Detention Forum Archive
27 March 2015
There was a Lords Debate on the detention inquiry report yesterday, led by Lord Lloyd of Berwick who retired today.
A total of 15 peers spoke at the debate, showing a broad consensus that a radical reform to the immigration detention system is necessary.
You can read the transcript here.
Meanwhile, in a Parallel Universe… – The Government’s response to the Detention Inquiry Report in Parliament so far – 18 March 2015
By the Detention Forum team
(Note – Also it is worth looking at the following exchanges on 23 March between James Brokenshire and Paul Blomfield MP and Sarah Teather MP where the same rhetoric was repeated. And is the government still planning to expand the size of the immigration detention estate? Minister doesn’t know the answer – yet – as of 23 March.)
With all eyes focused on the up-coming House of Lords debate on the Detention Inquiry Report on Thursday 26th March, the last couple of weeks in Parliament have seen some interesting exchanges in the wake of the Inquiry Report and a certain amount of disarray among Home Office ministers.
James Brokenshire in a written answer to Sarah Teather MP on 18th March said there were no plans for the Government to review “the use of detention”, that the Shaw review was confined to the “welfare of immigration detainees”.
However, in a mini-debate on immigration detention on the back of a question about the Immigration Regulations on 11th March 2015, Lord Bates announced that he had now read the Detention Inquiry Report, and that the Home Office would of course “give a proper response to such an important and thorough piece of work”. At the same time Lord Bates managed to present what appears to be, in his world, a rosy picture of immigration detention while assuring members of the APPG Inquiry Panel that a notice would go out on 17th March for all interested Peers to meet with officials to “offer reassurance about actions and steps which have been taken”.
The Lord Bishop of Chester, drew Lord Bates’ attention to the fact that “downward pressure from the authorities on non-EU immigrants is onerous, aggressive and…is producing all manner of injustice”. Baroness Hussein-Ece brought the debate back to Yarlswood, and the Channel 4 undercover filming, and the plight of older people with disabilities being detained there. Lord Bates expressed his distress, said the Home Office were investigating and so would the Shaw review, and left it at that.
Baroness Smith of Basildon raised with Lord Bates, one of his previous replies that Serco were contractually committed to delivering 66% women officers at Yarl’s Wood by 2015 and contrasted this statement with a letter she’d received from Rupert Soames OBE, chief executive of SERCO in which he says he is working to increase the figure to 60% by the end of 2015. Baroness Smith wanted to know whether there was any contractual, and therefore, legal obligation on SERCO to raise the number of women officers. Lord Bates rather dodged the numerical discrepancy, saying he would “look into” what the figure was, and appeared to duck the question on legal obligation, ambiguously saying the quota was “one of the conditions put out before renewing the contract”.
Lord Avebury raised the over-riding issue of putting an end to indefinite detention in the UK, being the only country in Europe to have such a system. Lord Bates took refuge in saying the House had rejected such an idea when debating Baroness William’s proposal to limit detention to a maximum of 60 days during House of Lords Report Stage of the Immigration Bill 2014. This appears to be fast becoming Lord Bates’ way of avoiding the issue. However, it will be remembered that Baroness William’s proposal was only defeated with the support of the Labour Opposition, and Baroness Smith of Basildon as spokesperson for the Opposition supported many of the objectives of the proposal but wasn’t convinced by the wording of Baroness William’s amendment.
We digress slightly here, with a reason, to also observe that in the mini-debate on the Immigration Regulations on 11th March, Baroness Lister of Buttersett raised with Lord Bates, the issue of the recent report on violence against women and girls, by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which expressed concern about how current Home Office policies leave some people destitute during the immigration and asylum process, leading to women being at greater risk of violence and sexual exploitation. In response Lord Bates was long on reassurances and short on specific measures. This is all the more concerning given that the question was asked only a few days before the Lords Debate on 17th March on the Modern Slavery Bill, in which the Government sought to deny any connection between the evil’s of Modern Slavery and wider immigration policy as a whole, and has shelved taking responsibility with another independent review.
The reason for the digression will hopefully become clear in the parallels with the Government response to the findings of the Detention Inquiry Report. The Government’s approach to the burning injustice of immigration detention is just as symptomatic of the disconnect between the high rhetoric of ostensible concern on the one hand, and the appalling plight of very vulnerable people resulting from Home Office policy on the other. Let’s look forward to the Lords debate on the 26th March on the Detention Inquiry Report further holding up the lack of joined up thinking in the Government’s current position on Immigration Detention.
