UK Borders Bill

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and also to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for this amendment—which, as each of them pointed out, is yet another of these amendments which from different vectors comes into the heart of the issues with which we are dealing. The reality is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, just noted, most people in this position are in one respect or another vulnerable. Last year, or possibly the year before last, this House attended to what was then the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill. Elsewhere in society a great deal of attention is now being given to vulnerable people in one situation or another, whether in their own homes, in elderly people’s homes or in hospitals. I wonder whether everybody concerned with detention centres has been CRB-checked and all those kinds of things, as every vicar and every minister of religion who visits old people’s homes is as a matter of course. We have to realise that a very large proportion of those seeking asylum, if genuine, as many of them are, will have had serious and damaging experiences of detention, even if those fall short of torture—those are difficult distinctions to make. As we noted the day before last when we debated these matters, and as both the noble Lords, Lord Hylton and Lord Judd, said, the likelihood is that, at any rate, most women in that position will have suffered at least severely inappropriate treatment, if not rape, at one point or another, because in many of the areas from which asylum seekers come, ill-treatment of women—rape and still worse things—is basic to the way that a range of militia, ill-disciplined, police forces and the military behave. There are many forms of ill-treatment short of torture. As the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, noted, there are far too many people in the system whose probably genuine record of torture and ill-treatment has simply not been passed on—not noted or, if noted, not properly recorded and passed on. There are also people who are vulnerable because they have not received the right legal treatment or medical assistance and whose mental health has been affected by the whole process that they have gone through leading to the point of their detention. We will come later to those who have been severely affected through the experience of destitution. Finally, I was recently given the figure—it will be interesting to know how the Minister responds to it—that more than 50 per cent of those presently in detention centres are there because they are foreign national prisoners awaiting repatriation. I was told that their presence radically affects the tone and feel of detention centres at present, making them more dangerous, less secure places for adults, let alone children, as we heard two days ago, who are already vulnerable. On all those counts, the amendment is critical and I very much look forward to hearing the Minister's reply.