Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) welcomes the publication of the report of the Joint Inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Refugees and Migration into the use of immigration detention in the UK. This wide-ranging, careful, timely, and compassionate inquiry rightly took as its starting point the powerful testimony of those who have lost their liberty through administrative detention in the immigration removal centres and prisons of the UK.
The inquiry correctly identified that few of the many enquiries and reports into immigration detention over recent years have resulted in any meaningful change to Home Office detention practice, and that Home Office policy that detention be used as a last resort and for the shortest possible time is “not being adhered to or having its desired effect”.
It is essential that appropriate safeguards are in place when people are deprived of their liberty for months or even years at a time. The absence of such safeguards is exposed by the grinding, mundane, damaging existence of extended immigration detention imposed by the Secretary of State without any form of routine external oversight.
The current lack of such safeguards is obvious when considering the inadequate efforts of the Home Office detect and properly manage serious mental illness in line with the Secretary of State’s positive duty of care towards those she has ordered to be deprived of their liberty, or the inadequate efforts on the part of the Home Office to act in the best interests of children separated from their parents by detention by observing the statutory duty under Section 55. These shortcomings operate in concert with poor decisions on the part of the Home Office to maintain detention, decisions that appear not to acknowledge that over months or years little or nothing has been achieved by detention, little or no progress has been made towards removal, and lasting damage is being done both to those who have lost their liberty and to their families.
BID welcomes the recommendation of the inquiry that a maximum period of detention of 28 days should be introduced via statute. We agree that this should be operated alongside a new and robust system for reviewing the decision to detain early in the period of detention, via some form of automatic court hearing and a statutory presumption that detention is to be used only exceptionally and for the shortest possible time. In our evidence to the inquiry we argued that the successful introduction of a time limit on detention in the family returns process could and should now be extended beyond family cases.
Improved provision of legal advice throughout any period of detention is essential if detainees are to fully exercise their right to liberty and access mechanisms for release from detention. We are pleased the inquiry recommends that the Legal Aid Agency and Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner carry out regular audits on the quality of advice provided by contracted firms in IRCs.
The inquiry chair, Sarah Teather MP, in her introduction to the report calls for a “wholesale change in culture” towards the use of detention, including better Home Office casework and decision making. We earnestly hope that the political courage and civil service leadership to which she refers can be found to achieve this. Immigration detention is not an effective or efficient means of immigration enforcement, and is deployed at massive financial cost to the UK, and immense personal cost to those 30,000 people taken into custody each year.
Downloads
BID policy paper: Safeguards against arbitrary & prolonged detention
BID submission to detention inquiry- immigration bail
BID submission to detention inquiry - access to legal advice in IRCs