Defending the Indefensible? – The Government’s response to the Detention Inquiry Report in Parliament so far – 10 March 2015
By the Detention Forum team
The week following the inspirational launch of the landmark APPG Detention Inquiry Report on 3rd March and the Channel 4 exposure of conditions in Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth detention centres, we’ve seen Home Office Ministers providing some welcome reassurances. Clearly, more lobbying efforts are required to secure political commitments concerning future detention policy, but this is probably the very first time that the issue of immigration detention has become a mainstream political issue.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick, in the Lords debate on the day of the launch, not unreasonably suggested a 28 day limit on detention, “would go quite a long way to solving the sort of problems in evidence at Yarl’s Wood”. He was one of the Inquiry Panel members.
Richard Fuller, Conservative MP for Bedford, also one of the Inquiry Panel members, championed the findings of the Inquiry Report, the same day, by saying: “the issue is not just individual people; it is the policy of the overuse of detention in managing immigration. That policy was introduced by the last Labour Government and has been continued by the coalition Government. When will the two Front Benches wake up and smell the coffee? Immigration detention is costly, ineffective and unjust. It costs millions of pounds a year. Some 70% of people who go into immigration detention go back into the community.”
However The Home Office response to the Inquiry report was low-key and evolved from Karen Bradley, Conservative MP for Stratfordshire Moorelands and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, saying on 3rd March:
“I have a copy of it, and I have to say that it is quite lengthy. I have not had a chance to get through all its points, but I assure her that I will look at it, and I will make sure that we respond to it.”
to Lord Bates saying on the 5th March that the Home Secretary was:
“Looking very closely at that very important report, particularly in the context of the very disturbing allegations made about Yarl’s Wood”.
So what of the 28 day limit? The pressure is clearly on.
Karen Bradley MP told the Commons: “I agree that people have been kept in detention for too long. That has happened because the previous Government’s immigration system allowed up to 17 appeals. The Immigration Act 2014, which we brought in, brings that number down to four. I hope that we will see a difference in the length of time people spend in detention. It is not something that any of us want to see, but it is a necessary evil if we are to have a fair, robust immigration system.”, making a tenuous connection between the changes brought in by the Immigration Act 2014 and the length of time people are held in detention centres. Lord Bates when asked about the 28 day limit in the Lords, referred the House to Baroness William’s defeated amendment to the Immigration Bill 2014 which sought a cap of 60 days. (House of Lords Report Stage of the Immigration Bill 2014, Amendment (9), Lords Hansard 1st April 2014, Column 866). The Government’s position in that debate was that determination of the maximum detention period was better done by the courts under Hardial Singh principles, Lord Taylor of Holbeach for the Government saying cases are very fact dependent and a 60 day limit would give an incentive to people not to co-operate with removal.
The Shaw review of the welfare of people in immigration detention was much referred to by Karen Bradley MP and Lord Bates. Unfortunately, neither of them seems to have had an opportunity to read the conclusion of the Inquiry Report which states ‘We welcome the review into the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons that was announced in February 2015, shortly before this report was published. However, the narrow scope of the review, particularly the restriction that it will not look at decisions to detain, means that it will not be able to deal with the issues raised by this inquiry and others’. Lord Bates’ hints of “more progress to come” in relation to pregnant women were welcome. So were his remarks that he “expected” the Shaw review to include the decision making process of whether women victims of abuse should be detained at all. However, it only made manifest the scant grasp the Ministers seem to have their own department’s work; the terms of reference of the said review explicitly states that decision to detain is outside its scope.
Again, while it was welcome to see Karen Bradley MP seeming to suggest, for people suffering from mental health conditions, “we are taking steps to ensure that they are not detained in immigration detention”, it is entirely unclear what is meant by this statement. The Shaw review, which once gave the Government a way of ducking the bigger issues, can no longer be used as a shield against fundamental objections to the immigration detention system raised by the Detention Inquiry Report.
We have to remember too, that Ministers have ‘form’ when it comes to downplaying the seriousness of immigration detention policy, and the Channel 4 footage of the conditions inside the detention centres, ironically, provided a perfect opportunity for that.
