UK Borders Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment No. 26, which is grouped with, but more limited, than the proposal advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and which is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the right reverend Prelate. I must congratulate the noble Lord on the persistence with which he has raised the subject most effectively over a great many years. He has extended his concern today to pregnant women and those with serious physical and mental health conditions, for whom I agree that detention is inappropriate, except possibly when they are part of a family. In his reply to a similar amendment moved in Committee, the Minister acknowledged that a history of torture would normally make it inappropriate to detain the victim, other than in exceptional circumstances. The Operational Enforcement Manual requires officials to consider a history of torture and physical or mental ill health as factors against detention without going as far as prohibiting it altogether, but specifically requiring a separate decision to detain, not merely a consideration of the matter as part of the examination of the application, as has sometimes happened in the past. The difficulty is that, as the Minister hinted in our previous discussion, some people make false allegations of torture in the expectation that it may reinforce their claim for asylum. As we noted before, it appears from the reports of the chief inspector on Yarl’s Wood, Dungavel, Campsfield House and Harmondsworth that they all completed the Form 35 letters which report the allegations of torture to the case holder, but then there was a lack of feedback from the case holder to the management of the IRC on the further action that should be taken. The Minister agreed that that issue needed to be looked at and addressed. Our Amendment No. 26 suggests a way in which that can be done. I am grateful to the Minister for his letter of 9 October in which he says that, following the review of procedures on Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules, a central log of Rule 35 letters should be kept at every immigration and removal centre, and that BIA staff have been reminded to acknowledge the letters and to take them, "““into account in deciding whether detention should be maintained””." I am asking that they go further and report on the specific action they take, which might include not only a decision to continue detention or order release but a decision to call for further medical reports on the asylum seeker concerned. I also thank the Minister for the very interesting figures which he sent me on the number of allegations of torture reported in Rule 35 letters between January and September 2007. There were 968 in total, of which 335 came from Oakington and 288 from Yarl’s Wood—the two establishments from which the largest number of allegations of torture arose. The table does not tell us the number of cases in which it was ordered that the person should be released because the allegations were credible or whether in any cases there were further investigations by independent medical officers to verify or confute the claims that were made. I expect that the Minister will say in reply to my amendment that this matter belongs in the Operational Enforcement Manual rather than on the statute book, but is that a real answer when the chief inspector’s recommendations have been so persistently ignored? As your Lordships are aware, the chief inspector has drawn attention to the failure in all immigration and removal centres to respond radically to the Rule 35 letters. It must be extremely exasperating for her to get no action from the BIA on a matter as sensitive as this. It is certainly disturbing to us as well. As for other categories of vulnerable people, the list in the noble Lord’s amendment is not exclusive. Mothers with small children are not well looked after in Yarl’s Wood, where the staff have no special training and they do not keep stocks of the requirements of these mothers. The right answer seems to be to consider in every case whether there is a valid reason for detention and always to weigh that against the personal circumstances of the applicant.