draws attention to some of the consequences of the policies restricting access to services that go under the umbrella of the hostile environment, which I believe has now been rebranded as the compliant environment. While he says in his foreword:

“Some of what I say in the pages that follow reflects very well upon the Home Office, the Department of Health and Social Care, and NHS England”,


he goes on to say that:

“I have found a gap between the laudable intentions of policymakers and actual practice on the ground”.


He also comments that,

“the Home Office’s strategy of expanding capacity by adding extra beds into existing rooms had exacerbated overcrowding and created unacceptable conditions”.

Why has the Home Office’s strategy led to the arising of that situation, upon which Mr Shaw has commented adversely? He repeats again in his report his concern that,

“more needs to be done to ensure that individuals who are at risk are not detained”.

I conclude by raising three questions for the Government in addition to those I have already asked. We are in a situation where the Chief Inspector of Prisons, the all-party parliamentary groups on migration and on refugees, the Bar Council, the British Medical Association and NGOs have all called for an end to indefinite detention. Do I take it from the Statement that the Government are still not prepared to commit to that objective? Perhaps the Minister could confirm that one way or the other.

I think I am also right in saying that the previous review called for an absolute exclusion on pregnant women in detention. But as I understand it, in 2017, 53 pregnant women were detained, almost all of them entirely unnecessarily, and were subsequently released into the community. If pregnant women are still being detained, will the Government commit now to an absolute exclusion of pregnant women and children from immigration detention? There is also currently no proactive screening process so that survivors of sexual and gender-based violence and others who are recognised as vulnerable under the adults at risk policy are identified before they are detained. Will the Government commit to introduce a proactive screening process to achieve this objective?

Finally, now that we have had the follow-up Shaw review, how will the Government ensure that the detention estate continues to be reviewed and assessed? I note that the Statement made reference to the review of the adults at risk policy, but there is more to it than simply that policy, vital and important though it is, so I ask that question once again—bearing in mind that the Shaw review has once again said that the situation is far from what it should be.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement regarding adults at risk and vulnerable people in the detention system. I have always thought that it would take someone very resilient not to become at risk or vulnerable to the effects of detention once detained, however they started that process. That applies even to definite detention, and far more to indefinite detention, when the absence of hope is added to the other conditions experienced. I was grateful to the Minister’s colleague Caroline Nokes, the Immigration Minister, whom I met with the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, the other day, for confirming the Home Office’s aspiration of a humane system. I welcome the direction in which the Government are going on this.

I will mention again a report to which I have referred before in your Lordships’ House—the recent report by the Red Cross on the long-lasting impact on mental health of everyone surveilled after release from detention; in other words, release from physical detention is not the end of the experience.

There is always talk of numbers and percentages, which is helpful, but it is worth remembering that each person detained is an individual. The silver lining to the Windrush experience was that it rather confirmed that; that is certainly how they were seen by the public during the Windrush reports.

A number that I find shocking is the standard number of days to which the Home Office works in dealing with asylum claims. Also, if someone does not go when he is told to leave the country, he is automatically regarded as a flight risk, to the extent that even when he reports to the Home Office he is picked up from there and put into detention.

I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which this morning announced a new inquiry into immigration detention, because human rights—particularly Article 5 of the convention—are engaged. The committee was planning this inquiry anyway, but the evidence that we heard in an inquiry into the Windrush generation’s experience particularly drew our attention to issues including access to legal advice, the possibility of challenge to detention and accountability.

Policy is always only a part of the story. Implementation and practice are the other very important side of the coin and, of course, that is very much what Stephen Shaw has focused on. He and Mary Bosworth deserve our thanks for all the work that has gone into this report. I have not been able to read this door-stopper yet—it is about half the size of the last door-stopper, but even so—but I will. It seems to me that the reasons for detention given in the Statement rather illustrate that detention is not, as we are so often told, treated as the last resort, although I believe that it should be the very last resort.

I want to pick up a number of points made by the Minister. She mentioned that the team of special detention gatekeepers has been set up—this is part of the recent history—but the gatekeeper process does not seem to have been working as well as planned. The Statement refers to ensuring that decisions to detain are reviewed. What about the initial decision? Should there not be investigations prior to detention to confirm that there are no indicators of vulnerability?

The Statement also refers to immigration bail, described as all being “good work”. Of course, it has been very welcome, but it has not been unfailing. The Minister will recall our exchanges about the problems that detainees have in accessing education. Importantly, it is clear that detainees do not all know that they can apply for bail at any time.

With regard to alternatives to detention, we have heard the organisations that the Home Office is going to work with, but can the Minister assure us that work will go on with other jurisdictions where there are very different practices and that the subject will be not just those whom the Home Office regards as vulnerable but much wider? Mr Shaw comments rather delicately that he is not certain that there has been significant investment in this since the first report.

I must leave time for the Minister to respond—