Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many in-person legal visits have taken place at (a) Brook House, (b) Tinsley House, (c) Yarl's Wood, (d) Dungavel, (e) Harmondsworth, (f) Colnbrook and (g) Derwentside immigration removal centres since 13 January 2022.

Detained individuals are advised of their right to legal representation, and how they can obtain such representation, within 24 hours of their arrival at an Immigration Removal Centre (IRC). The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) operates free legal advice surgeries in IRCs in England. Individuals who are detained are entitled to receive up to 30 minutes of advice regardless of financial eligibility or the merits of their case.

Legal visits can take place from both legal providers attending under the Legal Aid Detained Duty Advice Scheme and other legal providers visiting their clients who are in detention. In line with Government advice on social distancing, during the pandemic, face to face legal visits were facilitated in exceptional circumstances, and only if other means of contact (Skype, telephone, email) were not feasible or appropriate. In light of changes to Government guidance, face to face legal visits can now be facilitated. Safe systems of work are in place to ensure the safety of detained individuals, onsite staff and visitors during these visits.

The number of in-person legal visits, which includes both legal providers attending under the Legal Aid Detained Duty Advice Scheme and other legal providers visiting their clients who are in detention, that took place between 13 January and 9 March 2022, is set out in the table below:

This is provisional Home Office management information that has not been assured to the standard of official statistics.

The Home Office publishes statistics on immigration detention in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’. This includes data on people:

• Entering detention by initial place of detention in table Det_02a of the ‘Detention summary tables’.
• Leaving detention by last place of detention published in table Det_04c of the ‘Detention summary tables’ and by reason for leaving detention in table Det_D03 of the detention detailed datasets.
• In detention by current place of detention in table Det_03a of the ‘Detention summary tables’.

Data on those entering detention, by place of detention, relate to the place of initial detention. An individual who moves from one part of the detention estate to another will not be counted as entering any subsequent place of detention. Last place of detention does not show where an individual spent their time in detention. In some cases, an individual may have spent a period of time detained elsewhere before being moved to their last place of detention.