International Women’s Day

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak in this debate. Until recently, thousands of women were detained indefinitely every year in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre on the outskirts of Bedford. Many of those women were survivors of rape, torture and trafficking, and had left their countries to find safety; yet, in the UK, they were locked up for weeks and even months on end, causing them huge mental distress.

In 2015, research by the charity Women for Refugee Women found that 40% of women that it spoke to had self-harmed while in detention. In the same year, the chief inspector of prisons called Yarl’s Wood a “place of national concern”. Campaigners, including women who had previously been detained in Yarl’s Wood, called for its complete closure—a measure that I have long called for. But the Home Office did not close Yarl’s Wood. The Home Office has now announced that it is planning to open a new immigration removal centre for women in County Durham. It has decided to open this new detention centre for women, in spite of the fact that the number of women detained under immigration powers is currently at an historic low

Immigration detention retraumatises women who have already survived serious human rights abuses. It is also often completely pointless. Home Office statistics show that in 2018, just 14% of asylum-seeking women who were released from detention centres were removed from the UK. This Government could not find resources in the recent Budget for any investment in areas that would help women towards greater equality, such as childcare, but they can find the resources to open an unnecessary detention centre that will retraumatise vulnerable women.