Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that immigration detention centres are more effectively monitored.

Independent monitoring of our Immigration Removal Centres is vital to ensuring that each centre provides a secure and humane environment for detainees. Recommendations are made by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons in their regular reviews, and public reports, of immigration removal centres. Accepted recommendations are incorporated into a publicly available service improvement plan.

Each centre has its own Independent Monitoring Board, tasked with ensuring proper standards of care and decency for detainees. The Boards issue annual reports, and also make recommendations for improvements.

Stephen Shaw’s independent review into the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons was published in 2016. The Government broadly accepted recommendations made in this review. Mr Shaw’s second review, which will assess implementation of the recommendations made in his first, will be laid before the House in due course.