UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 35: 35: Before Clause 57, insert the following new Clause— ““Access to immigration advice in police custody After paragraph 25C of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971 (c. 77) (administrative provisions as to control on entry etc.) insert— ““25CA (1) This paragraph applies if— (a) a person has been detained under this Schedule; and (b) that person 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: My Lords, since we last discussed the question of legal advice to persons detained in police stations, we have heard again from the Transport and General Workers Union, although it has not given us details of individual cases as we requested. It said that numerous cases have been reported to it in the past 12 months of members being arrested at their workplace, usually on the basis of a tip-off from the employer or from an agency providing temporary labour. The member is detained incommunicado in a police station without any of the PACE protections for up to five days. When the member fails to show up at the workplace and the union gets to hear of his absence, it has to telephone police stations at random because it is seldom possible to establish where an individual is detained or why. The union tries to arrange for a police-accredited solicitor to attend but, where the member is detained because of an alleged immigration offence, the police refuse to allow access on the grounds that a properly accredited immigration solicitor is required. When union officials take these cases up with the police, they are told that the member is held pending the arrival of an immigration officer. It seems incongruous that when an immigration officer detains a person pending the arrival of the police, the limit is three hours, but when it is the other way round and the police are detaining somebody pending the arrival of an immigration officer, the limit is five days. When the immigration officer finally attends the police station, an in-depth interview may be conducted and sometimes the officer suggests that the detainee should not ask for an interpreter because the officer considers that the person’s English is good enough, or because if he asks for an interpreter his stay in the police station will be extended. In some cases the detainee is asked to sign a document agreeing to removal, and is warned that if he refuses the police will charge him with an immigration offence that may lead to a custodial sentence. The TGWU tells us that this problem largely relates to undocumented migrant workers—such as those working unlawfully pending an immigration decision—asylum seekers, and students working in breach of their 16-hour conditions. Many of them will presumably be among the 450,000 legacy cases who would starve if they did not work. Employers are deliberately recruiting from these sectors, using fictitious self-employment or agency working arrangements. A recent TGWU-supported case, Kalwak and others v Consistent in the Employment Appeals Tribunal, exposed some of these practices. We have also received information from the Poppy Project, which we have heard a lot about in other contexts. It is conducting research on 154 victims of trafficking who were its clients between March 2003 and July 2007. It says that 18.8 per cent of them had been in police custody on charges relating to immigration offences and 2 per cent had been given custodial sentences. I am not sure whether the research will show how long the women concerned were in police custody, but their experiences would presumably have been similar to that reported to us by the TGWU. Finally, I remind the Minister that Janipher Maseko, whose case aroused such widespread dismay because she was separated from her breastfeeding infant, was originally in the custody of the police before she was transferred to Yarl’s Wood. There is enough evidence to show that the absence of access to legal advice for alleged immigration offenders in police stations is a matter for serious concern. I suggest that the Minister invites the relevant organisations, such as the police, ILPA, the TGWU, the Poppy Project, the JCWI and the Black Women’s Rape Action Project, to a round-table discussion to see how the problem can best be addressed. I beg to move.