UK Borders Bill

I strongly support the amendment, and apologise to the Committee for not speaking on Second Reading; I was unable to do so. This afternoon I attended a meeting held by Medical Justice, an organisation predominantly concerned with asylum seekers in detention and torture survivors—defined by the Istanbul protocol on the reporting of torture—who bear physical and psychological scars. The facts are truly horrific. No matter how impeccable the guidelines, it seems that the implementation illustrates unacceptable practice. One of the studies that was carried out by Medical Justice was of 500 individual detainees from four different detention centres. Twenty out of 56 who have now been thoroughly analysed show physical signs typical of torture, but in no cases had the Home Office investigated allegations of torture or offered medical assistance, which is in breach of statutory duties. It is true, as has been said before, that most people who have suffered torture are reluctant to reveal the extent of it because of the wholly dehumanising process that torture engenders and the shame that people feel for having allowed themselves to become so depersonalised. That results in severe depression, which is immediately exacerbated by being held in detention. Many of those examined by Medical Justice were suicidal. I shall cite a couple of cases. In one case immigration authorities disbelieved the story of a woman from Uganda who had been repeatedly raped and tortured. She was taken from detention centre for deportation with five escorts, but became so unruly that the deportation did not succeed—whereupon an immigration officer let it be known to her that the army in Uganda would be informed of her return if she did not co-operate. That is almost Kafkaesque; not believing her story and then saying, ““We are going to inform the army so that you will undoubtedly be detained again if you are returned””. These things are not conducive to good health. A woman who was removed from detention to Malawi, despite the fact that a judicial review had been lodged and the immigration authorities had agreed that deportation should stop, was nevertheless deported because the escorts claimed they never got the message. I find it incredible, where people’s lives are concerned, that there are mistakes of that kind. Surely there should be procedures in every possible Bill to ensure that this does not happen in the future. There are many cases of people in detention who are the victims of disputed nationality. I am sure your Lordships will know that that can happen very frequently. I am thinking in particular about a group of Zimbabweans. There is one case that a lot of people are dealing with at the moment, where a Zimbabwean national—he had a Zimbabwean medical card, he has brothers and sisters there, he has a school record—escaped illegal detention and torture and fled to Malawi. He was unable to get a visa while he was in Zimbabwe, for understandable reasons. He bought a passport in Malawi, admittedly in an irregular way, and then came to this country. He is threatened with deportation back to Malawi. There appears to be a lot of agreement, even collusion, between the immigration authorities and the Malawian High Commission about accepting this guy as a Malawian citizen, but he would nevertheless be deported to Zimbabwe should he be returned, and would then be extremely vulnerable to detention and torture again. It is worth considering that we argued in the House not so long ago that terrorists should not be detained for longer than 28 days without charge, yet it appears that we are able to detain torture victims for up to two years. That is an anomaly that should not be accepted. The need to treat torture survivors with humanity and dignity cannot be overestimated. That is why I support the amendment, and wish to see it in the Bill and in any others that seem relevant.