Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]

There is a good Charles Walker and a bad Charles Walker. The bad Charles Walker says on occasions, "Why should the short-term detention centres be particularly welcoming? We have loads of immigrants coming to this country, and many people do not want so many to come, so why should these detention centres be comfortable?" Then the good Charles Walker holds sway and says, "Yes, there are bad people who want to come to this country and do bad things, but there are also many good people escaping terrible oppression." Of course, if people are put in a short-term detention centre for seven days, they are not illegal immigrants, because they have not entered the country and been lost within the system. They have been detained at our borders. We have to ensure that while people are in the short-term detention centres, it is not a near-prison experience. They must be looked after and receive the support that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) mentioned. They have the right to legal representation, interpretation services and so on. As I said, many good people will be caught up in the system. Many people will take an interest in amendment 20, because short-term detention facilities last at most seven days. For many people who leave those centres, the nightmare will just be beginning. They may face years and years caught up in a system that refuses to give them a clear decision on their immigration status. They will be in limbo, unable to work and relying on handouts. We said at the start of the debate that it was important that our immigration system was humane. My concern is that although we may have humane seven-day detention centres, the rest of the system will continue to be inhumane. We need to remove people from this country far more quickly than we do at present, but at the same time it is almost madness that we force people to wait for up to a decade for a decision. We need to take a broader look—outside amendment 20 and this Bill—at how we treat people who come to this country. Yes, in many cases, sending them home will be the right thing to do, but it may now be time to consider whether we should let people work while they are waiting for the decision. The quid pro quo for our constituents could be that we would make that decision in, at most, a couple of years, and we would remove people after that period. However, while they are here, we would not make their lives a living hell. We are a first-world country, and we need to behave like one when it comes to immigration.