Illegal Migration Bill

Committee (3rd Day) (Continued)

20:14:00

Clause 8: Support where asylum claim inadmissible

Debate on Amendment 57C resumed.

Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I had got as far as “My L—” when I was interrupted. I am sorry, I do not mean “interrupted”: I mean when we heard the Motion that the House be resumed. It was not going to be a major speech—it still is not, although I could have spent the last half-hour working on it.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who dealt with the issues very comprehensively, and the Refugee Council, which has been so helpful in briefing us. I simply observe the irony of our debating state support in the context of state-inflicted detention.

Lord German (LD)
I apologise to the Committee for speaking twice, but of course this is Committee so I can do it again.

To reiterate some of the issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, raised, this is an issue which you need to understand if you are to propose and manage this policy and move it further forward. “What happens next?” is not just a big question, it is of crucial importance to people and people’s lives. I will not repeat my statements about assessments, which are well made and obviously made all the time, but we have heard an exposition of this issue, which needs to be resolved. We need answers to those questions.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for introducing this group of amendments, which concern the duty to remove those who are not detained, and their access to support because they would be otherwise destitute.

Clause 8 amends relevant legislation to provide support on the same basis as for those whose claims are declared inadmissible under Section 80A or 80B of the 2002 Act. My noble friend introduced her amendments in great detail. They would allow for appeals to be made on decisions around support. They would allow financial support to be provided where accommodation support is not needed. They would allow people awaiting decisions on accommodation support to be provided with interim accommodation. They make it clearer that if someone has not yet been removed from the UK, despite the duty from the Secretary of State to do so, they face a genuine obstacle. As my noble friend said, the Government must ensure that no one awaiting deportation faces destitution and danger.

Given the questions about the Government’s ability to actually remove people given the lack of returns agreements, what assessment have the Government made of the support that will be needed? We read in the newspapers that the Government are renting two more barges. Of course, the numbers the barges can accommodate will not touch the sides of the amount of accommodation that will be needed.

My noble friend Lady Lister and the noble Lord, Lord German, asked a number of detailed questions, as did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who I suspect is getting his train as we speak. As the right reverend Prelate said, in practice it will be local authorities, faith groups and voluntary organisations which will be picking up the pieces if there is not adequate government support for people who find themselves in this position. I will listen to the Minister’s response with interest.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Migration and Borders (Lord Murray of Blidworth) (Con)
My Lords, Clause 8 ensures that there is support available to individuals who would otherwise be destitute where their asylum claims have been declared inadmissible, pending their removal from the United Kingdom. It also seeks to incentivise those whose asylum claims have been declared inadmissible to comply with the arrangements to remove them from the UK, whether that be to their country of origin—where it is safe to do so—or to a safe third country. These provisions will support the overall objective of the Bill and ensure that those who come to the UK illegally will not be able to stay. Pending their removal, we will ensure that we support those who are complying with arrangements for removal. I make no apology for introducing these measures to protect and preserve the integrity of our asylum and migration system.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for setting out her amendments to Clause 8. Amendments 57C and 57F seek to create a right of appeal against a decision to refuse an application for support under Section 95A of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which would take effect only if supporting provisions in the Immigration Act 2016 are brought into force. The Government keep these matters under review but I can answer the noble Baroness’s question directly: there are no current plans to bring those measures into force, and so we consider these amendments unnecessary. Therefore, those who are refused support under Section 4 of the 1999 Act will still be able to appeal the decision.

Similarly, we do not consider Amendment 57D necessary. As I have told noble Lords frequently throughout Committee, our intention is to detain and swiftly remove people. We expect that the overwhelming majority of those who fall within the scope of the duty to remove will need accommodation as well as financial support. These individuals will therefore be provided with financial support to meet their essential living needs, pending their removal from the UK.

Although I recognise the intention behind Amendment 57E, the Government do not consider it necessary to provide a statutory basis on which to provide temporary support. As I have said, our intention is to detain and swiftly remove those who enter illegally and meet the conditions in Clause 2. The details of how the scheme will work in practice, including the support provided during this interim period, are currently under active consideration. We are confident that there is sufficient scope to be able to provide adequate support to individuals pending a determination of their application under Section 4 of the 1999 Act. Obviously, we will bear in mind the contributions made during this short debate.

Finally, Amendment 57G seeks to amend uncommenced provisions in the Immigration Act 2016 and, in so doing, alter the long-standing position that Section 4 support would be available only to people who face a genuine obstacle in leaving the UK. The Government have no plans to implement the 2016 Act provisions in the immediate future; even if we were to do so, we see no need to alter the existing approach to eligibility under Section 4 for this group of people. Eligibility for Section 4 support is a long-standing position. As long as individuals whom we support pending their removal co-operate with the process, they will remain eligible for support.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, the noble Lord, Lord German, and the train-bound right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham asked about the Section 4 application form. We are working on the arrangements for implementing these provisions. As part of that, we will consider what changes, if any, are required to the Section 4 application form.

Where necessary, the Government will provide accommodation and basic support for those who are subject to the duty to make arrangements for removal and who are not being detained pending their removal. In answer to the right reverend Prelate, I can assure him that, with the changes made by Clause 8, we consider that there is sufficient legislative cover to provide such support where a person would otherwise be left destitute. On that basis, I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, including the right reverend Prelate, in his absence; we know that he had to get his train. I am also grateful to the Minister for answering more questions than I expected him to be able to.

I am disturbed by the proposition that it is not necessary to provide a statutory basis for temporary support because the intention is to remove people quickly. The Government are the only people who think that removal will be quick. All the organisations on the ground predict a state of semi-permanent limbo—purgatory, as some of them have called it. There needs to be a proper statutory basis for the support that these people are provided with. I hope that the Minister will look at this point again.

Other noble Lords have asked questions that have not, I think, been answered. I would be grateful if the Minister or his officials could look through Hansard and answer any remaining questions. The noble Lord, Lord German, certainly asked a number of questions that have not been addressed. I will not detain the Committee now by pressing them—I am sure that the noble Lord will not either—but I ask that a letter answering those questions goes to the noble Lords who have participated in Committee before Report.

It would also be helpful if the Government published as clearly as they can a statement on what is proposed. We can piece bits together from the Minister’s reply today but the point has been made that local authorities, faith groups, refugee organisations and others need to start planning; they need to know. A clear statement would therefore be helpful.

I finish by quoting the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who said that this is going to be like detention without walls. That is a very telling statement. It is important that we get this right. We do not want large numbers of people destitute on our streets because they are in this permanent limbo. I look forward to seeing what the Minister has to say in any subsequent letters but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 57C withdrawn.

Amendments 57D to 57G not moved.

Clause 8 agreed.

Amendment 58

Moved by

58: After Clause 8, insert the following new Clause—
 “Repeal of asylum seeker accommodation regulationsThe Houses in Multiple Occupation (Asylum-Seeker Accommodation) (England) Regulations 2023 are repealed on the day on which this Act is passed.”Member's explanatory statement
 This amendment provides for the repeal of the Houses in Multiple Occupation (Asylum-Seeker Accommodation) Regulations 2023.

Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, this amendment relates to a statutory instrument that has recently been approved.

I appreciate that the issues of the use of houses in multiple occupation for asylum seekers and the changes in the standards applying to such houses for that purpose may not have crossed the inboxes of most noble Lords; they certainly had not crossed mine until I was told that the SI changing the regulations was scheduled and found myself scheduled to speak on it. Like many such instruments, it was considered in Grand Committee and then went through the House very quickly. The purpose of the instrument is to make provision to exempt accommodation provided by the Home Office for asylum seekers from licensing requirements; that sounds quite straightforward.

20:30:00

My noble friend Lord Scriven and I spoke in the debate in Grand Committee because of our concerns and those of relevant organisations which were, I think it fair to say, caught out by the speed with which the instrument went through. We chose to use the mechanism of an amendment to the Bill to repeal the SI and thus bring it to the House.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, who I am aware has sat through quite a lot of debates on the Bill without our getting to this amendment but appears unable to be here now. I guess that is how it goes when you are a Minister. I thank her and the noble Lord, Lord Murray, for the letter which my noble friend and I received. I particularly wanted to thank the noble Baroness for how she dealt with the questions raised in Grand Committee. My noble friend shot out very direct and pertinent questions at enormous speed and it is mostly his questions which the letter addresses. We will hear whether he is satisfied with that, and I will leave him to pursue those issues.

There are two broad areas of concern as well as a lot of detail: first, the condition of the accommodation in the new regulations in which asylum seekers will live; and secondly, the impact more broadly on this part of the rented sector. On the conditions, we have heard news over the last few days of asylum seekers sleeping in the street in protest at the conditions they were faced with, including sharing rooms with non-family members. There was quite a lot of reporting about what happened at a hotel in Pimlico, which should have blown apart the notion that a “hotel” in this context means five-star luxury.

In the case of houses in multiple occupation, they and “hotels” mean two or more households sharing basic amenities—bathroom, toilet and cooking facilities. HMOs are regulated and licensed. Licensing was introduced primarily to protect from fire, after a fire in 1981 in which eight people died and about 100 were left homeless, all of them having been living, I understand, in a warren of 56 bedsits. They were asylum seekers from South America.

Mandatory licensing by local authorities was introduced in 2004. It enables an authority to know where the HMOs are in its area because the landlord has to tell it when they apply for a licence. Among the standards required is that landlords and managers must be fit and proper persons.

I understand that provider staff who have had contact with asylum seekers in the hotels that have been used over the last months are required to be DBS checked and, to quote the Ministers’ letter, “have had appropriate safeguarding training”. I have to say that we have seen how well safeguarding has worked for asylum seekers in hotels.

Local authorities’ oversight of HMOs is funded by the fees paid by landlords, and it does not take much imagination to start to worry that the owners of properties which lend themselves to such use will see this as easier and more profitable than letting them as regular, standard —if I can put it that way—HMOs. Local authorities are to receive an incentive payment for beds available within an expedited framework during a four-month pilot. As I understand it, there is no commitment beyond the pilot and this is not, as I recall, in the instrument in any event.

Local authorities, as your Lordships will know, have homelessness duties. London Councils, in briefing us on the instrument, refers to London boroughs—of course, this is not unique to London by any means—

“facing an acute and worsening position”

and notes that

“the number of households owed a homelessness relief or prevention duty”

was considerably higher than a year ago. The briefing continues:

“Challenges in the private rented sector are making it more difficult for councils to procure and retain suitable accommodation, a situation exacerbated by competition with Home Office contractors for properties.”

The 25 London boroughs which provided data show that they

“procured 26% fewer private rented sector properties for homeless households in February 2023”

compared with a year ago. The total number of temporary accommodation properties requested back by landlords was 150% higher over the same period. The number of people in unsuitable B&B accommodation has gone up massively.

The impact on the supply of housing, as we predict will happen, will not be an unintended consequence. It is no wonder that over 130 organisations joined the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and a major refugee charity in signing a letter to the Home Secretary and the Levelling-up Secretary about the detail of the scheme and wider issues. Their note on this letter says that

“the strain on the asylum accommodation system is due to excessive delays in asylum decision-making and the fact that those seeking asylum are not allowed to work”.

It then urges the Home Office to address these problems rather than deny people who are seeking sanctuary the basic accommodation rights that should be afforded to all tenants. I quote that not because it will be news to any Members of the Committee but because the points about the backlog, decision-making and the right to work always deserve to be emphasised. Shelter says that the housing emergency is likely to be exacerbated because of the risk of family homes being converted to Home Office HMOs, because of landlords being incentivised to pull out of letting to people who need to claim local housing allowance—which has been frozen for more than three years and so is less profitable to them—and because of landlords pulling out of offering properties to councils for use as temporary accommodation.

The Local Government Association has set out in a long briefing its asks, as it calls them. I will pick out just a few, because otherwise I could keep your Lordships here for considerably longer than I had planned to. One is that the sector is engaged in the development of the policy. Though the Government have said that they want to put engagement structures in place, there are no details yet. It wants to co-design with the Home Office how inspection teams will work across the two types of housing and share intelligence. Adequate new burdens funding to councils will not come as a surprise either, given what I have just explained. It is hardly an ask to ask to understand how HMO licensing will slow down procurement, because providers do not have to wait for an HMO licence. That is another point about engagement. Rightly, it wants to explore with the Home Office the barriers that the Home Office and its private sector providers identify, which could be addressed in ways other than with the regulatory change being further extended.

When I saw the title of this SI, I thought, “Oh, I can knock off a short speech on that on Sunday afternoon for Grand Committee”. When I started to think about the number of issues—which my noble friend is going to add to—the list grew and grew. That is why I beg to move Amendment 58.

Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, I speak in favour of Amendment 58, which I put my name to, moved by my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I draw the Committee’s attention to my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I reiterate what my noble friend Lady Hamwee just said: history is important. The catalyst for licensing HMOs in this country was a fire in 1981 in which eight individuals were killed and 100 residents of 56 bedsits were affected. Those who survived and those who died were all asylum seekers. That was the catalyst for the HMO licensing regime. That is where the campaign really started. The key issue for the introduction of the HMO licensing was to allow local authority housing enforcement teams to hold HMO landlords in their area to account for providing national minimum standards, and for local authorities to know exactly where HMOs were, so that they could be inspected effectively.

When the statutory instrument was in Grand Committee, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, was very reassuring in telling the Committee that this had nothing to do with the dilution of standards and that it was all about speed to get houses for asylum seekers ready to go so that they could be housed. Speed can and does cut corners. It became quite obvious from the written answers we received to our questions in Grand Committee that the standards will be watered down, and in some cases will now be dangerous and potentially lead to fires and other issues that could cause fatalities. These are standards for homes, not houses but homes, for some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

There were 11 standards raised in Grand Committee, which included everything ranging from the electrical compliance of equipment to HMO landlords being fit and proper persons for those properties. Of the 11 standards, only one is either equivalent or better than the HMO licensing conditions. All the others are a dilution of the standards. For example, the licensing of HMOs minimum standards state that the electrical appliances and furniture supplied by the landlord must be maintained in a safe condition and that a declaration of safety for all electrical appliances and furniture must be supplied on demand by the authority. However, the Home Office equivalent asylum accommodation and support services contract states only that electrical appliances are required to be inspected once every five years. It says nothing about the condition of furniture.

20:45:00

On the condition of carbon monoxide safety, the HMO licensing scheme says that a carbon monoxide alarm is required to be installed in any room in the house that is used wholly or partly as living accommodation and contains a fixed combustible appliance other than a gas cooker, that alarms must be kept in working order, and that a declaration of the condition and positioning of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms must be provided to the authority on demand. However, the provision in the Home Office contract is just that a carbon monoxide alarm is required in a property that has a solid fuel or gas appliance. It says nothing about how they are monitored or positioned. Again, this is a very serious watering-down of house safety and standards.

Other questions were asked and the Written Answers that followed showed very little concern for the safety of the people who will be in these unregistered and unlicensed houses.

The Home Office, in trying to placate the Grand Committee, said it is doubling the number of people in its inspection team for monitoring Home Office properties as part of the contract. I asked what the new full-time equivalent number would be and how many, on average, would be available for each local authority area. The answer came back that the number would be doubling —no numbers, just doubling. If you have one and you get two, the number has been doubled. I expect the team to be more than one at present, so again I ask Minister what the number of full-time equivalent members of the team will be once it has doubled. Also, what is the average number for each local authority?

Another question asked at Grand Committee was whether the inspectors who go into these properties were independent of the Home Office. This is important, because the HMO licensing authority is an independent local authority that goes in with professionals who have absolutely no connection at all to the landlords. Are the inspectors who go into these properties independent of the Home Office? I am sure that noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that they are not independent of the Home Office; they are employed by and are part of the Home Office.

My noble friend Lady Hamwee raised concerns about unscrupulous landlords. These are not my words but the words of experts in the property field, who say that unscrupulous landlords will no longer wish to see themselves as part of a HMO licensing inspection and will just offer their properties, at a lower standard, to the Home Office for asylum seekers.

Noble Lords who spoke about this in Grand Committee were uneasy about the SI’s intentions and its implications. The answers that we have received mean that these regulations need to be repealed as a matter of urgency. Remember that HMO licensing came in because of the tragic deaths of eight asylum seekers. With the latest comments over the weekend from certain Home Office Ministers about the living conditions of people seeking asylum, with up to four people having to share each hotel room, it is clear that the Home Office cannot be trusted with the safety and dignity of those seeking asylum and their having safe, habitable accommodation. HMOs, regardless of who is living there, need to be safe and to be inspected by an independent local authority licensing scheme. That is why this statutory instrument should be repealed.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I rise in support of Amendment 58. I am sorry that I could not be at the Grand Committee debate on the regulations because of another commitment. Given the representations that have been made by a range of an organisations, I felt it was important to say a few words.

All people should have access to secure, safe and decent accommodation, no matter what status they hold. While it is right that we should not have people housed in hotels for longer than necessary, the removal of so-called red tape, which potentially includes shortcuts around safety standards, as we have heard, seems exceedingly risky. Once again, we have been asked to put our trust in the Home Office and its subcontractors instead of properly resourcing local authorities to provide adequate housing. This is not the way to address the backlog or accommodation shortages. The speed of procurement should not come at the possible cost of life.

Earlier this month, while the Levelling-Up Secretary was unveiling new laws protecting renters’ rights, his colleagues were debating the Government’s intention to scrap HMO licensing for asylum seekers’ accommodation. That seems somewhat perverse. The Government state in their Explanatory Memorandum to the regulations that part of the rationale for the change was that subcontractors

“raised concerns that … regulation is posing a barrier to acquiring … properties”.