Karen Bradley MP and Lord Bates informed Parliament on 3rd March they were “breathing down the neck of Serco”, “holding Serco’s feet to the fire”, “watching them like a hawk”. Keith Vaz MP and Baroness Bakewell joined the debate by pointing out, despite “previous catastrophic failings” at Yarl’s Wood, last November Serco was awarded an eight year £70 million contract at Yarl’s Wood. This even though a few months ago the Lord Chancellor had sent in the Serious Fraud Office in order to discover why Serco had overcharged the taxpayer by £70 million.
Important as these issues are, and of course people in detention should never suffer abusive behaviours by the guards and these practices should come to light and be investigated further, they can also serve to distract observers’ attention away from the central question – who exactly is it that is making the decision to detain? As the daily practice of immigration detention is subcontracted to private security companies (and let’s not forget that the detention centres such as Morton Hall, The Verne, Dover and Haslar are run by HM Prison Services), it can conveniently deflect the blame that the government should shoulder; that it continues to detain far too many people for far too long.
In closing the report launch event, Sarah Teather MP, Chair of the Detention Inquiry Panel, urged all to make sure that the Inquiry Report is used as a tool for change. The Report seems indeed capable of setting a new agenda in Parliament, if used strategically through the coordinated advocacy and campaigning work by civil society organisations across the UK.
12 March 2015
It was revealed today that in a letter to Nicola Blackwood MP, Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire, announced that the Home Office is withdrawing its application to Cherwell District Council in Oxfordshire to more than double the size of Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre.
The Detention Forum members opposed this ill-advised and ill-timed plan. Some of the members based in Oxford, particularly Campaign to Close Campsfield, played a crucial role in leading a strong opposition to this plan. Huge congratulations to local groups who co-ordinated a brilliant campaign. You can read Campaign to Close Campsfield press release below.
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Campaign to Close Campsfield PRESS RELEASE – 12 March 2015
Government agents formally withdraw planning application
CGMS consultants, acting for the Home Office and Ministry of Justice, have now written to Cherwell District Council formally withdrawing the planning application to expand Campsfield.
Bill MacKeith, spokesperson for the Campaign to Close Campsfield said:
“This is a great victory. But the new government in May must implement the recommendations of the parliamentary Inquiry into Immigration Detention: a 28-day time limit to detention and full judicial oversight of individual decisions to detain. This would be a further step forward and entail some closures of detention centres. Above all, this is a chance to point to the need for the end of the barbaric imprisonment every year of 30,000 innocent people under 1971 Immigration Act powers. Close Campsfield. Close all immigration detention centres.”
Carol Day at Leigh Day, solicitors acting for Stop Campsfield Expansion who wrote the 7-page letter to Cherwell Council that prompted the postponement of consideration of the application and then its withdrawal, said:
“This is the right decision and very good news. The approach being taken by Cherwell Borough Council was clearly wrong in law. The onus was on the Home Office to prove that very special circumstances to justify this inappropriate development in the Green Belt were established. The information before the Council completely failed to make the case.”
Contacts:
Campaign to Close Campsfield: Bill 01865 558145, Liz 07791 738 577, Tim 07721 771 835 Gill 01993 703994
Leigh Day: David Standard, Head of Media Relations 01949 850246 07540 332717 dstandard@leighday.co.uk
‘For the country and for those we detain, we cannot go on as we are.’ The Detention Inquiry Panel calls for an end to indefinite detention of migrants
The joint All Party Parliamentary Group inquiry into the immigration detention system[i], chaired by a former Minister, Sarah Teather MP, has concluded that ‘we cannot go on as we are.’ The inquiry report,[ii] published today calls for radical reform of the system, starting with the introduction of a time limit of 28 days on immigration detention.
“At a time when the topic of immigration is used as a political football by all parties, it is significant that this cross-party panel unanimously agreed that the current immigration detention system is ‘expensive, ineffective and unjust’ and felt compelled to call for such a radical change.” said Eiri Ohtani of the Detention Forum[iii].
The panel examined of over 180 written submissions and heard evidence from 26 witnesses, including current and former detainees. In contrast to the review of care for mentally ill migrants in immigration detention, recently announced by the Home Secretary, Theresa May[iv], the inquiry’s report amounts to a forthright rejection of a focus on ‘tinkering’ to make immigration detention less harmful. It concludes that reform must amount to a ‘wholesale change in culture, towards community models of engagement and better caseworking and decision-making.’ It also recommends that the UK looks to good practices from other countries which operate much more effective community-based alternatives to detention programmes[v] in order to reduce its use of detention.
