Asylum: Detainees

(asked on 2nd March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government why they are ending pilot schemes for community-based alternatives to detention for female asylum seekers.


Answered by
Baroness Williams of Trafford Portrait
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (HM Household) (Chief Whip, House of Lords)
This question was answered on 16th March 2021

As part of the Department’s immigration detention reform programme, we are conducting a series of two pilots exploring alternatives to detention. In line with international best practice, each pilot will run for two years before a final evaluation.

The first of these pilots, Action Access, has provided women who would otherwise be detained with a programme of support in the community. This pilot concludes on 31 March 2021 after operating for two years. The second pilot, the Refugee and Migrant Advisory Service, is supporting both men and women and is running until June 2022.

We are working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on these pilots and they have appointed the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to independently evaluate this work. These evaluations will be published, with the evaluation report of the Action Access pilot scheduled for early Summer 2021. We will use the evaluations of these pilots to inform our future approach to case-management focused alternatives to detention.

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