But the suspicion is that subcontractors’ concerns are motivated more by profits than by the need to reduce backlogs and move people into accommodation. As my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage asked during the Grand Committee debate, what evidence is there—again there is this question of evidence; it seems that with every amendment we are asking for evidence—to suggest that this change in regulations will speed up procurement of accommodation? The potential to undermine safety and standards seems very risky if there is not clear evidence to suggest that it will achieve the Home Office’s intended outcomes. Local authorities are concerned that any further erosion of enforcement powers will lead to a decrease in accommodation standards, where the reverse is needed.

The excellent briefing from the Chartered Institute of Housing, Crisis, JCWI and others argued:

“The assertion from the Government that HMO licence levels of protection will be maintained in these properties, but overseen by the Home Office rather than the local authority, is deeply suspect. People are already losing their lives in asylum accommodation managed by private subcontractors on behalf of the Home Office”.
 

Echoing the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, it was alarming to read at the weekend that asylum seekers were left on the streets in Westminster for two nights running because of accommodation problems and that the Immigration Minister had led moves to require groups of up to four adult males to share single rooms in so-called Operation Maximise. Richard Drax, a Conservative MP, has equated this to putting them in prison. As the leader of Westminster Council commented, to ask people who are

“likely to have been through significant and traumatic events … to share an inappropriately sized room”—

we are talking about a single room here, not some palatial five-star room—

“with multiple strangers defies common sense and basic decency”.

Basic decency, as well as safety, is what is at stake with these regulations.

Can the Minister give us an assurance that Operation Maximise will be abandoned at once in the interest of basic decency? With regard to these regulations, can he reassure us that the Home Office or its contractors have the skills to make a proper assessment of the risks around fire safety that an experienced and qualified local authority environmental health officer would have?

In the recent debate in Grand Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, asked the Minister to confirm that the same conditions that apply to an HMO licence will be replicated in the contract with the provider of accommodation for those seeking asylum. I do not think that the noble Lord has asked this again tonight, but I hope he will forgive me if he has. As the DLUHC Minister was unable to answer the question because it related to Home Office responsibilities, perhaps the Minister could provide an answer now.

In conclusion, this amendment should have never been needed but, unless we get serious assurances around living and safety standards, I can only question how the Government have decided that creating unsafe homes and putting asylum seekers in them is a decent strategy. As the Chartered Institute of Housing has said, HMOs will undoubtedly prove cheaper, but at what cost?

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, this amendment, at its heart, is about the Government’s proposal to exempt housing for asylum seekers from licensing conditions. My noble friend Lady Hamwee outlined the two principal areas of concern, which have been the thread throughout this short debate. One is the conditions of the accommodation and the second is the impact on the rented housing sector in its entirety. I would add that the limited number of properties that are available in the private rented sector is in danger of impacting seriously on the number of houses for people who are looking for that accommodation but are not asylum seekers.

I will ask the Minister as well about the devolved responsibilities in this area, because the private rented sector in Wales is quite differently managed under Welsh Parliament legislation. I would like to understand whether the Government have consulted the devolved Administrations to find out how they propose to deal with this matter. In the case of Wales, all private rented sector accommodation is required to be licensed, not just HMOs. There is a strict regime and landlords pay for that licence. Clearly, that has had some impact on raising standards. That is an important issue, and if it is going to be reduced further, the Government need to explain why.

My noble friend Lady Hamwee pointed out that there is a better way forward, and mentioned the need for a more collaborative, non-regulatory approach. My noble friend Lord Scriven pointed out that licensing provides protections, and I think we all understand that. He illustrated it by talking about smoke and CO2 alarms. The reduction in standards is implicit in the proposals that are contained in the statutory instrument. It seems to me that we need to have a proper inspection regime, as stated by my noble friend Lord Scriven. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, raised the issue of the safety of people being at risk. That is at the heart of all this. Are we going to put the safety of this vulnerable group of people at risk by returning to the original situation before the HMO legislation came into place? Are we going to manage the contractors properly and correctly? Clearly, the process of creating unsafe homes is not in anybody’s interest in this country at all, and neither is placing people within them.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, for moving this amendment. It was a good idea to address this issue in this context, even though it was fully addressed when the SI was debated. The Labour Party voted against the SI in the House of Commons, but it was not pushed to a vote in this House. Nevertheless, this is an appropriate Bill for us to address the issue again.

As we have heard, the regulations for HMOs were brought in following a fire in Notting Hill in which eight people died and almost 100 people lost their homes and possessions. Almost six years after that came the catastrophic fire in Grenfell Tower. These DLUHC regulations could lead to another fatal fire in an HMO used to accommodate people seeking asylum or other people in housing need. As we have heard from the briefings that we have all received—particularly the Shelter briefing, which was a particularly full briefing —people seeking asylum can be particularly vulnerable to fire risks, due to disabilities and health problems, being unaware of what standards to expect in a new country, being unable to read or speak England, and perhaps being reluctant, or less able, to complain to the authorities.

21:00:00

Parliament is finally about to pass the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, which reintroduces the proactive regulation of social homes following the Grenfell Tower fire. The regulations addressed in the amendment go in the exact opposite direction.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, asked various detailed questions about whether the inspectors are likely to be independent of the Home Office. We have heard that they are not going to be. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, which underpins the amendment is that licensing itself—proper licensing—provides protections for the people living in these HMOs. My noble friend Lady Lister asked for evidence, as noble Lords have done in many other amendments to the Bill, that this lowering of standards will indeed speed up the accommodation of asylum seekers in this position.

There are a number of detailed questions here. I look forward to the Minister’s answer, but it is fair to say that there is scepticism in the Committee that the course of action proposed by the Government is the right way to go.

The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Stewart of Dirleton) (Con)
My Lords, I acknowledge the gracious compliments paid by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to my noble friend Lady Scott, which I will pass on.

As the noble Baroness has explained, the amendment would prospectively revoke the Houses in Multiple Occupation (Asylum-Seeker Accommodation) (England) Regulations 2023. Those regulations, which have not yet been made, would amend the definition of “house in multiple occupation” in England for the purposes of Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004. The effect of the regulations is that accommodation provided on behalf of the Home Office for destitute asylum seekers will not require an HMO licence from a local authority for a specified period. The exemption will apply to properties that begin to be used as asylum accommodation from the point when the regulations come into force up to 30 June 2024, and last for a two-year period.

It is the Government’s intention with these measures to ameliorate conditions for asylum seekers. The regulations will support the rapid provision of accommodation for asylum seekers in local areas. I emphasise the urgency of this important reform, which forms part of a suite of measures to accomplish wider asylum delivery plans.

Many contributions—I noted in particular that of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett—focused on the use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers. There are over 56,000 asylum seekers currently living in contingency accommodation, mainly hotels. The reform will support the necessary steps being taken to accelerate moving asylum seekers out of hotel accommodation—which the Government accept is inappropriate, generally speaking, and furthermore is more costly—into more suitable and cost-effective accommodation.

Lord Scriven (LD)
I notice that in the statutory instrument there is no impact assessment. The Minister has just reiterated what the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said in Grand Committee, that this would speed up the number of properties coming on to the market for asylum seekers. As there is no impact assessment, could he tell us how many a year will come on to the market for asylum seekers that would not have done if these regulations were not made?

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
The noble Lord asks a highly detailed numerical question, and he will not be surprised to know that I am unable to answer it from the Dispatch Box.

Baroness Ludford (LD)
A ballpark figure would do.

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
We will do our best to provide one in short order in writing to the noble Lord, if that would be acceptable to the noble Baroness.

Lord Scriven (LD)
It would be acceptable to me, but time and time again, the noble and learned Lord has reiterated what was said in Grand Committee. Surely, that is something he should have asked for in meetings before standing at the Dispatch Box and giving that assurance to the Committee.

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, I repeat that I will endeavour to provide an answer to the noble Lord.

The use of hotels as being inappropriate was a matter raised again by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, in relation to Operation Maximise, and that was a scheme to use hotel rooms to accommodate asylum seekers. It is in order to move away from the use of hotels and provide more suitable accommodation that the Government are advancing these measures.

Asylum accommodation and support contract providers have identified existing licensing requirements for HMO properties as a challenge to swiftly making such accommodation available, in particular where local authorities apply licensing conditions that exceed statutory requirements, detracting from the viability of the property. The introduction of this exemption would mean that national standards apply uniformly to all new asylum accommodation, thus removing barriers to acquiring the more suitable and cost-effective accommodation, of which I was speaking, for housing asylum seekers and assisting in that aim of accomplishing dispersal of asylum seekers so the country bears the burden more evenly.

There were questions from a number of your Lordships —from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in opening, from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and from the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, responding for the Opposition—about whether these measures were intended to create lower standards. That is not the case. The Home Office accommodation contracts with our service providers set out clear minimum standards for all asylum accommodation. This is used to ensure compliance with standards similar to those used in local authority licensing.

Lord Scriven (LD)
We have answers that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, gave to us in writing after we had asked the questions. Of the eleven standards that questions were asked about, only one meets the requirements of the national HMO licensing conditions; 10 do not. Therefore, the standards are not similar to the HMO licensing. They are a dilution of standards in the HMO licensing system. Would the Minister not accept that is the case in light of the answers that the Home Office and DLUHC have already given to noble Lords?

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
“Similar” does not mean “the same”. I will endeavour to answer questions raised by the noble Lord, but I would doubt whether the answers I am able to give will satisfy him as much as the answers to his own questions which he has already given.

All dispersal accommodation is required to meet the room and space standards in the Housing Act 1985 or the Housing Act 2004 as appropriate. Properties are also required to have at least one bathroom and one kitchen per five occupants as well as meet the statutory space standards, and this will continue in HMO licence-exempt properties and will be checked on inspection. I will come to the inspection regime in due course.

All dispersal accommodation is also required to meet a range of other standards, for example for effective fire safety risk assessments to be carried out and acted upon, and for gas and electrical safety to be properly certified. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, spoke eloquently about the genesis of such measures arising out of a tragic fire. I am able to advise the Committee that the Home Office is working with the national fire safety co-ordination centre in relation to fire safety provisions in such properties.

Compliance with these requirements will also be checked by the Home Office’s asylum support contract assurance team. All asylum seekers have access, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to an advice, issue reporting and eligibility service provided for the Home Office by Migrant Help, where they can raise any concerns regarding accommodation or support services. They can also get information about how to obtain further support.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord German, raised the interaction of such properties with the provision of housing for homeless persons. The Government will do everything they can to mitigate the risk of homelessness, in support of the existing cross-government commitment to end rough sleeping within this Parliament and to fully enforce the Homelessness Reduction Act. To support this, while recognising the burden that local authorities are under, the Government will increase funding for local authorities to support asylum seekers and encourage councils to make properties available more quickly. To support local authorities this year, a one-off payment for each person accommodated on 1 April 2023 has increased from £250 to £750 per person. Councils will continue to receive £3,500 quarterly for each new dispersal bed made available thereafter during the financial year 2023-24. Payment will be made through the same grant process as used in 2022-23.

In addition, as part of a four-month pilot, to which we have had reference, councils will receive a further incentive payment of between £2,000 and £3,000 where a bed is made available within an expedited timeframe following identification. This almost doubles existing funding for those local authorities which take on new accommodation and do so quickly. The Home Office will also monitor any impact and will be conducting a full burdens assessment, working with the Local Government Association.

This brings me to the points raised by noble Lords on engagement with local authorities. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who particularly sought assurances about co-operation between central and local government on these matters. Home Office engagement with local authorities has increased significantly, and improved, since the introduction of an engagement strategy which is designed specifically to ensure that impacts on local services can be raised, discussed and mitigated through multi-agency forums.

The full dispersal team also currently meets every region at least once a month and some regions more regularly. These meetings are the key to driving delivery of regional dispersal plans. The Home Office engages regularly with local authority chief executive leads in a number of forums, including the asylum and resettlement council senior engagement group and the strategic oversight group. At these groups, HMO plans are being discussed alongside wider asylum and resettlement-related issues affecting councils across the UK. These are bodies within which the concerns raised in this debate by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and others can be raised.

The Home Office will also be arranging an open forum for local authorities to attend to provide local government colleagues with opportunities to discuss issues of concern with senior Home Office officials. Through its strategic oversight group, the Home Office is looking to set up a sub-group which will explore the issue of community cohesion with local authorities. This group would complement other work strands that are exploring related regional impacts.

On the subject of inspections, the Home Office is doubling the size of the current team in asylum support contract assurance to undertake additional inspections and other assurance work in response to the HMO licensing exemption. Inspections will be undertaken by housing health and safety rating scheme-qualified inspectors on all HMO properties that benefit from this exemption at least once in the two-year exemption period. This is in addition to the monthly inspections made by the accommodation providers themselves to ensure that the appropriate property standards are being maintained.

Lord Scriven (LD)
I thank the noble and learned Lord for giving way again. I asked this in Grand Committee and do so again today: the doubling is a doubling, but what will the actual full-time equivalent be and what will it mean in terms of the average number per local authority area in England?

21:15:00

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
Again, the noble Lord asks a question of some detail and I will, with his leave, respond in writing. I appreciate his point that doubling from one to two is not significant. However, the Committee has heard me speak of the breadth of support and inspection that will be given and the expertise of those carrying out the inspections. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, for nodding his assent; he can expect to receive a letter from the department in due course.

These regulations are subject to the draft affirmative procedure, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said as much in introducing the debate. They have been considered and approved by this House and await approval by the House of Commons. They are subject to sunsetting provisions, as stated. They are an appropriate response to the short-term challenges we face accommodating asylum seekers.

The Home Office has put additional measures in place of a robust nature to ensure that housing quality is maintained to a national standard. In addition to the usual assurances via the terms of contracts entered into, an enlarged team of appropriately qualified inspectors will inspect each eligible property at least once during the exemption period, as I said to the noble Lord a moment ago.

I reassure the Committee once again that these regulations and the actions of the Home Office in drawing them up and moving this policy forward are informed by our consciousness of the terrible past tragedies which have overtaken people living in accommodation of this sort. We are all too well aware of the incidents the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, drew to the attention of the Committee, and to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, adverted in passing at the outset of her remarks. I offer to the Committee an assurance that we are aware of this and that the inspection regime we set up will, as much as is humanly possible, look to prevent such things happening again.

Lord German (LD)
I wonder if the noble and learned Lord could answer my question about the devolved Administrations and their licensing powers?

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
I beg the noble Lord’s pardon; I meant to answer that question and sought specific information from the Bill team on it. The regulations apply only to England and not to Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland.

Finally, I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I am not going to say very much. Many Members are waiting to consider the large number of amendments we are scheduled to get through tonight—whether we will or not, we will see.

I thank the noble and learned Lord for his responses to the shedload of questions which came from this side. I was surprised that he started by saying that the regulations are intended to ameliorate conditions for asylum seekers, because it seems to everyone involved that it is about numbers and not better conditions. He has given assurances about engagement with local authorities, but it was the Local Government Association which particularly asked to be reassured about engagement, so this remains a live issue. He said that the lump sum of up to, I think, £3,500 would be paid in the circumstances he mentioned. I had understood from briefing that that was only for the pilot period of four months. Could he let me know after today if that is correct?

Finally, the noble and learned Lord mentioned Migrant Help. There have been a lot of tales over the last few months of people in hotels who have asked for some help from the contract providers who run the hotels or from other staff, and been told, “Oh, go and ask Migrant Help”. I do not think that it is quite the smooth process that was just suggested. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 58 withdrawn.

Clause 9: Other consequential amendments relating to removal

Amendment 58A not moved.

Clause 9 agreed.

Clause 10: Powers of detention

Amendment 58B

Moved by

58B: Clause 10, page 14, line 5, leave out “and (3)” and insert “, (3) and (3A)”

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, as Amendments 61, 62 and 66 are consequential to Amendment 58B, I will speak to all three at the same time as moving it; they all sit together.

Currently, pursuant to Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs may detain people for immigration purposes only in places set out by her in a direction. Detention in places not specified by her in a direction will be unlawful. The Bill amends that direction to include

“any place that the Secretary of State considers appropriate”.

Following the publication of the Bill, the Immigration Minister in the other place outlined that the expansion of the asylum and migrant estate will include military barracks and that the Home Office will

“continue to explore the possibility of accommodating migrants in vessels”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/3/23; col. 1018.]

More recently, the Government announced plans to house 500 asylum seekers on a barge in Portland, off the coast of Dorset. It remains unclear whether these settings will also be used as detention facilities as the provisions of the Bill seek to give the Home Secretary the power to detain individuals in such places, despite the risks posed by facilities such as Manston, which I will come to later. Some of the further mooted facilities present additional risks of their own, with military bases potentially triggering pre-existing vulnerabilities in people who have likely fled war and/or persecution. Will the Minister explain the reasons for granting the Secretary of State the power to detain people in “any place” that she “considers appropriate”?

If the intention is to allow detention in places not currently set out in the Immigration (Places of Detention) Direction 2021, will the Minister give details of where these places will be? For example, will the detention centres include military sites, such as Scampton in Lincolnshire, Wethersfield in Essex and Bexhill in East Sussex, or barges, such as the “Bibby Stockholm”, due to be moored in Portland? With the announcement this week by the PM of more barges to house asylum seekers, can the Minister advise on the cost of these, given that the aim has been to reduce money spent on accommodation, especially if some of this will be used for detention purposes?

