Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I support my noble friend’s amendment, and I shall speak in particular to proposed new subsection 2(b). It is evident that we should have full information on detained children; my noble friend and other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Judd, have made a strong case for why that should be so. Subsection 2(b) also talks of the need to record the number of people with dependent children under 18 who are detained under immigration Act powers. That is important, too. When talking of the welfare of children, we should know how many people have been affected and how many children have been deprived of their parents because they have been detained. There are many arguments about whether it is better to detain the family together or just the one person or whether we should detain people in this way at all. On the subject of statistics, I voice my gratitude to the London Detainee Support Group. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, read us extracts from its recent report, Detained Lives, in a previous Committee sitting. This report is crucial to our discussions about statistics. It is so easy to focus on the statistics, but this publication shows the faces of the people behind the statistics. It shows the reality of what it is like to be detained away from your children. Last year, my noble friend and I and some other Members of your Lordships' House visited Harmondsworth and witnessed the terrible plight of some of the youngest men in there, although I appreciate that they were not children. They are called detention centres but to all intents and purposes—given the locked doors—they are prisons by any other name. The Minister made arrangements for me to visit Yarl’s Wood to see the situation there for myself but it seems that there was an outbreak of chicken pox and quarantine has been imposed. I was therefore not able to visit. I am surprised that quarantine has been imposed for chicken pox, which, after all, is prevalent in just about every community and school. Every time you get on a bus, you probably risk catching it from somebody. Nevertheless, the implications of that go beyond my frustration at not being able to visit and see with my own eyes what we are talking about before this Committee stage. I presume that if I could not visit the establishment, the people in Yarl’s Wood could not receive visitors for the duration of the quarantine. That was not the first occasion when quarantine had been imposed. How often have quarantine restrictions been imposed on Yarl’s Wood, and what are the implications for the families concerned? I shall be grateful for any detail that the Minister can provide tonight. I shall be particularly grateful to him if he will follow that up with written details on what infections have occurred and how long the quarantine lasted on each occasion. As for the amendment, the absolute least we can ask for are very full statistics on this matter. I therefore hope very much that the Minister will give a positive reply on the amendment.