Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), who spoke so eloquently about the impact of Lords amendment 1 and the importance of wages for people who do some of the most important work in our country.

I will speak to Lords amendment 6, which would place a time limit on immigration detention and was moved so well by the noble Baroness Hamwee in the other place. Immigration detention is the ghastliest aspect of the failed immigration system we inherited from the last Labour Government. However, we can no longer apportion the blame to them, because it was so very long ago.

This amendment provides an opportunity for the Government to start to modify the worst aspect of immigration detention, which is that we never tell people when they will come out. That is the most atrocious thing to do to anyone. Those of us who have been through the national lockdown or quarantine know how psychologically debilitating it can be. Imagine being in that position and never knowing when you will come out.

This is an opportunity to make change. This is an amendment that the Government could have adopted. It is an amendment that screams, “We can do better. Please accept this.” The Minister said in his opening remarks that 28 days was a very short limit. Of course, the Government had the opportunity to put in their own limit, if they had wished to. They did not do that. It is another indication of the lost opportunity we see with this amendment today.

Unfortunately I do not compliment the Minister on this too often, but I was very pleased that he did not use the usual Home Office trope that putting a time limit on immigration detention would let out the rapists, the murderers and all the other people they like to scare others about. As he well knows, that argument does not hold water. There were 24,500 or so people in detention in 2019, of whom 26% were detained for more than 28 days. That is 6,373 people—a vast number—who were detained for over 28 days. That has nothing to do with failures in the criminal justice system in processing people’s immigration claims while they are in prison.

As the Minister indicated in his speech and as others have said, we are looking towards a new system that promises to speed up application processes and make our asylum system more effective. I say gently to him that the Government cannot speed up a broken immigration system without causing more harm. It is better first to recognise the failures in the system we have before seeking to speed the process up, thinking that that will somehow provide a solution.

It is for that reason that I am so disappointed the Government have not taken this opportunity to put in a time limit or to say, “We understand the psychological problems that come when we detain someone without telling them they can leave.” As the Government come forward with the new system, I want them to say, “When someone comes here to claim asylum, we will provide them with access to the best psychological resources, so that we can understand what underpins why they have sought asylum.” I want people to have the best access to legal aid and legal rights so that their claim can be made with the greatest precision and so that honourable claims for asylum have the best chance of being heard and recognised.