Current Home Office plans suggest that these facilities are being considered for use as asylum accommodation only rather than detention. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government in fact plan to use them in whole, or part, as detention sites? If the intention is to allow detention in places not currently set out in the immigration direction of 2021, will the Minister explain how the Secretary of State will ensure that the standards set out in the Detention Centre Rules 2001 and the Short-term Holding Facility Rules 2018 are met in relation to the treatment of detained persons, including the safeguarding of vulnerable people known to be at particular risk of suffering harm in detention, such as victims of torture and trafficking, pregnant women and those with serious mental health conditions? What legal framework will exist to ensure these standards in such places? Are we to expect regulations and, if so, will we see them in draft before the Bill is completed? Has the Home Office carried out a full risk assessment linked to the proposed expansion of the detention estate and will it be published? How will the Minister seek to avoid scenes such as those at Manston, described by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration as “wretched”, if there is no extra detention capacity when the Bill passes?

It is interesting to note that, just this week, we have had the publication of the report of the unannounced inspection of Manston by His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons. I am sure Ministers have seen his comments. They are clearly concerning, and I shall briefly mention four priority areas: detention in the facilities was too long; the governance of adult and child safeguarding was poor; there was no accurate data on the use of force or separation from the general population or of incidents of violence and non-compliance; and professional interpretation was not always used consistently. There is a danger that Manston will not be able to cope any better than it was coping when the disturbances took place there more than 12 months ago. The response to the report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons is therefore important, to show that the Home Office will ensure safeguarding and care for individuals, which is not currently present.

According to Charlie Taylor’s report, there is no oversight of leadership and safeguarding, or of the use of force. These are incredibly important issues in places of detention. Care planning for vulnerable detainees and children with disabilities was poor and did not demonstrate individual planning, risk assessment or meaningful welfare checks.

Given the responses that we see about the current detention regime in this very recent report from His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, how does the Minister expect to provide new and extra accommodation, given the challenges the Government are already facing, across the country, from many Conservative MPs, for example, who do not want these in their backyards—not in the run-up to an election, I understand? Can the Minister tell us whether barges are really suitable places for the detention of families and children?

Amendment 62 would place the Secretary of State under a duty to consult local residents before authorising the use of any new facility within these categories. This is critical for community cohesion and well-being. Removing someone’s liberty is a deeply serious issue and we are extremely concerned about the consequences of this clause for the most vulnerable in our society, particularly children, torture victims, pregnant women and victims of modern slavery. It seems to us that the Home Secretary is moving far beyond the sorts of powers necessary to detain people in an appropriate manner, and this manner at the moment gives us minimal recourse to scrutiny.

The lives, liberty and well-being of fellow human beings should not be put on the line as collateral damage for a policy which most of us know will never achieve its stated aims but is being used for political appeasement. For the reasons I have outlined, I also oppose Clause 10 standing part of the Bill. I beg to move Amendment 58B.

Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 59B, 61A, 64B, 66A and 79C in my name.

Amendments 61A and 66A would ensure that, if children are to be detained or held in temporary accommodation before they are placed with a local authority, there are basic standards in the Bill to ensure that the type of accommodation is suitable, along with the services and standards that are needed to ensure that the best interests and the welfare of the child are paramount, and that the provisions are exactly the same as in the Children Act 1989.

21:30:00

Amendments 59B and 64B would ensure that the regulations about detention or the holding accommodation of children are made not by the Home Secretary but by the Secretary of State for Education, whose department has a far better understanding of the Children Act and what it means to put the interest of the child first. Because of this I have also tabled Amendment 79C, which would ensure that until such time as a young person is allocated to a local authority’s care, the department that understands fully the details of the Children Act, the Secretary of State for Education’s, is responsible for the welfare of children in the holding accommodation.

I will explain the rationale for these amendments. It is clear from what has been happening to young children seeking asylum who have been held in hotels that the Home Office has no idea what to do to put the interest or welfare of the child first. The Home Office seems, at best, not to have a detailed understanding of the provisions of the Children Act 1989. At worst, it ignores certain provisions of the Act and has no regard for putting the interests and welfare of the child first and central to its policy of temporarily holding children. What we have seen happening to some of the young people housed in these Home Office temporary hotels is nothing less than a national scandal and a disgrace.

Since summer 2020, unaccompanied children seeking asylum on arrival in England have had their rights systematically breached by the Home Office and have been denied the full protections they should have been afforded under the Children Act 1989. Their needs have not been assessed and they have been unlawfully denied the care of local authorities for unlimited periods of time. Instead, they have been placed in Home Office hotels, many of which are unsuitable, are out of reach of the standards laid down in Section 22 of the Children Act and house vulnerable children alongside adults. Many children have gone missing. I eventually got the Minister to answer from the Dispatch Box that 200 children were still missing. Some of these have been well documented; reports from Greater Manchester Police have indicated that children who have been scooped up have been found in Greater Manchester, used by drug gangs and trafficked for sex. Yet in the Home Office Answers to Written and Oral Questions in this House, it is in total denial about what is happening and refuses to accept that it has evidence from police, such as Greater Manchester Police, about the plight of some of these vulnerable children.

That is why these amendments have to be accepted. To be blunt, if they are not, these vulnerable children will still go missing and will not have the standards that every child in this country should have; the needs of the child will not be paramount.

Amendment 79C would ensure that the Secretary of State for Education is responsible for the temporary care of a child from the moment they arrive here and would be responsible for them until they are placed with a local authority. As I indicated earlier, this is far more desirable—not perfect, but more desirable—than the Home Office having responsibility. The Department for Education has years of experience in dealing with these vulnerable children through close-working liaison with local authorities and issuing detailed guidance for unaccompanied children seeking asylum. This amendment would help to ensure that the interests of the child are put first the moment they step into the country.

Amendments 59B and 64B are in the same vein. The Department for Education fully understands the law and nuances of the Children Act, and the rights and obligations to children to ensure that their interests and welfare are put first. It is therefore appropriate that the Secretary of State for Education, and not the Home Office, issues such regulations under Clause 10.

Finally, Amendments 61A and 66A would ensure that unaccompanied children seeking asylum would not be dumped in unsuitable accommodation, as we are seeing at present, but would have afforded to them the same standards and provisions that are in Section 22 of the Children Act 1989. Section 22(3) sets out the general duties of the local authority looking after a child to safeguard and promote their welfare. This duty underpins all activity by the local authority in relation to looked-after children and has become known as “corporate parenting”. In simple terms, corporate parenting means the collective responsibility of the council, elected members, employees and partner agencies for providing the best possible care and safeguarding for the children who are looked after by the council.

My amendments would mean that those same provisions would apply to children who are not in local authority care but in temporary accommodation that the Home Office has given—that the corporate parenting responsibility would be for the Secretary of State for Education. That includes an assessment of the suitability of the accommodation required for each individual child. Amendments 61A and 66A would confer the same responsibilities and duties on to the Secretary of State for Education the moment the child enters the country, until such time as they are placed with a local authority.

The welfare and care of unaccompanied children seeking asylum is paramount. They should have the full protections of the Children Act 1989 from the moment they reach our shores. These amendments will ensure that the rights of the child are paramount if the Home Office insists on detaining a child or putting them into temporary accommodation before  they are in the care of a local authority. I believe it is paramount that this is in the Bill. The rights of the child and the Children Act 1989 are absolutely key to protect vulnerable children who are seeking asylum. That is why I tabled these amendments.

Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I have only two questions to put to the Minister. I reinforce the remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Scriven and Lord German.

First, I ask the Minister directly about the issue of capacity. I also want to ask him about the role of the Independent Family Returns Panel. Dr Peter Walsh says that the current detention estate has capacity for about 2,500 individuals, yet we all know that last year 45,000 people arrived on our shores. In addition, there are 160,000 asylum seekers still awaiting decisions. If we take those numbers together, how do they square with the capacity that is planned for the estate? I was also struck by the Taskforce on Victims of Trafficking in Immigration Detention saying:

“We expect that tens of thousands of individuals will be indefinitely detained in immigration detention facilities, with the current already overstretched detention estate being unable to hold anywhere near the numbers anticipated”.
 

My second question is brief. I am concerned about the disapplication of the duty currently placed on the Secretary of State to consult with the Independent Family Returns Panel in every family returns case, particularly where the family involves children. Has the Minister seen the statement from the UK Committee for UNICEF, which has described this decision for disapplication as “regrettable”? Is that something he might give further thought to?

Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I want to make two quite separate points. I pick up on what the noble Lord just said; have the Government looked at what is really happening on the ground, the numbers of people currently waiting to be removed—that is a very large number—and the numbers coming in? How on earth are they going to get people away? Where they are going and what is going to happen was set out in much greater detail on an earlier amendment.

What worries me as I have sat listening, today in particular but really throughout the debates on the Bill, is that I do not think the Government have yet put their mind to the problems of numbers and how on earth they are going to get rid of these people, if I may put it rather bluntly.

The second point, which is so much more important, relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, just said, and I not only support him but admire him enormously for saying it. As I said on another Bill some time ago, I remind the Government that the Home Secretary is not a corporate parent, nor indeed at the moment is the Secretary of State for Education. The concept of the corporate parent is to be found in the Children Act 1989, as a local authority. Currently, the Government are expecting to deal with sometimes quite young children. I think they are concentrating on the 16 and 17-year-olds who are coming through and are not looking at a minority—but probably a relatively substantial minority—of children who are much younger. They have to be looked after. I do not want to repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said, but it is crucial that they be looked after. The only corporate parent who can care for them is in fact the local authority where the children are. It is about time the Government started to look at not just the best interests of the children, which is so obvious—it worries me that I keep having to talk about that—but the points that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, made, which really should strike home.

The Lord Bishop of Southwark
My Lords, I support Amendments 61 and 62 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord German, and welcome the opportunity to discuss what rules and regulations His Majesty’s Government will adhere to when selecting a site for the purposes of detention. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham had intended to speak but is unable to be here for this group of amendments; I am glad to be here in his place. I am grateful to Medical Justice for sharing how existing legislation governs both the nature and operation of detention centres. As it is a detailed policy area, I will focus my time on the context for these amendments while also posing questions to the Minister.

First, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham explained at Second Reading, the Bill before us changes the nature and scope of detention considerably. It moves detention away from an administrative process to facilitate someone’s removal to a punitive system of incarceration intended thereby to deter asylum seekers from travelling to the United Kingdom. Deterrence, as we have seen, is a key theme stressed by the Government, albeit no evidence or impact assessment has been adduced in its favour. This shift towards incarceration signals a major transition in policy, but in embarking on this shift in the purpose of detention, the Government leave us with a lack of detail on what rules and guidance will be adhered to when the Secretary of State is selecting a place of detention.

However, the Minister replied on 26 May to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham’s Written Question that individuals can be detained for immigration purposes only

“in places that are listed in the Immigration (Places of Detention) Direction 2021”.

I know that the right reverend Prelate was grateful for that answer. Furthermore, the Minister stated:

“All Immigration Removal Centres … must operate in compliance with the Detention Centre Rules 2001, this includes any additional sites that are opened as IRCs to increase detention capacity”.
 

Can the Minister therefore say whether it will remain unlawful for the Government to authorise places of detention outside those specified in the direction?

Secondly, will the Minister explain how the power granted by Clause 10 to the Secretary of State to detain people

“in any place that the Secretary of State considers appropriate”

marries up with the Immigration (Places of Detention) Direction 2021? The Minister may understand my concern that the power to deprive a person of their liberty, and how and where someone is detained, should be constrained by law and not the discretion of a Minister of the Crown, or anyone else.

21:45:00

The Home Office has announced plans to accommodate asylum seekers on military sites such as Scampton in Lincolnshire, Wethersfield in Essex and Bexhill in East Sussex, or on barges such as the “Bibby Stockholm”, already mentioned, due to be moored in Dorset. So I further ask the Minister to confirm that these sites will not be used for the detention of people deemed inadmissible on arrival but for those awaiting a decision on their asylum application.

The Government will understand the potential impact of wide discretionary powers to detain people anywhere, without adherence to particular standards, given the events at Manston in 2022. With a maximum capacity of 1,600, Manston became overcrowded, with the number of people detained there nearing 4,000 towards the end of 2022, and there are concerns that the conditions are likely to have amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment. We cannot allow another humanitarian crisis such as this to occur.

I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to answer all my questions tonight. If that is the case, I ask him kindly to write to me in advance of Report and to send a copy to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham.

It is the concern of several of us that the proposed new regime of detention facilitated by the Bill does not distinguish whether you are a child, a victim of trafficking or a pregnant woman, and that you will be subject to initial detention of not less than 28 days. Due to the ouster clause, there are also no means for anyone to challenge the lawfulness of the Government’s action, putting it beyond legal remedy. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we understand the legal framework that will be put in place to ensure that detention and safeguarding standards are established, and that detention sites are designated by law, not by expedient, as suitable.

Lord Etherton (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 69 is in my name. I am very grateful to those who have co-signed it: the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman.

The amendment provides for a general standard or series of standards to be applied—to some extent, picking up some of the more specific points that have been raised by other Members of the Committee. The amendment says:

“The conditions under which persons are detained pursuant to this section must comply with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Detention Guidelines”.
 

This becomes particularly important in the context of this proposed legislation because there is no time limit currently provided for detention. Indeed, earlier today, the Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, made great play of the fact that currently Rwanda is the only country in Schedule 1 which has actually signed up to admit people and therefore the rest of the people are not going to be accommodated by way of a removal.

People who are not suitable to go to Rwanda, which, according to the FCDO’s travel guidelines, would certainly include LGBT people, would be subject to indefinite detention until some other arrangement—if and when, if ever—with a truly safe place for that group was arrived at.

The UNHCR’s refugee Detention Guidelines currently set out, in guideline 8, some 18 minimum conditions of detention. They range from general propositions on treating asylum seekers with dignity to conditions around medical treatment; the ability of persons resident in detention to make contact; physical exercise; for children, education and vocational training; standards of food; and so forth. We certainly know that, on the ground at the moment, those standards are not being adhered to in the accommodation currently being occupied by those who seek asylum.

The time has come—particularly in view of the possibility of detention without any limit whatever; although that issue is going to be dealt with in a later group, I might add that it is in itself contrary to guideline 6 of the UNHCR’s refugee Detention Guidelines —when the Government must commit themselves to the minimum recognised standards that apply to asylum seekers. As others have said, we are not just dealing with numbers—number 1,231, for example. Each of these cases is a human being deserving of dignity and proper treatment.

Those are the minimum standards set down in guideline 8. I would like to know whether it is the Government’s proposal that they should adhere to these minimum standards.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, I rise in support of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, whose Amendment 69 I have signed. It would require detention conditions to comply with those set out in guidelines by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I need not repeat the arguments that the Committee well understands about the United Kingdom’s historic role in the refugee convention and other aspects of the post-war human rights settlement.

Like many noble Lords in this Committee, I have been in these debates for some time, so I understand that there is some dispute on the Government Benches about the UNHCR. The UNHCR says something; they say, “So what? It is just another woke NGO”. Well, it is not. The UNHCR has a special role in the convention. It is a UN body and it was given a special role in the supervision of the refugee convention.

I simply refer noble Lords to Article 35 of the convention, headed “Co-operation of the national authorities with the United Nations”. We were an architect of the convention and a key signatory to it; I am sure that every Member in this Committee wants to abide by it. Article 35 states:

“The Contracting States undertake to co-operate with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or any other agency of the United Nations which may succeed it, in the exercise of its functions, and shall in particular facilitate its duty of supervising the application of the provisions of this Convention”.
 

This body was given from the beginning the very special role of supervising the convention. That is fair enough, is it not? It cannot just be that every nation gets to interpret the convention in its own way; that would not exactly be global governance.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
Is that not precisely what the Vienna convention on the interpretation of treaties provides for: that each nation interprets it? States have to relate to and deal with the body to which the noble Baroness refers, but that is separate to the legal question of what the convention actually means. These are two distinct legal questions, are they not?

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
Well done. Article 35 continues:

“In order to enable the Office of the High Commissioner or any other agency of the United Nations which may succeed it, to make reports to the competent organs of the United Nations, the Contracting States undertake to provide them in the appropriate form with information”.
 

The bottom line is that the UNHCR is not just any other body, think tank, NGO or pressure group. It is a specific organ of the United Nations that was commissioned right at the beginning, when this convention was drafted, to have a special role in its supervision. That is why I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, in suggesting as a bare minimum that our detention provisions ought to comply with guidelines—they are only guidelines—set out by the UNHCR. We can have these lovely little Oxford Union interventions from Members opposite, but the bottom line is that if we do not comply—

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
I am sorry, but this is not an Oxford Union intervention. There is a clear distinction between an obligation to co-operate with a body in the implementation of the convention and that body having a role in the interpretation of the convention. They are different legal concepts and, with great respect, the noble Baroness knows that; it is quite wrong to elide one with the other. “Interpretation” does not appear in Article 35 and is deliberately excluded.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I am very grateful, obviously, to the noble Lord for his intervention. I repeat:

“The Contracting States undertake to co-operate with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees”.
 

This was the body given special status in the drafting of the very precious convention that was drafted with key instigation by the wartime generation in this country for reasons that I need not repeat.

If we do not comply with guidance from the UNHCR in relation to the detention of asylum seekers and refugees, who will? For that reason alone, I am very glad to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton.

Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 70A in this group is in my name and also signed by my noble friend Lord German. It is focused on the protection of unaccompanied migrant children and child victims of modern slavery. Picking up on the theme from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I want to make a brief reference to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 22 on refugee children says if a child is seeking refuge or has refugee status Governments must provide them with appropriate protection and assistance to help them enjoy all the rights in the convention.

There is consistent medical evidence that immigration detention is damaging the mental health of those who are detained. This Bill now forces children to be detained beyond the very short period which has been about acceptable before, although it was good that during the coalition years we stopped children being held in detention.

People seeking asylum have a very high prevalence of pre-existing vulnerabilities, including serious mental health conditions and histories of being trafficked, tortured and suffering sexual and gender-based violence. This puts them at particular risk of being further harmed in their time in detention.

The health implications of this Bill to detain people anyway without adherence to particular standards was highlighted by the events at Manston. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark has mentioned, it had a capacity of 1,600 but last autumn it was overcrowded, with the number of people detained nearing 4,000 following a decision by the Home Secretary not to send people on to hotels. People were beyond the 24-hour time limit without clear lawful basis for detention in holding rooms or five days in holding facilities.

My noble friend Lord German referred to the recent reinspection of Manston, but it is worthy of note that Charlie Taylor said there seemed to be some improvements while it was “fairly empty” but that he

“was not assured that if numbers increase … the site will be able to cope much better”

than last autumn, which is why I wish to persevere with my amendment. Conditions at Manston deteriorated very quickly and are likely to have amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of Article 3 of the ECHR, including overcrowded living conditions, unclean and unhygienic facilities, inadequate food provisions—some days without sufficient food or drinking water—lack of adequate medical care and spread of infectious diseases.

22:00:00

This was not new. Charlie Taylor’s inspection last year made a number of points which I will not go through now, except to say that the care pathways lacked co-ordination, clinical leadership to govern the standard and quality of care was not there and facilities for the management of detainees with Covid or other infectious diseases were poor. There are still reports from doctors that healthcare is patchy. I have talked recently to some directors of public health and GPs in areas that have received asylum seekers. NHS access for those who really need it is very slow and piecemeal, and often there is still no clinical oversight and no real clear strategic co-ordination or pathway, meaning that access to healthcare is delayed.

This is important for children because the position for the healthcare and well-being of children is even more worrying. Medical Justice assessed children detained at Yarl’s Wood and identified psychological harm caused and exacerbated by detention. Symptoms included bedwetting and loss of bowel control, heightened anxiety, food refusal, withdrawal, disinterest and persistent crying. The children expressed suicidal ideation, and physical health problems included fevers, vomiting, abdominal pains, diarrhoea, musculoskeletal pain, coughing up blood and injuries because of violence. They also witnessed their families being subjected to racist abuse during dawn raids and other people being subjected to violence in detention. Children were also reported to have been physically harmed because of violence in detention, and a number of royal colleges of health have described the detention of children as unacceptable, saying that it should cease without delay.

That is why initial health assessments for children must be carried out by a qualified doctor in a safe environment, with an interpreter. IHAs should not be carried out by care assistants working for detention centres and their contractors. Too much is at stake. Does the Minister believe, as he has repeatedly said in Committee, that deterrence should take precedence over rights? What is happening to these children in detention should not be tolerated. What healthcare and well-being standards will be in place for those in detention centres, especially minors, whether with their families or unaccompanied? The amendment sets out the legal framework by which it is perfectly possible to create safe standards to ensure that these children are protected properly. If the Minister cannot provide details, will he accept my amendment?

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I was going to ask this question in the next group, but it is more appropriate to ask it here. It was raised by Doctors Without Borders in its damning briefing: what specific care will be provided for children with pre-existing or emergent health needs?

Also, following on from my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, I have been in correspondence with the UNHCR about the different interpretations of the UN convention and the refugee convention that came up when I asked on our first day in Committee why we should accept the Government’s interpretation of the refugee convention over that of the body which has global responsibility for it. The Minister was rather dismissive of the UNHCR, which, in response, highlights that its position on the Illegal Migration Bill—one diametrically opposed to the Government’s—is that it will go against the obligations under the refugee convention. The UNHCR’s institutional position has been conveyed to the Government in the exercise of its responsibilities under Article 35. It does not accept that this is a legitimate interpretation of the refugee convention.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I will speak briefly on Amendment 69 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and others. My intervention is prompted by a meeting I had earlier today with the disabled Greens group, specifically on the question of meeting the needs of disabled asylum seekers and refugees. That caused me to look up the details of the UNHCR Detention Guidelines, specifically point 9.5, which says that states may be required to make reasonable accommodations to ensure that they meet the specific needs of disabled asylum seekers. It says:

“As a general rule, asylum-seekers with long-term physical, mental, intellectual and sensory impairments should not be detained”,
 

and that accommodation needs to be accessible.

The disabled Greens raised with me their particular concern about the barges, about which the Government seem very enthusiastic and to which they have been paying a great deal of attention. It is difficult to see how those barges could possibly meet the accommodation requirements of disabled asylum seekers.

A number of noble Lords referred to the historic situation at Manston, but we have seen the Chief Inspector of Prisons expressing great concern about what is happening there right at this moment. The focus has very much been on children but, if we are not able to identify and assist children appropriately, I really wonder whether we are also able to identify and assist refugees with disabilities, who may have specific needs. Can the Minister say how the Government will ensure that they meet the needs of asylum seekers with disabilities?

Finally, without in any way daring to intervene in a discussion between two lawyers on a fine technical point, I just note that Article 35 of the convention, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, says that:

“The Contracting States undertake to co-operate with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees”.
 

The relationship does not look much like co-operation at the moment.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I am afraid I rise again to make a point that really should not have to be made. I made the point on a previous group that we are a dualist state where international law is not part of domestic law unless and until it is so incorporated by this Parliament. Later, perhaps in a question, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, rather poured scorn and said that this was some sort of technical dualist point. It is not a technical dualist point; it is a fundamental part of our constitution.

Another fundamental part of our constitution is that, when we sign up to international treaties such as the Vienna convention, we have to look at what they actually say. This is not an Oxford Union debating point for two reasons: first, it is far more important than that; and secondly, I have never been a member of the Oxford Union. Article 31 of the Vienna convention, on the interpretation of treaties, says:

“A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose”.
 

Each state therefore has to interpret its obligations under a treaty.

Some treaties, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, have a court attached to them. If you sign that treaty and sign up to the court, you are obliged to abide by the rulings of the court, in so far as those rulings emanate from the treaty. For example, Article 46.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides that the UK has to abide by any judgment given against the UK by that court. That is what we signed up to in the treaty. The refugee convention does not have a court attached to it. Therefore, this country, like every other, has to interpret the treaty bona fide—in good faith.

What, then, is the position of the UNHCR? It is exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, read out from the treaty, but it is not the gloss that she put on it. The word “interpret”, which she used in her speech, does not appear in the treaty. That is not an accident, because the states were not going to give the UNHCR the power—[Interruption.] I will give way if the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, wants to make an intervention; otherwise, I cannot hear her.

Baroness Ludford (LD)
If the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, does not want to take that opportunity, I would quite like to. The noble Lord makes the point that Article 35 of the refugee convention does not have the term “interpretation”, but it does say, as the noble Baroness quoted:

“The Contracting States undertake to co-operate with the Office of the … High Commissioner … in the exercise of its functions, and shall in particular facilitate its duty of supervising the application of the provisions of this Convention.”
 

I suggest that that is not a million miles from assisting in the common interpretation of the convention.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. Acoustics are not always with me. I literally read from Article 35 and so did not use “interpret”. I used words such as “co-operate”. I think that I might have said “supervise”—I believe there is a supervisory jurisdiction. At this late hour, I really do not think that this should be a great beef between lawyers. I just say that there is a duty to co-operate with the UNHCR, and it has a special position as an organ of the UN that we set up. That is why I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, that our detention policies ought to have serious regard to the guidelines from the UNHCR.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
I may have misheard, but I thought I heard “interpret”. I think that other noble Lords did as well. The Official Report will make it clear, no doubt. With great respect to the noble Baroness, in legal terms there is a million miles between a duty to co-operate and giving that other party the right to interpret. There is a huge difference between this country as a state saying that the treaty means whatever the UNHCR says it means and, on the other hand, saying that we will co-operate with the UNHCR to enable it to fulfil its obligations under the treaty but we as a state arrogate and retain the right to arrogate to ourselves in good faith and bona fide what that treaty actually means. It may sound like one is drawing fine distinctions but there is a very clear distinction, as lawyers will tell you, between the right to interpret a document, whether that be a contract or a treaty, and co-operation in the implementation of whatever that contract or treaty means.

Baroness Ludford (LD)
The noble Lord is a good lawyer and I am not, and I know that time is pressing on. However, it says more than just that we should co-operate with the UNHCR. It asks contracting states to facilitate the UNHCR’s

“duty of supervising the application of the provisions of this Convention”—

I emphasise “supervising”. I do not know how that terminology was arrived at but it is saying more than that the UK must co-operate with the UNHCR. The UNHCR has a sort of supervisory duty, and I think that is more than what the noble Lord is saying.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
I am not focusing on the supervisory duty. For these purposes it does not matter whether we have a duty to co-operate once a month or once a day, or to get in touch with it every half an hour. That is just on the scale of the nature of the co-operation duty. My point, and I submit that it is a fundamental one, is that there is a difference in essence—a conceptual distinction—between a co-operation duty with the UNHCR as to whatever the treaty means and agreeing that whatever the UNHCR says the treaty means is what it means. It is not an accident that interpretation was excluded from Article 35. Having made that point about five times, I will sit down.

Lord Etherton (CB)
Perhaps I could just add to all of this. I am sorry to do so; it is a bit unseemly for the lawyers to start arguing among themselves but I think I ought to record that I do not agree with the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that the effect of Article 31 of the Vienna convention means that this country or any country can give to such a refugee convention any meaning it wishes to. It has to apply, under Article 31 of the Vienna convention, the wording of the refugee convention, bearing its ordinary meaning in the context of what it proposes.

This is a sideline. The Committee needs to concentrate on what the role of the UNHCR is. I think that it is perfectly obvious to virtually everybody that it has a special supervisory role under the refugee convention, as interpreted in accordance with the Vienna convention, in the application and the practical application of the refugee convention. What I was talking about in my amendment, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, was giving due weight to such a body. There is no other body that has that role. This body does, and it has been given by the United Nations.

22:15:00

Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, I am slightly nervous to stand up here. On a serious point, I want to say a few brief words in support of the amendments in this group, in particular Amendment 58B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord German, Amendment 60, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and Amendment 69, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Etherton, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and others.

In the interests of being brief, I will try to cut through to what I think is the fundamental issue. This group is about standards in detention. The reason this raises such concern, which I think the Minister should address, is that new subsection (2I), as inserted by Clause 10, as has been mentioned by others, says:

“A person (of any age) detained under sub-paragraph (2C) may be detained in any place that the Secretary of State considers appropriate”.
 

That is a huge power to give to the Secretary of State: to allow the detention of people arriving since 7 March, of any age, in any place. It is perfectly legitimate, and summarises all the amendments and all of the comments —I will not go through them all, and if I have got this wrong then people can intervene and I will apologise—for noble Lords to ask the Minister what that actually means in practice.

I thought that the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, cut to the chase. If that is the situation, how are those standards going to be maintained? What actually are those standards? Are the standards the same in a barge or in a military camp? These are the sorts of details that the Committee would wish to hear from the Minister. What are the standards, given that it can be any age and in any place? What difference will there be between arrangements for unaccompanied children, families and others? This is particularly important because the power in new subsection (2C) is not actually for people who have been definitely determined as being people we would wish to remove; it is that the immigration officer “suspects”. We are talking about the detention of individuals, maybe children, who we suspect.

That leads us into the next group. However, if we are talking about standards, this becomes particularly relevant. We are talking about people who might actually be regarded as legitimate and eligible asylum seekers, even under the criteria of this Bill.

In order to be brief, I think noble Lords are seeking an answer to the question posed by new subsection (2I). A significant extension of power to the Secretary of State to designate any place for somebody of any age demands that the Minister be very clear about what the standards will be in each of those places, and who will monitor them to ensure that those standards are kept to.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, as we have heard, these amendments bring us on to the issue of detention. The amendments in this group look at the standards of detention accommodation and seek to impose certain minimum standards in respect of accommodation and the treatment of detained individuals.

As I have repeatedly made clear, we need a new, radical approach if we are successfully to tackle the people smugglers and put an end to the dangerous, illegal and unnecessary small-boat crossings of the channel. The scheme provided for in the Bill needs to be unambiguously clear that if you enter the UK illegally you will be liable to detention and swiftly returned to your home country or sent to a safe third country. I want to make clear that the welfare of those who are detained is of the utmost importance. We will detain families and children, including unaccompanied children, only when it is necessary to do so and in appropriate accommodation with appropriate healthcare provision.

Amendments 61, 61A, 62, 66A and 69, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Scriven, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, deal with the issue of accommodation standards and limiting the place of detention. I assure noble Lords that persons detained under the powers conferred by the Bill will be detained in age-appropriate accommodation that meets appropriate standards.

We detain persons for immigration purposes only in places that are listed in the Immigration (Places of Detention) Direction 2021 in accordance with the long-standing provisions of the Immigration Act 1971, at paragraph 18 of Schedule 2. In answer to the point raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, following Royal Assent we will update that direction in line with the new detention powers. Moreover, we already have robust statutory oversight of immigration detention, including inspection by the prisons inspectorate and independent monitoring boards at every detention facility, and effective safeguards within the detention process that, I submit, are sufficient.

My noble friend Lord Wolfson made some powerful points about the application of the international instruments to the question of detention standards, and clearly made the point that the UNHCR was expressly not given the right to issue determinative interpretations of the convention. It is up to states to interpret its terms in good faith, as we are doing.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, also has Amendments 59B, 64B and 79C in this group, which seek to transfer certain powers in relation to the detention and accommodation of unaccompanied children from the Home Secretary to the Secretary of State for Education. To be clear, the noble Lord referred to the temporary housing of unaccompanied children in Home Office-provided accommodation prior to their transfer to the care of a local authority. Such accommodation is not detained accommodation and is therefore not caught by the provisions of these clauses. I assure the noble Lord and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that we will return to this issue when we reach Clause 15.

The immigration functions provided for in the Bill are properly a matter for the Home Office. As noble Lords would expect, we regularly consult and work with the Department for Education on matters impacting on children, and that will continue to be the case in respect of the powers conferred by the Bill as they impact on unaccompanied children. As I have said, these are matters that properly fall within the purview of the Home Secretary and, as such, the functions to which these amendments relate should be exercised by her.

In relation to Amendment 70A which is specifically on the health and well-being of detained individuals, I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that we will work closely with the Department for Education to ensure that there are proper provisions for children in detention, and we will build on our current detention facilities to ensure that they are appropriate and provide safe and secure accommodation for children. The statutory guidance referenced in the noble Baroness’s amendment would not be applicable where someone is detained, but we will ensure that all relevant policies that relate to detention will continue to apply.

All persons entering detention are medically screened on arrival and have access to round the clock healthcare. This will continue to be the case. The existing adults at risk in immigration detention policy will be updated in line with the Bill and will continue to act as a safeguard for vulnerable persons in detention.

The noble Lord, Lord German, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, asked about our plans to increase detention capacity. We are increasing our detention capacity to ensure we have enough detention space, and we already have plans in place to build two new immigration removal centres. These include developing a new immigration removal centre in Oxfordshire on the former site of Campsfield House and a new immigration removal centre at Gosport in Hampshire on the former site of Haslar.

Lord Scriven (LD)
If the central tenet of the Bill is to deter people from coming to the UK, why are the Government expanding detention centres?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I can imagine the noble Lord’s response if we did not expand detention centres. The point is that, as a matter of government planning, we need to have sufficient capacity to ensure that we can detain and swiftly remove those who enter the country illegally, in particular those embarking on dangerous journeys across the channel.

Change will not happen overnight, but we are committed to making this legislation work. We are working to find other solutions to scale up our detention capacity too. The first step is to change the law, which is why we are focusing on getting this Bill through Parliament.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, raised a related point, suggesting that large numbers would need to be detained in the absence of returns agreements. I remind him that in addition to our partnership with Rwanda we have returns agreements with 16 countries and that, as I have indicated, a returns agreement is not a prerequisite to our ability to remove people. I hope I have been able to reassure noble Lords about our commitment to maintain appropriate standards of detention accommodation and to provide appropriate care for those held in detention under the powers conferred by the Bill. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord German, will be content to withdraw his Amendment 58B.

Amendment 79C intends to ensure that the Secretary of State for Education has responsibility for unaccompanied children as soon as they arrive in the UK. I suggest that the amendment does not in fact have this effect. It places no duty on the Secretary of State for Education to have any responsibility for arriving children. It would give the Department for Education the power to provide accommodation but not a duty to do so. At this stage the children are already in the Home Office system and the Home Office has pre-existing duties under Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 towards those children. The Home Office also runs existing relevant mechanisms such as the national transfer scheme. It is a matter for the Government as to which department should operate these powers.

This amendment could create a great deal of legal uncertainty, which is not in the best interests of children. For example, where children were not accommodated by a local authority on arrival, the Home Secretary could not use her powers under Clause 16 to move children into local authority placements quickly unless those children were in DfE-run accommodation, which DfE would be under no duty to provide. That uncertainty continues with regard to the application of Clause 19 and how any accommodation power linked to a government department that operates in England only could be applied to the devolved Administrations. For that reason, I invite the noble Lord not to move that amendment.

