Immigration Detention (Victims of Torture)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) on securing the debate, on another expert speech and on the work that she has done in recent weeks to challenge Government policy on the detention of vulnerable people. I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate so far. It is fair to say that they all have strong and long track records in championing the cause. We have heard typically eloquent and passionate speeches from the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green).

I also thank the campaigners and campaign groups who do so much to keep the issue on the agenda. The vulnerable detainees we are talking about are kept so far out of sight and out of mind that it would be easy to forget about them. It is a tribute to the campaigners that they continue to work to support those detained individuals and push to keep them on the political agenda.

As in every debate on detention, I begin by repeating the position of the Scottish National party that the large-scale, routine detention of many thousands of people in private prisons for an indeterminate period at the discretion of immigration officers remains a scandal. It is a stain on our democracy and an affront to the rule of law—a matter of shame, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston correctly put it.

The current system is unacceptable for a host of reasons: it detains too many people, including people who should never be detained; it detains people for too long and without a defined time limit; and the safeguards against detention are utterly inadequate. If those factors are not enough, we can appeal to the purse strings: it is hugely costly and inefficient, and it does not remotely achieve what the Government want it to do.

Root and branch reform is urgently required; tinkering around the edges is nowhere near enough. Reform is needed not just of the detention system, but of the whole immigration system of targets and the hostile environment, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley argued.

I suspect that the Minister will say, as she has said before, including last week, that the number of people detained is proportionately quite small, but that is just too far removed from reality. The fact that 28,000 people are detained in any given year is absolutely horrendous. The UK’s immigration estate is among the largest in Europe; we detain several times as many people as some of our European neighbours. It has become a matter of routine rather than a last resort.

All those facts and figures were set out in the cross-party report referred to by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). The sheer volume of people involved is one reason that adequate procedures to stop the detention of vulnerable people are almost impossible to operate—the system cannot cope.

The debate is not just about numbers; it is about individual stories. The hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley and for Stretford and Urmston did us an important service in reminding us of that, and in providing some horrifying examples of what is going on. As Stephen Shaw made clear in his first report,

“detention in and of itself undermines welfare and contributes to vulnerability.”

That vulnerability will vary over the period of detention and has consequences for people long after they are released—as we have heard, 56% of them will be released back into the community—as highlighted in the new British Red Cross report, which has also been referred to.

Despite that, the UK still locks up vulnerable people on a huge scale, including victims of trafficking, torture or sexual violence, people with mental health conditions, and pregnant women. Mr Shaw described the detention of people with serious mental illness as an “affront to civilised values” and I agree.

Torture survivors and victims of serious violence and ill-treatment are among those particularly vulnerable to harm. Last week, the Government ignored concerns from the Opposition and from organisations such as Freedom from Torture and Medical Justice that their proposed changes to the detention rules would undermine rather than improve the safeguarding of victims of torture and ill-treatment.

As the right hon. Member for Enfield North said, the problem with those changes is that they encumber medical practitioners with an overly complex definition of torture that introduces a concept of powerlessness that has a dubious link to vulnerability and that will require a detailed and excessive interrogation of the vulnerable person. There is a danger that victims of severe ill-treatment and violence risk being excluded from the protections offered in the detention centre rules and guidance.

The burden of evidence placed on torture survivors has also increased. Instead of simply requiring them to provide independent evidence of torture to justify exclusion from detention, specific evidence is now needed to show that detention is likely to cause harm, which is a difficult concept.

We also need to consider the fact that guidance now includes a broader range of immigration factors that can justify detention even of torture survivors. As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has said, the adults at risk policy appears to make it more likely that vulnerable people will remain in detention because it requires the Home Office to balance the person’s vulnerability with their immigration history, with disproportionate weight being given to latter in many cases. The proof is in the pudding: the figures show that the number of releases following a rule 35 report has plummeted from 39% to 12.5%. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston set out exactly why the rule 35 process cannot be considered fit for purpose.

Last week, along with other hon. Members, I argued that the Government’s policy on the detention of vulnerable people should be shaped by the new Shaw review. The right hon. Member for Enfield North described that request as not unreasonable; I think it would be entirely sensible. Even though the Government have ignored our request, it remains the case that fundamental reform is needed, and it should reflect the wide-ranging recommendations of Mr Shaw’s reports.

We will continue to argue that there is no need for a specific definition of torture, and that the category of vulnerability should be broadened to include other victims of serious violence and ill-treatment, as recommended in the UNHCR detention guidelines. There should be a presumption, not a burden of proof, that such individuals are vulnerable to harm, and we should make their detention truly exceptional, rather than arming the Home Office with a further list of excuses for keeping them locked up. There is a drastic need to introduce a more thorough screening process.

More broadly, the detention estate must be cut drastically. The Yarl’s Woods, the Brook Houses and the Dungavel Houses should be shut down. Community alternatives and case management systems are more humane, cheaper and more effective, and they should be rolled-out with learning from best practice in other countries. There must be a time limit on detention. We must end this stain on our country’s reputation. As the right hon. Member for Enfield North said, this is a human rights cause, and we will all continue to champion it until radical reform is delivered.