Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much compensation her Department has paid for unlawfully detaining people under immigration powers in Scotland in each of the last five years.

Detention is used as a last resort when we consider that there is a risk of harm to the public, or of detainees absconding before they can be removed. We have a robust process for reviewing detention decisions to ensure that they are
justified and necessary; occasionally, the courts will disagree with a particular decision and award compensation, but this happens in less than 1% of all detention cases.

The amounts paid by the Home Office in compensation following claims for unlawful detention in Scotland were as follows:

Financial Year No. of Claimants Amount Paid
2011-12 3 £39,300
2013-14 2 £13,500

It is not possible to provide similar information for earlier periods, as data are not held in the appropriate format and to extract them would incur disproportionate cost.