22:30:00

Lord Etherton (CB)
I asked whether confirmation could be given that the Government will adhere to the 18 minimum conditions in the UNHCR Detention Guidelines. It would be very helpful for the Committee to know specifically which ones they intend to comply with and which they do not.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
As I have already indicated, the standards that will be adhered to are those prescribed already in legislation. While the points set out in the UNHCR’s document map on in some respects, there is no exact overlap. The regime which will be applied is that which I have already described.

Baroness Brinton (LD)
I wonder if I could ask the Minister two questions. The first relates to his comment before last to my noble friend Lord Scriven about whether the Secretary of State for Education should be the corporate parent for government, as opposed to the corporate parent being local authorities. In the event where there is a delay after a child has arrived before a local authority is allocated to be the corporate parent, who is the corporate parent for that child? The Home Secretary does not have that power; there is no protection and no oversight. I say this in light of the fact that, in Kent, there is a special arrangement for Kent not to be the corporate parent for all unaccompanied minors that have arrived there, for fairly obvious reasons. The concern would be that that child might not get the protection that it needs. That is the first question, which is completely separate to the one on my Amendment 70A.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments about appropriate healthcare, but without knowing what appropriate healthcare is and whether it meets standards that have been set out—even if he says that the guidance would not work—I am somewhat at a loss. Could he write to me to set out exactly what those standards were, because many doctors are extremely concerned about the current standards available for children in detention at the moment?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Yes, certainly. In response to those two points, as the noble Baroness will have seen, we will discuss this again when we reach Clause 15. But Clause 15(1) provides that the Secretary of State may provide or arrange for the provision of accommodation in England for unaccompanied children. As the noble Baroness rightly identifies, presently in Kent there is an agreement which works well. Initial reception facilities are provided by Kent County Council as the corporate parent, then any unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are transferred within the national transfer scheme. Obviously, it is sensible to have the powers in Clause 15(1) as a backstop, in the event that those powers might be needed. I hope that therefore provides a complete answer to the noble Baroness’s first question.

In relation to the second part of her question as to the standards, as I hope I have already made clear, we will be applying the standards that presently remain. It is abundantly clear that those standards are very detailed as set out. I would be happy to write to the noble Baroness to outline what they are. We will definitely be able to provide that.

Baroness Brinton (LD)
I thank the noble Lord with regard to the first issue. I wondered if there was actual data on the time that it takes to provide that transfer for children. What I am concerned about is the gap; we may be discussing it later, but the noble Lord raised the issue himself. Could he provide me with a letter that shows exactly how long it takes to get that transfer through, because I am hearing that there are gaps?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Because the powers in the Bill are obviously not yet in force, I cannot answer as to whether there would be a gap. But clearly it is anticipated—it is hoped—that there will not be a need to utilise the powers in Clause 15 routinely, because the situation with respect to Kent and other relevant local authorities should provide an answer. I am afraid that the noble Baroness cannot expect me to look into my crystal ball and predict what the situation will be after the Act is implemented.

Baroness Brinton (LD)
I am really sorry to prolong this. The noble Lord referred to the national transfer scheme. There is a concern that either it is taking some time or some children are not being transferred; they are, at the moment, without a corporate parent. There must be current data. That is why I ask: what is the normal gap and how many children have not been allocated?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am very happy that the noble Baroness has asked me that question. I am delighted to say that, as of yesterday, there are zero children in Home Office UASC hotels. They are all in the care of local authorities. I hope that provides a fairly clear answer to her question. Perhaps I can invite the noble Lord, Lord Alton, to intervene.

Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
I am grateful to the Minister. My question rather builds on what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has been asking. Earlier I specifically asked about the disapplication of the duty on the Secretary of State to consult with the independent family returns panel and the criticism that has been made by the UK Committee for UNICEF, which said that it regretted that decision. I asked the Minister if he would give further consideration to that point and think further about the safeguards that it enables to be put in place to deal with the kinds of issues the noble Baroness has put to him.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord. I am sorry that I did not answer that question. The relevant provision is in Clause 13 of the Bill. We will come to discuss it in the 11th group of amendments. Perhaps that might be the moment to explore those detailed points more thoroughly.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, may I press the Minister on the issue of disabled asylum seekers? I raised this specifically in terms of what is happening in general provision, what is happening at Manston, how the Government foresee—or not—disabled asylum seekers being accommodated on barges and whether they foresee provision in the new arrangements under this Bill complying with UNHCR detention guidance for disabled asylum seekers.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
The noble Baroness raises an important point. It is obviously right that our guidance reflects the special needs of disabled people in accordance with our duties under the Equality Act. That will continue to be the case. I hope that provides some reassurance for the noble Baroness.

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate, not least because I have seen two lawyers agreeing with each other after having a debate of 10 or 15 minutes about a point of law. It is a fascinating experience.

To turn back to the amendments before us, I thank everyone who participated. In the response the Minister just gave, there are a number of matters which I would like to ask him about. If I understood correctly, he said it is the intention to only allow detention in line with the Immigration (Places of Detention) Direction 2021. I think that is what the Minister said. He then immediately said that, after this Bill is enacted, we will amend it—we will uprate it. I do not quite understand what the uprating mechanism is and why you need to uprate a direction you presently agree with. It would be helpful if the Minister could say what he means by uprating and if they are following the Immigration (Places of Detention) Direction 2021—which, I acknowledge, is the right thing to do.

On Campsfield and Gosport, the Minister said that the capacity would be increased. Could he give an indication of the numbers of places there will be in each of those, or the total for both.

Finally, I have what I consider a bit of a non sequitur, but the Minister said it several times and repeated it today. He said that return agreements are not a prerequisite for returns. I did not quite understand that because if you want to return somebody, you need an agreement that they will be taken. That seems to be an agreement. It was a bit of a non sequitur and certainly did not fall within the wonderful statements we had from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, about these matters earlier. If the Minister could address those three questions, I will then be in a position to deal with the amendment.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
As I hope I made clear, once the Bill is passed, the direction will need to be updated, rather than “uprated”. It will reflect the new provisions and any new detention facilities that are available to be utilised at that point. I am afraid that I am not in a position to give the noble Lord an indication of the size at this stage.

On returns agreements, as I think I made clear in a previous group on the second day in Committee, there are different relations with various countries, so circumstances can arise where people can be returned to countries with which we do not have a formal returns agreement. I can write to the noble Lord in more detail on that subject.

Lord German (LD)
I thank the Minister for his answer. It would be helpful to know whether the matter of capacity of the two places is just unknown or whether it has not been concluded yet. If that is the case, I presume that the Minister could tell me at some stage what the capacity is.

This has been an important debate and I am sure we will return to it on Report. On the basis of those answers, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 58B withdrawn.

Amendment 58C

Moved by

58C: Clause 10, page 14, line 9, leave out “suspects” and insert “has reasonable grounds for suspecting”
 Member's explanatory statement
 This amendment probes the threshold for detention.

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, we now move to the second area of Clause 10, which is about the powers of detention. The clause significantly expands the current powers and use of immigration detention. It removes the current protections for vulnerable groups and the current limits on the detention of children, which offer UASCs 24 hours, children and families 72 hours, and pregnant women 72 hours. It gives extensive detention powers to the Home Secretary, away from the scrutiny of the courts, removing effective remedies to challenge unlawful or unjustified detention. That upsets the constitutional principle of the separation of powers. I am sorry that one of the lawyers has disappeared, because I would have liked to have raised the matter of the separation of powers whereby, in the past, the courts have determined the appropriateness of how long people will be detained.

The Bill says that it is for the Secretary of State, not the courts, to decide the reasonableness of the period of detention. It therefore weakens judicial scrutiny and removes a safeguard which is especially important for individuals who are particularly vulnerable to harm from prolonged detention. The Hardial Singh principles, which were established through UK case law, place limitations on the Home Office’s detention powers, so that it is for the courts to determine the reasonableness of a given period of detention. Those are the current principles under which the courts operate.

The role of the courts, including the High Court in particular, in reviewing the lawfulness of detention is critical to maintaining the rule of law fully in accordance with the role of the judiciary under the constitutional principle of the separation of powers. In respect of detention, the Bill infringes that principle. I expect that the Minister will talk about habeas corpus, but that is not about the reasonableness of detention; it is about whether it is legal to detain. Clearly, that is a distinction which makes the case I am trying to make more appropriate and important.

Amendments 58C, 58D, 63A and 63B probe the threshold for detention; my noble friend Baroness Hamwee will talk about that in a moment. Leaving out “suspects” and inserting “reasonable grounds” to believe the person meets the four criteria of Clause 2 for removal. The lower threshold of “suspects” requires no evidence; I can suspect that something is happening without evidence, except when I see what I think I am seeing in front of me. However, having a cause for “reasonable grounds” means that there has to be some evidence. It is unclear whether legal advice will be available in presenting their case for the inadmissibility of due process, especially when there will have been no judicial oversight for 28 days, under the Bill.

22:45:00

Amendment 60 would reapply the existing statutory time limit on children, and we will support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, on reapplying existing statutory time limits. This clause reverses the safeguards put in place during the coalition Government to end the routine detention of thousands of children and families. The Refugee Council says in its impact assessment that 13,000 people will be detained annually if this clause proceeds. That is an alarming departure, and the Bill will allow the routine, indefinite detention of children, unaccompanied or with their families. UK evidenced research and, more recently, that in Australia, demonstrates the long-lasting damage that detention does to children’s lives, physically and mentally.

The Bar Council—I believe it is a reputable body in understanding how the law works—considers it unlikely that these provisions in the Bill comply with the United Kingdom’s obligations under the United Nations 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, in particular, Article 37, which says that

“detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time”.

It is deeply troubling and surprising that Parliament should be considering a detention power that could potentially offend that convention. The British Medical Association echoes concerns expressed by the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium that the proposals contained in this Bill will have

“severe consequences for the welfare and physical and mental health of extremely vulnerable children who have fled conflict, persecution and other unimaginable harms and are in desperate need of support, stability and protection”.

So, has the Home Office carried out a full assessment of the risks linked to detaining children and families?

Finally, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report says that the procedures of the SI that are to come, the regulations, should be done by the positive procedure and not the negative resolution procedure which has been adopted. I would be grateful if the Minister said that the Government are considering that matter. In the end, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that individuals who are vulnerable and cannot be safely detained will be swiftly identified by appropriately qualified staff and released, with appropriate safeguards in place, following the removal of currently available legal challenge? Of course, we expect to see the Home Secretary’s risk assessment in the impact assessment which we understand is to follow.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, I would like to accept the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord German, as another lawyer, to address the Hardial Singh principles and habeas corpus, but since, on my reading of the Bill, they arise under Clauses 11 and 12 respectively, I think it might be best to reserve that treat for another day. I do have a question about Clause 10, which I candidly admit I do not find the easiest to understand. The Bar Council, in its briefing prepared by immigration practitioners far more expert than me, states that the powers already exist to detain any individual who is suspected to be subject to the Clause 2 removal duty, that Clause 10 does not provide for any additional persons to be detained, and that the purpose of the clause is simply to remove existing protections for unaccompanied minors, families and pregnant women. Is there any more to it than that?

Baroness Mobarik (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 59, 63, 64 and 67 standing in my name. I am immensely grateful to my noble friends Lady Helic and Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham for adding their names to these amendments. I am also extremely grateful to the many children’s organisations that sent invaluable briefings and gave clarity on the subject. I refer noble Lords to the relevant interests in my name in the register. 

The words “detention” and “children” have no place in the same sentence. In the case of this Bill, it can also mean the possibility of indefinite detention, as proposed by the Government. In 2010, the organisation Medical Justice coined the term “state-sponsored cruelty” in relation to children in immigration detention. Its reports highlighted the great calamity being inflicted on thousands of innocent children, with lasting and detrimental consequences, including leaving them traumatised and suicidal. This led to a deep conviction across the political spectrum that such practices were inherently wrong and that a better, more humanitarian approach had to be taken. A pledge was given in 2010 by someone seeking the office of Prime Minister—David Cameron. He pledged that, if elected as Prime Minister, child detention would end. He was true to his word, and it became part of the coalition’s programme for Government in 2010, with policy changed as soon as 2011. With the Immigration Act 2014, the routine detention of children came to an end. That was progress. It was, as one would expect, a humanitarian response to an unacceptable and cruel practice. It is therefore with some dismay and disbelief that we are seeing attempts to reverse the progress made. Almost a decade on, we are discussing the reintroduction of those measures in an even more draconian form.

This Bill creates powers to detain en masse those who arrive in the UK without permission, on or after 7 March 2023, because they are not coming directly from a country where their life and liberty are threatened. Fleeing war-torn Syria but crossing through, for example, Belgium disqualifies them. As mentioned many times, there are no legal routes to the UK for most of those seeking asylum here. Of those coming, thousands of children could face detention. This is not a random statement but one based on the Refugee Council’s careful analysis in its impact assessment of the Bill. The exact figures are available in its report, but over a three-year period it equates to around 13,000 to 15,000 children in detention per annum. We are talking about babies, toddlers, children who are victims of child trafficking, unaccompanied children and children with families—defenceless little people, many of whom have not yet learned to speak and others who may be of speaking age but have no English language. They are detained, and with no legally defined time limit to their detention. They are detained anywhere,

“in any place that the Secretary of State considers appropriate”,

and without the possibility of bail for 28 days. Needless to say, children’s and refugee organisations are aghast at what is being proposed. They are not alone. Many of us across all Benches in this House and the other place feel the same.

Let us stop and think for a moment that perhaps it is not the intention of the Home Secretary to lock up thousands of children. Perhaps we can put this down to the lack of an economic impact assessment or child’s rights impact assessment conducted by the Home Office itself. If that is the case, now is the opportunity, in Committee in this House, for my noble friend the Minister to reconsider what is being proposed. Of course it is understood that there will inevitably be very specific and limited occasions when children are detained, but the existing legislation already gives parameters for this. That is why I propose amendments to Clause 10, to retain the existing time limits of 24 hours in detention and with safeguards for unaccompanied children. Amendments on those who are with families seek to retain existing time limits so that they can be detained only for up to 72 hours, or not more than seven days where detention is personally authorised by a Minister. Importantly, this should be in short-term holding facilities or pre-departure accommodation.

Existing legislation on the detention of children, as under the Immigration Act 2014, is already in place. I ask only that the status quo be maintained. The Home Secretary may argue that by not detaining children we are creating another pull factor, but the evidence shows that there was no significant increase in the number of children seeking asylum once routine detention ended in 2011.

The question then is what the intention of the Government is if, as Prime Minister Sunak says:

“The intention of this part of the policy objective is not to detain children”.
 

We were given reassurances by the Minister during the Commons Report stage on 26 April that,

“we do not want to detain children. We will do so only in the most exceptional circumstances”.

There was also assurance from the Minister that the time limits

“will be as short as practically possible”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/4/23; col. 837.]

However, these tests of “most exceptional circumstances” and

“as short as practically possible”

cannot be found in the Bill. All that can be found following the Government’s amendment is a delegated power for the Home Secretary to make regulations under the negative procedure that specify circumstances for the detention of unaccompanied children. There is also a discretionary power for the Home Secretary to make regulations that specify time limits. There is no clarification in the Bill as to the length of the time limits for detention or to which unaccompanied children they might apply, or how discretion might be exercised. Moreover, the regulations may or may not specify time limits for unaccompanied children. We have no assurance in the Bill that they will. Either way, they will do nothing for children and families.

I understood from my noble friend the Minister that later in the Bill’s passage the Government propose to

“set out the new timescale under which children may be detained for the purposes of removal without judicial oversight”.—[Official Report, 10/5/23; col. 1783.]

I must ask for clarification from my noble friend. If the Government truly wish to detain children for as short as practically possible, why are they disapplying the 2014 safeguards to children affected by this Bill? These safeguards were put in place by a Conservative Prime Minister and a Conservative Home Secretary.

Given this late stage in the Bill’s passage, when do the Government propose to set out these new timescales in the Bill, and what will they be? What are the circumstances in which unaccompanied children would be detained and why can these “most exceptional circumstances” not be stated on the face of the Bill and be open to full scrutiny during its passage? Will those timescales in regulations be an absolute time limit for the detention of children, or merely a timescale for judicial oversight of that detention? As a country in which the rule of law is a pillar of our constitution, can we detain children without judicial oversight? I presume detention is for the purposes of removal but would like clarification on whether the Government are proposing child detention for other purposes. If so, can the legal basis for such detention be explained?

Verbal reassurance is completely inadequate. I am no expert but I understand that this is not the way that laws are made. Laws must be much more firmly established. They cannot just fluctuate depending on which Home Secretary is in the driving seat; that is surely a dangerous precedent. Amendments 59, 63, 64 and 67 seek to place our current safeguards for the detention of children in the Bill, so that children impacted by it need not rely on mere verbal assurance. I understand that the issue of illegal migration is complex and requires a deterrent factor so that those who genuinely qualify can be identified, and that it requires a genuine solution, but I think most here would agree that the solution being proposed is not the right one on so many levels.

We are speaking about defenceless children. I say to noble Lords that it may be difficult for us to think back to our six year-old selves, so let us think about our children or grandchildren, who have neither the physical strength to defend themselves nor the verbal sophistication. We have a moral obligation to ensure that we protect the rights of these most vulnerable human beings.