The UK quarterly immigration statistics released last week shows that during 2014, 30,365 people entered detention, a decrease of 0.001% on 2013, but an increase of 17.22% since 2010. At the end of 2014, 397 had been detained for more than 6 months, 108 for longer than a year, and 18 for longer than 2 years. Many who leave detention are released back to community. In 2014, of 29,655 people who left detention, only 52% percent were removed from the UK, down from 64% in 2010.
The size of the UK detention estate increased drastically last year, with the opening of The Verne, in Dorset, with 580 bed spaces. In addition, the Home Office is planning to double the size of Campsfield detention centre in Oxfordshire, although a legal action by local campaigning groups last month has delayed the planning application process[vi]. The cost of running the immigration estate in 2013/14 was £164.4m; the figure is set to rise for 2014/15 if the expansion goes ahead.
Eiri Ohtani of the Detention Forum said “The particular stain on the UK’s international reputation has been the absence of a time limit on immigration detention. The UK is the only country in Europe which detains migrants indefinitely[vii]. Recently, as part of the City of Sanctuary movement, hundreds of groups signed the Birmingham Declaration[viii] demanding that no one should be locked up indefinitely. An influential community-organising group, Citizens UK, is now asking all candidates standing for the next General Election to commit to ending indefinite detention[ix]. With more people joining us, it will become increasingly difficult for politicians ignore this growing civil society movement.”
“The UK’s detention system has been notoriously resistant to change, despite mounting criticism from human rights NGOs, the courts and domestic and international monitoring bodies. The panel’s recommendation that the incoming Government forms a working group with civil society organisations to implement necessary changes identified by this inquiry is certainly a step in the right direction in restoring UK’s proud tradition of justice.”
ENDS
For more information, please call Eiri Ohtani on 07412 126 706 or email detentionforum@gmail.com for further information.
[i] In July 2014, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration launched an inquiry into the use of immigration detention in the UK. The Panel consisted of members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. They were:
Paul Blomfield MP (Labour), Vice-Chair of the Inquiry, David Burrowes MP (Conservative), Jon Cruddas MP (Labour), Richard Fuller MP (Conservative), Baroness Sally Hamwee (Liberal Democrat), Julian Huppert MP (Liberal Democrat), Baroness Ruth Lister (Labour), Lord Anthony Lloyd (Crossbench), Lord David Ramsbotham (Crossbench), Caroline Spelman MP (Conservative), Sarah Teather MP (Liberal Democrat), Chair of the Inquiry.
[ii] The Report of the Inquiry into the Use of Immigration Detention in the United Kingdom A Joint Inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees & the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration (March 2015), available at http://detentioninquiry.com/2015/03/03/time-for-a-time-limit-parliamentarians-call-for-a-28-day-maximum-time-limit-on-immigration-detention-to-be-introduced/
[iii] The Detention Forum is a network of NGOs challenging the UK’s use of immigration detention. For more information, visit our website at www.detentionforum.org.uk
[iv] The review was announced on 9th February 2015. Its terms of reference states that the review’s remit excludes decisions to detain. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/home-secretary-announces-independent-review-of-welfare-in-detention
[v] The International Detention Coalition and the United Nations High Commissioners for Refugees, both global experts on community-based alternatives to detention programmes, gave oral evidence to the inquiry panel on 18th November 2014. The transcript is available at https://detentioninquiry.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/third-evidence-session-transcript.pdf
[vi] https://closecampsfield.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/decision-on-campsfield-expansion-deferred/
[vii] Examples of the length of a time limit on immigration detention: Ireland 21 days, France 45 days, Belgium 2 months, Portugal 60 days, Spain 60 days, Taiwan 15 days, Georgia 90 days and USA 180 days (Source The Report of the Inquiry into the Use of Immigration Detention in the United Kingdom A Joint Inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees & the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration (March 2015) page 16)
[viii] https://sanctuarysummit2014.wordpress.com/the-birmingham-declaration/
[ix] http://www.citizensuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Citizens-UK-Manifesto-2015.pdf