UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 70: 70: Before Clause 56, insert the following new Clause— ““Access to immigration advice in police custody (1) Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 (c. 77) is amended as follows. (2) After paragraph 25C insert— ““25CA (1) This paragraph applies if— (a) a person has been detained under this Schedule; and (b) is in custody at a police station. (2) Persons to whom this paragraph applies shall have access to immigration advice on request.””.”” The noble Lord said: The amendment was tabled at the instigation of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which foresees that, as a result of the enforcement provisions in this Bill and the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, police stations are likely to be used increasingly as places of immigration detention. When the crackdown on employment of people with limited leave to remain starts later this year, presumably there will be a jump in the number of people detained, some of whom will be detained in police stations. Under the present rules, immigration detainees can be held in police custody for up to five days, or seven days immediately prior to deportation. That is laid down in chapter 38 of the operation enforcement manual. The facilities in police detention are not suitable, even for those limited periods, as we saw in the case of Janipher Maseko, which I have quoted already on two occasions. She was held in Crawley police station for three to four days without having a shower, even though she was still bleeding from the recent delivery of her little boy, Collin. Because she had no access to legal advice while she was there, nothing was done about reuniting her with Collin or her other child, Chantelle until some time later when she was in Yarl’s Wood. We have also received an e-mail from the TGWU that sets out its experience with workers who have been arrested and taken into custody in a police station. I have passed a copy to the Minister, although I am sure that he will not have had time to study it and I would not expect him to respond now. The union tells me that the first it knows of a worker being arrested for an immigration offence is when someone fails to show up for work. The union then has to ring a number of police stations because there is no easy way of discovering where a person is being held. When the union finds out in which police station the member is detained, it tries to arrange for a police station-accredited solicitor to attend and offer advice. Frequently when that is done, the union finds that the duty officer in the station refuses to accept a person with those qualifications because they say a suitably accredited immigration solicitor should offer the advice. To cut a long story short—there is much to be studied in the TGWU memorandum—persons can be detained for up to five days in a police station and, at the end of that process, they can be ““persuaded”” to accept voluntary return to their countries of origin as a result of threats that if they do not do so they will be subject to criminal charges. Many people then accept the easy way out of going back to where they came from, rather than going through the hoops of a prosecution. All of this can happen without any legal advice being made available to the individual. We also have concerns about victims of trafficking for forced labour who may be apprehended and held in police custody as illegal entrants, instead of being given the care and support that they obviously need. The action plan on human trafficking—which, as the Minister knows, we strongly support in principle—rightly calls for an increase in police activity to combat human trafficking, but initially it may not be easy for the police to distinguish between an illegal economic migrant and a victim of trafficking for forced labour. The person claiming to be such a victim must have the right to legal advice immediately. The Home Office’s recently published Trafficking for the Purposes of Labour Exploitation: A Literature Review acknowledges that there is very little robust evidence of the trafficking of adults for labour exploitation, though the researchers go so far as to say that victims are to be found in agriculture, construction, nursing, care work, domestic work and hospitality. There is no standardised guidance on how to identify or treat adult victims, but there is enough information to show the growing importance of the problem. That is confirmed by the opinions of the TUC and Anti-Slavery International. Therefore we should take immediate steps to implement Article 15 of the Council of Europe convention which states that state parties must ensure that, "““victims have access, as from their first contact with the competent authorities, to information on relevant judicial and administrative proceedings in a language that they can understand””," and, "““provide…legal assistance and…free legal aid for victims””." I hope that at least the Minister will accept the amendment in principle and give an assurance that Article 15 will be implemented before the introduction of the new illegal working regime later this year. I beg to move.