23:00:00

My noble friend the Minister has a really difficult task, and he is aware that I am not comfortable with many aspects of the Bill. However, I hope he will acknowledge that with these amendments I am offering something he can accept as a viable alternative to what is currently proposed in the Bill. I look forward to his response.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I support these amendments generally, in particular those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik—it is a pleasure to follow her powerful speech. I have added my name to Amendments 60 and 65.

It was to the Conservative-led coalition Government’s credit that they ended the routine detention of children and replaced it with strict limits. It is thus inexplicable, as the noble Baroness said, that the present Conservative Government should choose to reverse that policy. Prior to that reversal, the Royal College of General Practitioners, together with other royal colleges, published an intercollegiate briefing paper which described the

“significant harms to the physical and mental health of children and young people in the UK who are subjected to administrative immigration detention”.

It concluded that the immigration detention of children and their families is “harmful and unacceptable”. Among the evidence at the time was that provided by Medical Justice clinicians, who

“identified psychological harm to be caused and exacerbated by detention. Symptoms included bed wetting and loss of bowel control, heightened anxiety, food refusal, withdrawal … and persistent crying. Many children exhibited signs of developmental regression … some attempted to end their own lives”.

Today, many organisations—health, children’s and refugee—have briefed us about the likely health implications of such a reversal. To quote the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, the effects on children’s

“physical and mental health included weight loss, sleeplessness, nightmares, skin complaints and self-harm, depression and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder”.

It also cites, as did the noble Lord, more recent collaborative evidence from Australia. The Royal College of Psychiatrists warns of the likely damaging impact on child mental and physical health of

“the restriction of movement, lack of community exposure, and limited access to health and educational services”

associated with detention. The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, a non-departmental public body, has warned the Home Secretary that this is

“a group who are particularly vulnerable, including in respect of mental ill-health, self-harm, and suicide due to trauma caused by dislocation from family”.

It also emphasises

“the link between the indefinite nature of detention and feelings of uncertainty and hopelessness, which can increase the risk of suicidality”.

A group of people with lived experience of the asylum system who advise Doctors of the World have written an open letter to Peers which speaks of their particular concern about the detention of children and pregnant women, whose plight I think we will debate shortly. However, more generally on the basis of their experience they write that

“some of us start shaking when detention centres are mentioned, or crying when watching the news about this Bill”.

The Children’s Commissioner has expressed deep concern at the prospect of children being detained for significant periods of time. She has not been reassured by the government amendment—mentioned by the noble Baroness—which does not specify any time limits or cover children who are with their families. Can the Minister tell us what steps will be taken to ensure that children are detained for as short a period as possible, as he assured us they would be? Also, what is his estimate of the numbers of children in detention as a result of this change of policy, in the absence of an impact assessment?

The Children’s Commissioner points out that Article 37 of the UNCRC is clear that children must be detained for as short a time as possible. UNICEF makes the point even more strongly, warning that the broad discretion on the detention of children provided by the Bill

“is not compatible with international standards”

and

“would not comply with the principle of the best interests of the child”.

Some, including the Committee on the Rights of the Child, have gone so far as to argue that Article 37 means that children should simply not be detained at all in an immigration context. Whether or not one accepts that interpretation, it is clear that the powers given to the Home Secretary in Clause 11 once again contravene a key international convention.

Although the Chief Inspector of Prisons’ report published yesterday, mentioned earlier by the noble Lord, Lord German, welcomed some improvements in the short-term holding facilities in Kent, it noted:

“Children were detained for far too long at all sites”.
 

During the previous six months:

“Detention records indicated that 337 children had been held in breach of the statutory 24-hour time limit”,
 

with one held for just over three days. It notes that some particularly vulnerable children were held for too long, giving the example of a 17 year-old girl with a 10 month-old baby—conceived, she said, following rape—who was held from 11.30 am and then overnight, for nearly 24 hours. If this is already happening, I dread to think what the situation will be like if Clause 10 reaches the statute book.

The incentives—pull factor—argument used by Ministers in their attempt to justify this retrograde policy would be laughable if the implications for children’s well-being and best interests were not so serious.

Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendments 59, 63, 64 and 67. I believe these are measured and proportionate steps to preserve existing safeguards around child detention—safeguards introduced by a Conservative Government.

Child detention must only ever be a last resort. That is a clear requirement, as many have said, of Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which also requires that detention be for the shortest appropriate time. Article 22 requires states to ensure that children seeking refugee status receive “protection and humanitarian assistance”. I hope and believe that these principles will be recognised and shared across your Lordships’ Committee.

There is strong evidence that the mental and physical health impacts of detention on children are severe. For refugee children, often escaping from traumatic circumstances, detention can further compound their trauma. Detention separates children from their peers, interrupts their education, exposes them to violence and denies them the safe, loving and supportive environment that children need to develop and thrive, and which is their right. Detention undermines parental authority and strains the parent-child relationship. This lasts well beyond the period of detention itself. Even short spells in detention can cause trauma and long-term mental health risks for children. When we detain refugee children, we should know that we are making their future lives and integration into society even harder.

My noble friends in government may have said that they recognise these impacts and do not want to detain children, but I am afraid that, as written, this is precisely what the Bill will do. My noble friend Lady Mobarik has explained the existing limits and how the Bill would change them. To reiterate: the detention powers in the Bill would apply to all migrant children and could see them routinely detained in any location for an indefinite period. This is simply not in line with the principle of child detention as a limited last resort.

We know that the immigration system is overstretched. As such, we can reliably expect every time limit and latitude granted to immigration officials by the Bill to be exploited to the full. Therefore, we must make certain that children’s rights and the limits on their detention are guaranteed in law. It is not good enough for my noble friend the Minister to say that child detention should be exceptional. The law must make it exceptional.

There are some problems which new laws can solve. There are other times when new laws will have no effect—or such serious side-effects that they are entirely disproportionate to the problem. If the Government do not feel that they can regulate immigration and asylum without locking up children for extended periods, that is indicative of a broken system. It is not a problem that is resolved by detaining children.

There is no evidence that the introduction of the existing limits on child detention have led to an increase in illegal immigration. There is no reason to think that removing these limits will improve the Government’s ability to control immigration and prevent the dangerous channel crossings. Exposing children to greater risk of harm, with no guarantee of preventing harm, is not a step we should accept.

The existing limits on child detention, brought in after careful consideration by the Conservative Government, meet the practical need that sadly exists. They ensure that detention is strictly controlled and time-limited, as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires. They mitigate the harm that detention causes. They make detention the last resort. That is what we must retain, and I urge noble Lords to support these amendments.

Baroness Hamwee (LD)
I remember well when the detention of children was ended by legislation. I visited Cedars, the property—I do not like the term “facility” in this connection—near Gatwick that was used for two or three days before the removal of families who were going to be removed and were at the end of the argument, if you like. What was particularly notable to me were the facilities for the children, and the support that was given to them, who were accommodated there for a very short time, to help them prepare to go back to a country that they may or may not have remembered—indeed, that they may not have ever lived in. It suffused the whole place and was really admirable. You only had to walk into the place to see the equipment and toys, and the information that was set out, as well as the work being done by social workers to support the children concerned. There were no families there at that point; the property used to allow visitors only on days when it knew that no families would be in residence.

I have a number of amendments in this group. The first is Amendment 59A, which seeks to probe the “discretion” given to the Secretary of State in making regulations regarding the detention of unaccompanied children. Amendment 64A is a similar amendment. The reason for my tabling this amendment is to understand whether the envisaged discretion can be exercised to extend the circumstances specified in an earlier part of the clause or to narrow those circumstances.

I discovered a possible answer to this when looking at my next amendment, Amendment 61B, which would provide for the affirmative procedure. Amendment 64C is a similar amendment. I tabled this amendment out of pure instinct that there should be an affirmative procedure, not a negative one. I subsequently discovered that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, with considerably more logic than I bring to the matter, recommended the affirmative procedure. I quote its report:

“The Memorandum explains that the negative procedure is considered appropriate because ‘the effect of any regulations is to limit the circumstances in which an unaccompanied child may be detained or the duration of detention for the purposes of removal’. In our view, this explanation is misconceived”.
 

That is very much committee speak for, “We really disagree”. The report went on:

“The regulation making power can only be viewed as a limiting power from the perspective of the Bill as introduced into the House of Commons which conferred an unfettered power to detain unaccompanied children”.
 

However, amendments were then made in the Commons, so

“no such unfettered power of detention exists in the Bill as introduced into the House of Lords. It is the regulations alone which will specify the circumstances in which unaccompanied children will be capable of being detained, in the absence of which there is no power to detain such children. Given the importance and sensitivity of the subject matter, we consider that the affirmative resolution procedure should apply”.

As I say, the committee approached this with considerably more logic and power than I was planning to bring to it.

23:15:00

Amendments 74, 75 and 76 regard matters on which I rather doubt there will be sympathy from the Government Front Bench, given the debate so far. They would provide for a 72-hour time limit on the detention of vulnerable people, or seven days with ministerial authorisation. I remember some years ago a meeting chaired by a very senior MP who had been a Minister. She argued how important it was to have ministerial authorisation in sensitive and arguably unusual cases because it ensures that Ministers apply their minds to the individual’s real situation.

Pretty much everyone has been through what led to flight and the experience of that flight—people must be vulnerable. There is a definition of vulnerability in Amendment 76, and I think it would be hard to argue that anyone in the list is not vulnerable and therefore in need of appropriate treatment.

Amendment 75 would require the Secretary of State to provide to the tribunal all relevant—which I realise now has become quite a topical term—information they have on an individual when there is an application for immigration bail or a bail hearing.

Amendments 76B and 78A would restrict the detention of potential victims of slavery and trafficking. We have already in this Committee spent some time on reasonable and conclusive grounds, and that a victim or potential victim can be referred only by a first responder; there is no self-referral. We have also spent time on the very particular needs of potential victims, including those who have reached the first stage of a “reasonable grounds” decision.

The detention of this already vulnerable group increases the risk of retraumatisation and there is a risk to their long-term physical and mental health. On Monday, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, talked about the fact that victims must be identified because that enables them to be supported. In turn, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has referred to several times, that affects the willingness and ability— ability is important too—to engage in investigations and prosecutions. This group of people is very much at risk of retrafficking and further exploitation, and needs the protection that these amendments put forward.

The Lord Bishop of Southwark
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendments 59, 63, 64 and 67 which, as has been demonstrated, have strong support from all quarters of this Chamber. It was the intention of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham to speak to these amendments but he is unable to be in the Chamber tonight.

I believe that the strength of opposition to any change in the current detention limits for both accompanied and unaccompanied children is because it is one of the most alarming and unedifying provisions in the Bill. Ministers have set out what they see as the need to detain children for immigration purposes in order to ensure that we do not inadvertently create incentives for people smugglers to target vulnerable individuals. Were this the case, then there would be a case for considering some sort of remedy. However, yet again we have been provided with no evidence that this is the case.

Building an asylum system with deterrence diffused throughout, as described by His Majesty’s Government, has led to this inappropriate proposal to restart detaining children, potentially for an unlimited period. As the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, said, it was a Government led by the party currently in office who took the brave decision to end the routine detention of children. That was against significant departmental pressure to retain the practice. How have we arrived, just 10 years later, at the conclusion that the well-being and welfare of children can now be sacrificed in consequence of the need to control migration?

In a rare admission to an evidential base for policy, on Monday the Minister referred to most persons deemed children in these categories being around the ages of 16 and 17. I accept his assertion on this point. However, as was said then, some children as young as 10 are involved.

The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, elegantly set out the impacts of detention of children. Studies show that the inescapable institutional nature of detention is traumatic for children and detrimental to the child’s physical and mental development. The Government are fully aware of the damaging impact of detention on children. I quote from one small section of the Home Office’s Assessing Age guidance, published only this March:

“Failure to adhere to the legal powers and policy on detaining children can have very significant consequences, for example … detention can be extremely frightening for a child, with their perception of what they might experience potentially informed by previous negative experiences of detention”.
 

It needs to be said explicitly that the Government will be sanctioning an intolerable level of emotional distress for the most vulnerable children. Understandably, a child will ask themselves, “What must be wrong with me to have been subjected to such conditions?”.

The Prime Minister stated that the Government’s objective behind the Bill is not the detention of children. None the less, that is what the Bill does. Given the Prime Minister’s just objective, why has the 2014 requirement that child detention be for the shortest time possible been expressly removed? In the year to March 2023, more than 8,000 children entered the UK who would meet Clause 2 conditions and who therefore could be detained indefinitely. In the first three years of the Bill’s operation, this may mean that up to 25,000 children will be deprived of their liberty. Should the deterrent effect of the Bill—about which we currently have no modelling whatever—fail, surely the 2014 requirement must be retained.

The Home Secretary bears a legal duty to safeguard children. Home Office guidance makes clear that this duty requires a demonstration of fair treatment that meets the same standard that a British child would receive. Would we tolerate the Bill’s proposals for our own children or grandchildren?

I welcome the amendments made in this area in the other place, but they do not go far enough. Legislating for the option to place limits on detention and for these limits not to be specified in the Bill is simply not adequate. It is an area that cannot remain entirely at the discretion of a Secretary of State, and children must have a means of challenging the lawfulness of a decision. Also, there have been no equivalent provisions for children within families. Why is one child different from another? Children will be detained after they have fled unimaginable horrors at home or been trafficked against their will. Children will be born in detention and others will have their futures shaped by it. It is the hope on these Benches that we are better than this and know what is right, having banished this immoral practice before. It will take real courageous leadership to change course, but we must. There is concern among my brother and sister bishops about the state of the nation’s soul if we tread so easily down this path.

Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, that was a powerful intervention by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, whom it is a privilege to follow. I pick up a point he made a few moments ago about the amendments that were passed on Report in another place. Like him, I welcome those amendments but do not believe they go far enough. Nevertheless, the House of Commons recognised in those amendments that the power to detain unaccompanied children under the Bill should be exercised only in the circumstances specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State. Those regulations may include a time limit on such detentions, but the Bill neither requires nor establishes what other restrictions on detention will be put in place.

This is why the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made about the use of the affirmative resolution is so important. As things stand, the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee was right to say that, given the importance and the sensitivity of the subject matter, if regulations are made concerning the detention of children, the affirmative resolution procedure should apply. I hope that, when the Minister responds, he will deal specifically with that point and perhaps discuss with us how Clause 10 might be amended to take into account what the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee suggested.

I turn now to the substantive points made in the wonderful speeches by the noble Baronesses, Lady Mobarik and Lady Helic, from the Conservative Benches. I hope that the Government will take into account the arguments that they have placed before your Lordships tonight. There is an echo of what they said in the evidence from the UK Committee for UNICEF, to which I referred in an earlier intervention, which said this about Clause 10, permitting the detention of children both unaccompanied and in families:

“This is not compatible with international standards and also risks undermining the great progress that the UK has achieved in working to end immigration detention of children since 2010”.
 

That point was made eloquently by both noble Baronesses, who do not want to see the clock turned back.

Whatever limits on the detention of children are made in regulations issued by the Secretary of State, they are unlikely to be sufficient to meet the requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 37(b) of the convention establishes the general principle that a child may be

“deprived of … liberty … only as a … last resort and for the shortest … period of time”.

The UK Committee for UNICEF says:

“Two relevant UN Committees have stated that the possibility of detaining children as a measure of last resort … is not applicable in immigration proceedings as it would conflict with the principle of the best interests of the child and the right to development … The Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has stated that ‘within the context of administrative immigration enforcement … the deprivation of liberty of children based on their or their parents’ migration status is never in the best interests of the child, exceeds the requirement of necessity, becomes grossly disproportionate and may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of migrant children’”.
 

The power to detain unaccompanied children pending removal or a decision on whether to grant them leave to remain would no longer be subject to the 24-hour time limit and other protections currently provided in Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971. The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, noted that this time limit was established by law

“because widespread evidence showed the long-lasting damage that detention has on children’s lives”.

The Government have stated that the detention of unaccompanied children will be

“for the shortest possible time in appropriate detention facilities with relevant support provisions in place”.

In an echo of what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said earlier, I simply press the Minister to say what that word “appropriate” actually means. Please spell it out, because it has no definition as things stand and we are being asked to agree to something pretty awesome in this Bill tonight. That is why the speeches by the noble Baronesses, Lady Mobarik and Lady Helic, are so important and the Government should take proper note of them.

23:30:00

Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, at this hour, I do not propose to repeat anything that has been said, so splendidly and excellently, in relation to children, save to say that it is good news that, as the Minister told us, there are no unaccompanied children currently being detained. But that does not mean that they will not turn up next week, and there will certainly be unaccompanied children in the future.

I will say something very briefly about Amendments 76B and 78A on modern slavery from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I refer to my involvement in various aspects of modern slavery, which I set out earlier. I am very concerned, because it is intended that victims of modern slavery who have got through the first part of “reasonable grounds” ought, under the NRM, to be given the appropriate support. The support provided when they get to that stage of the NRM is generally very good, but none of it, as far as I can see, would be available to those detained by the Home Office under the Bill. That would be a huge deprivation to people who, by definition as having been trafficked, and likely to have been trafficked as well as enslaved, will have already suffered very greatly. This is really an extraordinary and another very cruel move of this Government.

Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 59 and its accompanying amendments. We have heard from many tonight about the impact that detention has on children; I do not need to repeat that. We heard on Monday from my noble friend the Minister, making the case against creating loopholes in this legislation. I understand his reasons for that, but, like the group that follows, this amendment is about detention and not the other powers in the Bill. We also heard on Monday from the Minister that we cannot evidence what is yet to happen. Of course we cannot, but we can look at what has happened before in this area. When routine child detention was ended in 2011, there was no proportional increase in children claiming asylum.

We all remember the situation before the current protection was in place, in Yarl’s Wood and elsewhere. I remember the campaign back in 2010, which garnered support from hundreds of parliamentarians and parliamentary candidates across the political and professional spectrum. I remember the pledges of all political parties to end child detention if elected, and I remember the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, delivering on that commitment. There remains widespread cross-party support for not returning to child detention and for maintaining the status quo of the current protections.

At Second Reading, four weeks ago today, my noble friend the Minister said that later in the passage of the Bill the Government would set out the new timescale under which children may be detained. That is very much welcome. It is clear from tonight’s debate that that detail is needed. I hope that this report will be simpler and quicker to produce than the oft-raised impact assessment. Is there any update on when this timescale will come, and can my noble friend confirm that we will see it before Report?

The troubling situation that we are seeing in our immigration and asylum system—the small boats, the backlog in processing, and the lack of broader safe and legal routes—was not caused by the lack of detention of children, and nor will it be solved by reversing our long-standing policy against child detention. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will consider accepting these amendments.

Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 60 and 65 in my name. I thank my noble friend Lord German and the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for adding their names to these amendments.

Because of the lateness of the hour, I will not add to the very powerful speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, and give all the reasons why increasing child detention time limits is a bad thing to do. However, I want to go back to what so many noble Lords have asked during this Committee stage: where is the evidence that this is required? The Government have not given any evidence or any reason why 24 hours-plus is required. Since the time limits for unaccompanied children were introduced back in 2014, there has been no empirical evidence and no indication of problems that have arisen which have caused either a pull factor or a push factor for child migration to this country. What is the problem? For a change of policy of this significance, which affects some of the most vulnerable children in the world, the scale of the problem and what problem this will solve have to be put before this House.

We could make the comment that so many noble Lords have, and which I am sure the Minister might: in due course, it will be in the impact assessment. However, the real issue is this. When the Minister stands up at the Dispatch Box, the reason and evidence for this, and the problem it is going to solve, need to be placed before your Lordships, otherwise we cannot in any conscience extend the detention limits.

It was a great part of our history when the Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition Government, Nick Clegg, insisted that children, for immigration purposes, should not be detained, and the Conservative partners in that coalition Government agreed. Noble Lords can see that nothing has changed, so the Minister has to explain what the problem is, what has changed and what problem this will solve.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and to speak specifically to the amendments in this group to which I have attached my name and to the general tenor of this. I did consider not rising to speak at all, because the incredibly powerful speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, and her proposition that the words “detention” and “children” do not belong in the same sentence, can be said to sum up all of this debate.

However, I did want to give voice to someone else in this debate—the voice of a nine year-old who was held in immigration detention previously in the UK before the laws were changed. When asked how detention made her feel, this nine year-old said very simply, “Sad and angry. Feel like screaming or breaking something”. That is a nine year-old, talking about the kind of experience that we could again be subjecting children to in this country if the Bill goes through.

To put that in terms of a 2009 briefing paper from the Royal College of GPs, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and the Faculty of Public Health:

“Reported child mental health difficulties include emotion and psychological regression, post-traumatic stress disorder … clinical depression and suicidal behaviour.”
 

A more recent paper, published in 2023 by Tosif et al, entitled Health of Children Who Experienced Australian Immigration Detention, said it showed devastating impacts on children’s physical and mental health and well-being and on their parents’ parenting capabilities. I wanted to allow that voice to be heard and to share that medical reference.

I just want to make one final reflection. There is a hashtag I use on Twitter quite often, #CampaigningWorks. Sometimes people say, “Well, it should have worked indefinitely. Why do we have to fight this same battle again?” I think that what the Government have got this evening is a very clear message that this battle has been fought before. We have learned a huge amount and got all the evidence from last time, and it is going to be fought again, even harder, from all sides of your Lordships’ House, to stop this element of child detention and to stop this Bill going through.

Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow a number of the contributions to this debate. I shall concentrate on Amendments 59, 63, 64, and 67 by the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik. These, along with some others, are the most important amendments in this group, and we support what she has said.

I am a proud Labour politician, but I am not someone who thinks a Conservative Government have never done anything that deserves recognition or praise. The Modern Slavery Act is one such thing; the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and I do a lot of work with respect to modern slavery, and we know that to be the case. Another, under the prime ministership of David Cameron, was the ending of child detention for immigration purposes. That Government —to be fair, they were a coalition Government—deserved an awful lot of credit for that, since it was an affront to our country that it was happening in the first place.

So it is a great surprise to us to see this Government, in their desperation to do something about the small boats crossing—which we all want to see something done about—driving a coach and horses through that. I would have thought they would have said, “This is something we are proud of. This is what we stood up for. Whatever measures we take to try to deal with small boats, we will not abandon that principle”. I know the Minister will say that the Government made a concession in the other place and came forward with a regulation-making power that will allow exceptions to be made and so forth, but that is not good enough.

The noble Baroness’s amendments are supported by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, my noble friend Lady Lister and many others, and I hope the Government listen. Whatever else we would wish to see done in order to tackle the problem that we face with respect to small boats crossing the channel—and there is a problem—I do not think any of us want to see children used as one of the ways of doing that. To be fair, I do not believe the Government would wish that either, but the fact is that the legislation as it stands means that unaccompanied children will be detained, and most of us find that unacceptable. That needs to change. We need to go back to the situation that existed before, as suggested by the amendments by the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik.

I have a specific question for the Minister. Many of us received the briefing from the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, which says:

“If the Government’s intention is to detain and remove those arriving on small boats, then more than 13,000 children may face detention annually under this government proposal”.
 

Is it wrong? If so, it is incumbent on the Minister, if not now, to look at the way in which the organisation has arrived at that figure and tell us why it is wrong. Thirteen thousand children annually facing detention under the Government’s proposals is a significant number of children.

If that figure is wrong—this goes back to the problem of the impact assessment—then what figure are the Government using? The Minister says, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, referenced this, that there are no unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in detention at present. What assumptions are the Government working on here? They must have some figures somewhere for their expectation of the number of children who will be impacted by the proposed legislation as it stands. It would be helpful for us all to know what the Government’s assumption is of the number of unaccompanied children who may be detained as a result of these measures. Presumably they have scoped out the regulations that may be necessary which the Secretary of State may pass in future, so what is the number that the Home Office is working towards?

Secondly, what is the number of children who would be detained under the measures as currently drafted in this Bill who are with a family? I think it would be extremely helpful to all of us to have some sort of understanding of the number of children the Government are expecting their proposals to impact.

We have heard movingly from the noble Baronesses, Lady Mobarik and Lady Helic, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark about all the moral reasons for which we should not proceed with the Bill as it is currently laid out in respect of children. I think that the country would be in a situation where it would say to our Government that, whatever they do to control small boats, not to do it at the expense of children.

23:45:00

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, Clause 10 is an integral part of ensuring the success of this Bill, both as a deterrent and as a means of ensuring that the Home Secretary can comply with the duty to make arrangements for removal. The statutory powers to detain are spread across several different pieces of immigration legislation, such as the Immigration Act 1971 and the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. The provisions in this clause create new powers that will enable the detention of illegal migrants to establish whether the new duty to remove applies and to promptly remove those eligible from the UK. Many of the amendments in this group seek to limit these detention powers in one way or another, impacting our ability swiftly to remove those to whom the duty applies.

Amendments 58C, 58D, 63A and 63B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord German, probe the threshold for detention and in effect seek to raise it by replacing the current test based on an immigration officer or Secretary of State suspecting the relevant matter with a test that requires an immigration officer to have “reasonable grounds for suspecting.” To deliver the objectives of this Bill, our detention powers need to enable detention of illegal migrants to ascertain whether someone falls within the duty to remove, and these amendments seek to reduce our ability so to do.

The issue of time limits is the subject of Amendments 60 and 65, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and Amendments 59 and 63 tabled by my noble friend Lady Mobarik and co-signed by my noble friend Lady Helic. The detention powers in the Bill are fundamental to our approach, and here, as elsewhere, we need a robust and uniform scheme that broadly applies to all and does not allow the system to be gamed, for example by adults pretending to be children, or provide scope for the people smugglers to exploit any exceptions or carve-outs. The Bill will create new detention powers specific to all migrants subject to the duty to remove being introduced in this Bill. These new powers will not be time-limited. However, in line with our other existing immigration detention powers, detention will be limited to a period of time that is reasonably necessary for the statutory purpose to be caried out. The new detention powers will not be subject to the same statutory limitations as existing detention powers to ensure the power can apply more widely.

We recognise the particular vulnerability of unaccompanied children, and therefore the Bill provides that the statutory detention powers may only be exercised to detain an unaccompanied child in circumstances prescribed in regulations by the Secretary of State, such as, but not limited to, for the purpose of family reunion or where removal is to a safe country of origin. We will set out, in due course, having reflected on debates in this House and the other place, a new timescale under which genuine children may be detained for the purposes of removal without judicial oversight—

Lord Coaker (Lab)
Will those regulations be available, even in draft form, before Report?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I will certainly take that request back to the department.

Along with a new timescale under which genuine children may be detained for the purposes of removal without judicial oversight, the Bill will also allow the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying time limits to be placed on the detention of unaccompanied children for the purpose of removal, if required. I would remind my noble friends Lady Mobarik, Lady Helic and Lady Sugg that unaccompanied children are not subject to the duty to remove and the power to remove them will be exercised only in the limited circumstances we have already described. For the most part, unaccompanied children will not be detained under the provisions of the Bill but will instead be transferred to local authority care—that care which the Committee has broadly agreed is the correct place for these children to be located.

In answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, I do not recognise the figure of 13,000 detained unaccompanied children in the NGO report to which he referred. Those statistics did not of course include any allowance for the deterrence effect of the measures in the Bill.

Amendment 73, put forward by the noble Lord, Lord German, seeks to introduce time limits on detention that apply at large, not just to detention under the powers conferred by the Bill. An absolute bar on detention of all children and a 28-day time limit on detention of adults would significantly impair the effectiveness of our enforcement powers. Such a time limit is likely to encourage individuals to frustrate immigration processes to the point where the time limit is exceeded, necessitating their release, which would then significantly inhibit our ability to remove those who have no right to be here and are subject to the duty. I agree that immigration detention cannot, and should not, be indefinite; as we will come on to with later clauses, the legislation places clear limitations on the duration of detention and provides for judicial scrutiny of continued detention. We judge the existing safeguards provided for in respect of existing and new detention powers to be sufficient.

Amendments 61B and 64C, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, relate to the recommendations of the Delegated Powers Committee. I am grateful for the work of the Delegated Powers Committee in its careful scrutiny of the Bill. We are considering the report, published just before the Whitsun Recess, and will respond ahead of Report stage.

Turning to Amendments 74, 75 and 76, which relate to the detention of vulnerable persons, I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that the existing adults at risk policy, which I discussed earlier, will be updated to take account of the provisions in the Bill, and will act as a safeguard when detention decisions are made in respect of such persons. This statutory policy requires that evidence of a person’s vulnerability be balanced against immigration factors when considering whether detention is appropriate in their particular case. Finally, I remind the noble Baroness that under the terms of Section 59 of the Immigration Act 2016, revisions to the statutory guidance must be laid in draft before each House and then brought into force by regulations subject to the negative procedure, so there will be an opportunity for this House to scrutinise the necessary changes.

There are no exemptions from immigration detention for any particular groups of people. Amendment 76B, again tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, seeks to create an exemption to immigration detention for potential victims of modern slavery. When decisions are currently made regarding detention or continued detention, potential victims of modern slavery are considered under the existing adults at risk in immigration detention policy.

To sum up, the Government recognise that unaccompanied children are particularly vulnerable. That is why we amended the Bill in the other place to place limitations on their detention under the powers conferred by the Bill. For all others caught by the duty to remove in Clause 2, we believe it is appropriate for the Bill to provide for a single legislative framework for their detention, with tailored provision being made in our adults at risk statutory guidance. On that basis, I invite the noble Lord, Lord German, to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Coaker (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down, can I clarify that the 13,000 figure was not just in respect of unaccompanied children? It included families with children.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am grateful for that clarification.

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, it has been an interesting debate in which it appears there has been one speaker against and everybody else in favour of changing the Government’s proposal.

To sum up the discussion, with the exception of the Minister, the key issues have been the impact of detention on children, that this is a backward step, that it is not in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and that no evidence is given of a sufficiently robust nature to state the objectives of these clauses. To sum it up in a single phrase, “We are going to lock children up to deter the boats”. The rationale of locking up children has just been put to one side. It is a backward step. Therefore, I am sure we will return to these matters at the next stage of the Bill. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 58C withdrawn.

Amendments 58D to 67 not moved.

Amendment 68

Moved by

68: Clause 10, page 17, line 18, leave out from “paragraph” to the end of line 19 and insert “(a) of the definition of “relevant detention power”, after “paragraph 16(2)” insert “, (2C) or (2D)””
 Member's explanatory statement
 The effect of this amendment is that section 60 of the Immigration Act 2016 (which limits the detention of pregnant women normally to 72 hours under existing powers of immigration detention) will apply to the new powers of detention created by Clause 10 of the Bill.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I will also speak briefly to Amendment 70, which is also in my name. Before I start, I wish to put on the record my protest at the fact that we are debating these important issues after midnight. It is disgraceful.

Noble Lords
Hear, hear!

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, who sends her apologies that she cannot be here, but who asked me to underline her strong support. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, for her support for both amendments, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti for each signing one of them. I am grateful to Women for Refugee Women and Medical Justice for their briefings on the amendments, but I feel we really cannot do them justice at this hour.

Amendment 68 does no more than restore the status quo ante, restricting the detention of pregnant women to 72 hours, extendable up to a week with ministerial authorisation. This restriction was introduced by the Immigration Act 2016 thanks to the strong opposition in your Lordships’ House to the detention of pregnant women.

Prior to that, there was no time limit and, although policy stated that pregnant women should be detained only in exceptional circumstances, in practice they were all too often detained in far from exceptional circumstances, and often for long periods. The Bill would return us to those dark days.

00:00:00

The government-commissioned review of the welfare of vulnerable people in detention by Stephen Shaw, a former Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, recommended the absolute exclusion of pregnant women from detention. That formed the basis of an amendment that I tabled in your Lordships’ House, which received strong support right through to ping-pong. Eventually, we accepted the 72-hour limit compromise proposed by the Government. In her Statement explaining it, the then Home Secretary Theresa May stated that

“the Government are clear that pregnant women should be detained only in exceptional circumstances”,

and that to achieve a balance

“with the need to maintain a robust and workable immigration system … This new safeguard will ensure that detention for pregnant women will be used as a last resort and for very short periods”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/4/16; col. 12WS.]

In his review, Stephen Shaw cited evidence from the Royal College of Midwives and others but explained that he had

“not sought further evidence that detention has an incontrovertibly deleterious effect on the health of pregnant women and their unborn children. I take this to be a statement of the obvious”.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it is worth recalling that, during the 2016 debate, a number of noble Lords with medical experience voiced serious concerns about the impact of detention, not just on pregnant women but on their unborn babies. In particular, my noble friend Lord Winston drew attention to the science in which he himself was involved, which

“tells us clearly that the foetus at certain stages during pregnancy is extremely vulnerable to the environment of the mother”.

He warned that if a pregnant woman’s

“stress hormones … are raised, the effect on the foetus may be profound”,

and that

“the Government need to recognise”

their potential responsibility

“for a heritable effect on that child and possibly even on the grandchildren”.—[Official Report, 10/5/16; col. 1667.]

Today, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives, the BMA and a range of maternity and refugee organisations have warned of the serious risk of harm that indefinite detention could create for pregnant women and their babies. The Children’s Commissioner has expressed support for this amendment.

The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, which I mentioned earlier, wrote to the Home Secretary on 17 March. Having expressed general concern about the increased risk of suicidality as a result of the extension of indefinite detention, it asked whether the Home Office had carried out a full assessment of the risks linked to the indefinite detention of pregnant women as well as children, and whether it would publish that assessment. More than two months on, no reply has been received. No doubt it will be sent in due course, so perhaps the Minister can provide an answer now and remind the Home Secretary that a proper reply is due to the panel.

In his follow-up review, Shaw noted that the introduction of the time limit had led to a welcome reduction in the number of pregnant women detained, a trend that official figures show has continued; we are now talking about single figures, compared with 99 in 2014. Why are the Government going back on their own policy?

At Second Reading, in response to concerns raised from around the House, the Minister stated that

“to date, there have been very few pregnant women in the small boats”,

yet to exclude them from the detention powers

“would only serve to incentivise the people smugglers to”

put more

“pregnant women … into flimsy boats”.—[Official Report, 10/5/23; col. 1924.]

Similarly, in a Commons Written Answer, the Immigration Minister warned against creating

“perverse incentives for evil people smuggling gangs to target particularly venerable groups”.

Echoing the ECHR memorandum, he further justified the move with reference to “appropriate accommodation” and “healthcare provisions”. That ignores not only the evidence on the inherent stress for pregnant women of being detained, which even the highest-quality healthcare would struggle to mitigate, but the evidence from organisations on the ground that antenatal and other healthcare in immigration detention is often very poor.

