Immigration Bill

Debate between Sarah Teather and Ian Mearns

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. Of course, it is not effective in doing what we claim to be trying to deliver. The people detained over a long period of time are those whom we are least likely to be able to remove. Detention Action monitored long-term detainees and found that only a third were ultimately removed or deported. The longer somebody is in detention, the less likely they are to be removed. Extreme stress is caused to the individual, extreme expense is caused to the UK and no benefit is gained for the wider common good.

Amendment 56 seeks to limit the time of detention to 28 days, forcing the Home Office to do what most other countries in Europe have managed to do and find some other way of enforcing removal without putting people into detention. Indeed, 82% of returned asylum seekers in Sweden left voluntarily. When I was a children’s Minister I had a great deal of discussion with the Home Office about ending child detention and we eventually managed to reach an agreement. I was pleased to hear the Home Secretary say in response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that we would put some of those provisions on the face of the Bill. I shall await the detail with interest and hope that everything we agreed in 2010 will be included and that it will not just be an agreement in headline.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

There is of course a question mark over whether some detainees are minors. They often arrive in this country without the appropriate documentation and it can be difficult to know whether they are past the age of majority. Those youngsters, who subsequently prove to be minors, are still kept in detention.

[Sarah Teather]

There is a particular difficulty with the speed at which we determine the age of young people at the moment and it varies significantly from one borough to another. I encourage the Home Office to work closely with local authorities to try to speed that process up.

My point is that we have managed to do such a thing for families with children and a great deal of learning has happened in the Home Office that we could extend to adults held in detention. We are managing to remove people whom we want to remove without putting them into detention, and a great deal of good and innovative thinking has been happening. It would be fantastic if good practice in one area of the Home Office was to extend to other areas of the Department. A 28-day limit would sharpen the mind of the Home Office and encourage it to get on and do that.

Amendment 57 would ensure that people had an opportunity to challenge their detention by ensuring that it came up regularly for review. The review would first happen shortly after they went into detention and then at intervals thereafter. The UNHCR has repeatedly asked us to look at that and I strongly urge the Home Secretary to consider it.

Unfortunately, in direct competition with my proposals to try to encourage better due process for people in detention, the Government are proposing to remove people’s rights to apply for bail. That is a very retrograde step. I know that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has tabled amendments on this matter, and if he decides to press them to a vote I will certainly support them.

I have also tabled a raft of amendments on the best interests of children. The drafting of clause 14 appears to imply that certain children are somehow invisible, which goes completely contrary to the work I did in government as a children’s Minister. It was with significant frustration that I read the wording used in the Bill, which, from my perspective, undermines the work we did to end child detention and put in place in the Home Office a practice of considering the best interests of children. More to the point, it runs contrary to existing law. At worst it is unlawful, at best it is deeply and profoundly confusing.