Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress has been made implementing the recommendations of the Independent Monitoring Boards to improve conditions in short-term holding facilities.

Home Office management information indicates there were 19,434 detentions at the short-term holding facilities at Heathrow airport between June 2018 and May 2019. Of this number, 136 people were detained for more than 24 hours. For the same period 8,386 detentions were recorded in the short-term holding facilities at Gatwick airport, and of these 74 people were detained for more than 24 hours. This is provisional management information that has not been assured to the standard of official statistics.

Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) provide vital scrutiny of short-term holding facilities and help ensure that they provide a secure and humane detention environment. IMBs publish annual reports and the Government responds with a published action plan. The Government has responded to the 2018 annual report for the North and Midlands Independent Monitoring Board for short-term holding facilities and will be responding to the 2018 annual reports for Heathrow Airport, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Larne, and Port of Dover short-term holding facility Independent Monitoring Boards in due course.