Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of trialling community-based alternatives to detention for asylum seekers in Northern Ireland.

Recent independent evaluations of two Home Office funded pilot projects in the UK found no definitive evidence that community-based case management focused alternatives to immigration detention led to the quicker resolution of individual cases nor represented better value for money. We therefore have no plans to progress any further community-based case management focused alternatives to immigration detention.