The Doctors of the World advisory group of people with lived experience of the asylum system raised particular concerns about standards of nutrition in detention centres for pregnant women and their unborn babies. The equality impact assessment bizarrely argued that because pregnant women could be considered more vulnerable, the removal of restrictions over their detention advances equality of opportunity, because it reduces the risk of their exploitation by people smugglers. This is Alice Through the Looking Glass thinking. Moreover, there is no evidence—that word again—that the 2016 legislation incentivised pregnant women to seek asylum, and the Minister himself acknowledged that there had been very few in the small boats drawn by the prospect of limits on their detention. Are the Government really willing to risk the health of pregnant women and their unborn babies on the basis of a theoretical fear of incentives, or “gaming the system”, as the Minister put it, for which there is no supporting evidence?

I turn to Amendment 70, which would protect children as well as pregnant women against the use of force, be it through the laying of hands on a child or pregnant woman or the use of restraint equipment to effect detention or removal. Again, the rationale for this amendment is the harm that the use of force can do to particularly vulnerable groups, the numbers of whom are likely to increase as the Bill’s removal of detention restrictions becomes law. According to Medical Justice, citing the Royal College of Midwives, pregnant women are at particular risk of developing serious conditions if subjected to the use of force, with implications for their unborn babies. It also cites the Home Office’s own use of force guidance, which acknowledges the serious physical and emotional harm that the use of force might do to children.

Current Home Office guidance does in fact place clear restrictions on the use of force on pregnant women and children. However, this policy was withdrawn for a period and was reinstated only following legal action. In practice, Medical Justice still sees disturbing evidence of the misuse of force in both detention and removals. It also quotes His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons’ recent report on short-term holding facilities, which gave examples of what it described as disproportionate, unacceptable and inappropriate use of restraint, including handcuffs on children. In his report published yesterday, he noted, depressingly, that:

“Across all three sites we saw no evidence of scrutiny or governance of the use of force or of lessons learned from poor practice”.

Home Office policy states that force should be used on children and young people only where it is necessary to prevent harm to the child or any individual present. Can the Minister give a commitment that this will continue to be policy? I ask because the fact sheet on the Bill and children suggests that force might be used on children if completely necessary, rather than only to prevent harm. Moreover, the fact sheet goes on to state:

“Using force on children in family groups may unfortunately be necessary if a family is resisting removal”.

But the use of force on a child to effect removal is not currently allowed. Will the Minister please explain why it will now be deemed acceptable to use force against children in circumstances where it has not previously been allowed under Home Office policy? This amendment simply puts into the law what is already supposed to be part of government policy, thereby creating a more robust statutory protection for two particularly vulnerable groups. I hope, therefore, that the Government will accept it.

Returning to Amendment 68, I fear that the Government’s obsession with deterrence, such that they intend to make life as grim as possible for all those who seek asylum in the UK through irregular means—not just small boats—regardless of vulnerability, means that they have lost all sight of humanity. I implore the Minister to think again and accept what is really a very small amendment but one that could make all the difference to the lives of pregnant women and their unborn children. I beg to move.

The Lord Bishop of Southwark
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who has expertly outlined why these amendments are needed. My good friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester has added her name in support of Amendments 68 and 70, and regrets she is not able to be here to give her support in person. I share her concern about the impact of detention on pregnant women in particular, impact which we know is considerable. Others will rightly draw attention to the impact on children, and the suggestion of the use of force against either group is unspeakable. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons advises that there

“is no safe way to use force against a pregnant woman, and to initiate it for the purpose of removal is to take an unacceptable risk”.

I turn now to Amendment 68, which is a preservation amendment. This simply asks that the Government maintain the status quo. In 2016, the Immigration Act introduced a 72-hour time limit on pregnant women’s detention, which saw the numbers detained drop from 99 in 2014 to just seven in 2021. It is alarming to think that we may see numbers rise, and the consequences are disturbing. According to research by Women for Refugee Women,

“women seeking asylum who are pregnant are an extremely vulnerable group. Many have experienced trauma such as rape, trafficking and torture, and have significant physical and mental health issues”.

I appeal to the Minister to consider also the well-being of the unborn child involved. The Royal College of Midwives has said:

“The detention of pregnant asylum seekers increases the likelihood of stress, which can risk the health of the unborn baby”.
 

Antenatal care and support provided to women who are detained has often fallen short of the care normally available to pregnant women.

Research by Medical Justice found that in Yarl’s Wood, women often missed antenatal appointments. Some had no ultrasound scans while detained, and women did not have direct access to a midwife and could not request visits. In recent years we have seen the devastating consequences of holding pregnant women in prisons. These facilities, including detention centres, are on the whole not set up to provide the necessary health and welfare oversight. This violates women’s dignity and puts lives at risk. The indefinite detention of pregnant migrant women, who are often extremely vulnerable and the victims of abuse and trafficking, is a very worrying and regressive move. The implication that force may be used against them, and against children, is beyond words. I hope wholeheartedly that the Committee supports these amendments and that His Majesty’s Government give them the consideration they so justly merit.

Baroness Gohir (CB)
I thank noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for putting forward Amendments 68 and 70, to which I have added my name. I also support Amendment 76A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. Let me address Amendments 68 and 76A first.

I made a strong case at Second Reading as to why pregnant women should not be detained. I followed this up with a letter to the Minister. In the letter, which I sent on 19 May, I acknowledged that the Minister has a difficult job in trying to tackle illegal migration but inquired about the following points. I asked about what the Minister had said in his opening comments at Second Reading. He said:

“More than 45,000 people came here by small boat last year. The overwhelming majority of arrivals were adult males under the age of 40.”—[Official Report, 10/5/23; col. 1781.]
 

This suggests that there were only a small number of women. However, I asked for clarification to understand fully the numbers. If the number was indeed small, then the number of pregnant women would have been negligible. I therefore asked also for evidence of how many pregnant women had entered the UK illegally and whether there had been sharp rise in the figures. I asked this because if not detaining pregnant women was going to act as a magnet, we would have seen the sharp rise suggested by the Government. I chased up a response yesterday and was informed that a draft letter has been prepared and is going through final checks, and I will be receiving it soon. I wonder whether there could be a response today to my points.

It seems obvious that there are probably only a few pregnant migrant women coming to the UK every year, but of course I am happy to be corrected on that point. If the Government are trying to make a case that not detaining them would act as an incentive for more smugglers to bring pregnant women into the country or act as a magnet, that does not stack up. What assessment has been made to arrive at that conclusion?

00:15:00

I also cannot imagine what safety risks a few pregnant women will pose if they are housed in the community, so I ask for clarification on the following points. How would pregnant migrant women living in the community make us less safe? It would definitely make them safer. Why is this Government’s response to pregnant migrant women so harsh, disproportionate and cruel?

Detention centres are unhealthy and unsafe environments for pregnant women, as I mentioned at Second Reading. I asked Women for Refugee Women for cases of pregnant migrant women who had been detained prior to 2016. When I read the cases sent to me, I noted the following commonalities. These women were not believed when they said they were not feeling well. They had delayed maternity care. Miscarriage came up, as did poor nutrition. They were given medication without really knowing whether it was suitable for pregnant women. Poor mental health, self-harm, flashbacks and PTSD were mentioned. All of this also impacts unborn children and newborns.

Given the vulnerability of pregnant women and children, I support Amendment 70. Force should never be used to effect detention or for removal. Any use of force, even if it is considered mild, will risk harm to the mother and unborn child because each pregnancy is unique, and there may be pregnancy complications that are not apparent. The use of force risks miscarriage, waters breaking and the risk of infection, premature labour, stillbirth and trauma. It goes without saying that to safeguard and protect children from harm, force should also not be used on them. The only time reasonable force can be justified is to prevent harm to the person themselves or to another person. It should not be done for the purposes of detention and removal.

Your Lordships may be wondering why I am so worried about the use of force. The use of force in law enforcement could potentially include handcuffing, the use of a baton, the use of dogs, the use of irritant spray, body restraints, spit hoods, Tasers, and aiming firearms. The Government have a duty to safeguard the most vulnerable in society, so I hope they carefully listen to our concerns today.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
Good morning, my Lords. I hope all Members of the Committee—it is a large group; larger than usual, for which I give credit to the Committee and to Members opposite in particular—will remember 8 June 2023. I will always remember where I was this morning, and I hope that other noble Lords will too, because this was the morning when we began debating whether detention and force are appropriate for pregnant women and small children.

I am very privileged to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, with her various well-put medical and other reasons why it is not a good idea to use force against pregnant women. It seems that this is now necessary in the context of debating amendments to the Bill. It would seem that there is the edge of depravity, and then there is the abyss. In the last group, we talked about detention. We now take it to its further conclusion, because in the end, a consequence of detention will sometimes be force. It is as well that we confront that, and confront it in the case of both children and, in this example, pregnant women.

Whatever our views about the basic policy here, I rather agree with the noble Baronesses in the previous group and with the speeches we have just heard that it would be appropriate for the Government to think again about this group of vulnerable people in particular, considering all the reasons that were given. Surely, whatever is said about deterrents and so on, there can be some concession to humanity, please, in relation to children and pregnant women. That will not hurt the signalling and the deterrents and so on. We cannot go on like this—and I do not just mean that we cannot go on at 12.20 am. When we were younger, hey, we used to go on all night, so we can go on all night in here; this is how we get our kicks in the Committee. However, we cannot go on degrading ourselves and our values by suggesting that there is no difference between a child or a pregnant woman and an adult, and that everybody is illegal. We need to make some restraints, just for decency, for our own sake.

Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, it is ironic that we are talking about detention when the Government Front Bench is trying to detain us here. What we are trying to do is our job of sensibly and calmly dealing with a Bill that has huge potential for the liberty and lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world. It is absolutely disgraceful that, when the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, was talking about staying here all night, some on the Benches opposite, including the Government Chief Whip, thought it was funny and amusing. It is not funny and amusing to be told that we have to stay here until goodness knows what time to do our job because the Government Benches wish to rush this through at any cost as a red-wall, red-meat Bill, rather than allowing us the serious job that we have to do as Members of this House. It is an absolute disgrace.

Now that I have got that off my chest, I will speak to my Amendment 76A. It is not a probing amendment but a clear amendment that women who are pregnant should not be held in immigration detention. I see no reason for that. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, pointed out what the equality impact assessment says on pregnancy and maternity—it is absolutely enlightening:

“Data on pregnancy and maternity in relation to people who enter the UK illegally is not available”.
 

It is not available—there is no data. They do not know the numbers and therefore they do not know what the impact is. It continues,

“it is therefore difficult to categorically establish whether there will be indirect discrimination”.

It is not just hard to determine whether there is indirect discrimination; because of the lack of figures it is absolutely impossible to determine what the effect will be of the primary part of this legislation and whether it will act as a deterrent.

I am sure that that is what the Minister is going to tell us: that there is no data or evidence available. As the Minister said on Monday, on all the proposals:

“Obviously, as these provisions are not in force, there is no evidence of the impact of these measures. The noble Lord appears to require me to look into a crystal ball”.—[Official Report, 05/6/23; col. 1175.]
 

When the Minister gets up at the Dispatch Box, if he trots out the ridiculous statement that locking up pregnant women will somehow act as a major deterrent to people coming here, both the equality impact assessment and what the noble Lord, Lord Murray, said on Monday show that that is not the case.

It is for those reasons—the lack of evidence, the lack of understanding of what the impact will be, and, as other noble Lords have said in the debate, the impact it will have on both the pregnant woman and the child—I believe there is no case in a modern, civilised country to have an immigration policy position of putting pregnant women in detention.

Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in 1979, when I was a young Member of another place, the then Conservative Government regularly kept us there all night. When you are younger, you are quite happy to do that but I suspect it would be better—and knowing how reasonable the Leader of the House and the Government Chief Whip are—if we could schedule our proceedings to include at least one extra day to consider this very important Bill, but also maybe to have a morning sitting if necessary to enable those of us who are not quite as young as we once were to ensure that we can focus properly on these very important questions.

I made common cause with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in 2016 and it was to the credit of your Lordships’ House that, after some ping-pong and debate between both Houses, we were able to ensure that the law was changed to introduce these restrictions on the detention of pregnant women. Similarly, the decisions that were taken about children were to the credit of this House. To see these things being rolled back brings no credit to any of us and I really hope that the Minister, when he goes away from our proceedings tonight and talks again to his officials and to the Secretary of State, will recognise the strength of feeling that has been expressed in the debate already, and that the very important points that my noble friend Lady Gohir made in her excellent speech will be taken into account.

The detention of pregnant women is currently restricted, as we have heard, to 72 hours. That limit would be specifically disapplied in respect of those detained because they are or may be subject to the Clause 2 removal duty. As the Bill stands, a pregnant woman could be detained for any period—I repeat: any period—considered “reasonably necessary”. Prior to 2016, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and I argued that it was unconscionable that there was no time limit on immigration detention for pregnant women, leading to some of them being detained for weeks, even months, on end. That, inevitably, put pregnant women and their unborn babies at risk.

The Royal College of Midwives says:

“The detention of pregnant asylum seekers increases the likelihood of stress, which can risk the health of the unborn baby”.
 

Stephen Shaw, the former Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, mentioned earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, was emphatic. He said:

“That detention has an incontrovertibly deleterious effect on the health of pregnant women and their unborn children … I take to be a statement of the obvious”.
 

Back in 2016, Medical Justice told Parliament that the level of care for pregnant women

“falls short of NHS equivalence and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) standards”.

Are we seriously going to turn the clock back to those bleak times? Some of the women who will be affected will have experienced barbaric treatment, including rape, torture and trafficking. To forcibly return such women will be traumatic beyond belief for them. It will endanger their lives and the lives of the babies in their wombs, and we have no business doing it. That is why I support Amendment 68, and even at this late hour I hope that many of your Lordships on all sides of the Committee will support the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.

00:30:00

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I begin with an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, because, had I spotted Amendment 76A, I would certainly have attached my name to it. I judge from its numbering that it was a relatively late arrival. Having addressed the detention of pregnant refugees at Second Reading, I saw that Amendments 68 and 70 had full, cross-party and non-party support—including from the Lords spiritual—so I could not attach my name to them. I certainly would have done so otherwise. The case for all these amendments—certainly for not making things any worse than they are now—has already been overwhelmingly made.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, took us gazing into the abyss; I am afraid that I am going to look even further into the abyss. I have specific questions for the Minister. Throughout these many long hours of debate, we have heard again and again that the Government are determined to remove people with great rapidity—that is, that they are going to detain them for just a few days and then remove them. We have all heard the expressions of doubt about that. I want to ask some questions about the Government’s intentions for the removal of pregnant refugees.

I have looked at the NHS guidance on travelling when pregnant; for the assistance of the Minister, the website is fitfortravel.nhs.uk. It says that flying during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is risky because of the risk of miscarriage. It says that most commercial airlines accept pregnant travellers up to 36 weeks if it is a single pregnancy or up to 32 weeks if it is a multiple pregnancy if the pregnancy is uncomplicated and the pregnant person is in good health. This advice also notes that, in the post-partum period, the risk of deep vein thrombosis is significantly elevated. My question for the Minister, because I think that it needs to be raised in this context, is this: is it the Government’s intention to remove, presumably by flying, pregnant refugees, risking their health and that of their unborn babies?

Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, I have co-signed Amendment 68, which, as we have heard, would keep the existing protection of a 72-hour time limit on the detention of pregnant women for immigration purposes. I appreciate that the Minister will make a similar closing speech to the one for the previous group, but I want to make some different, practical points on pregnant women specifically. I believe that there is a case for special treatment here.

In our debates on previous groups, my noble friend the Minister warned against introducing loopholes that could be exploited. I do not believe that that will be the case here. This is a narrow amendment. It does not seek to exempt pregnant women from the other provisions in this Bill, such as the duty to remove. It simply ensures that their and their babies’ health will not be put at risk by being detained with no time limit.

There is no evidence to support the suggestion that maintaining the time limit will result in more pregnant women crossing the channel. Women’s groups and experts working in this area do not believe that it will increase the number of pregnant women making these journeys, so I do not believe that there will be an incentive effect. I am not really clear on the reasoning behind that argument. I do not think anyone is suggesting that this will incentivise women to get pregnant so that they can claim asylum. Nor will women take the decision to put themselves and their unborn baby at risk of a dangerous crossing and eventual deportation just because they will not be detained on arrival for more than 72 hours.

If the broader measures in the Bill work as the Government intend and people are swiftly removed to another country, we will not see people traffickers seeking out pregnant women to make the crossing, exploiting a loophole, because they will not be exempt from removal. The risk of the very small number of people on whom this will have an impact absconding is very low, given the desire and need for healthcare when pregnant. Further, where there is a real risk of absconding, Section 60 allows for detention to be extended with ministerial authorisation.

Despite the same arguments being made when this issue was debated in 2016, the 72-hour time limit placed on pregnant women’s detention has not had an incentivising effect on women claiming asylum. Unfortunately, the Home Office does not collect specific statistics on the number of pregnant women claiming asylum, but the number of women claiming asylum annually prior to the time limit was about 7,000. This figure has stayed broadly the same post time limit; there has not been any increase.

Secondly, there is the argument that there will be sufficient protection for pregnant women thanks to existing or updated guidance. I do not believe that that will be the case either. The existing “adults at risk” level 3 does provide some guidance but, as we saw before the Immigration Act 2016, with just guidance, pregnant women were being detained on a far more routine basis than they should be.

During the passage of the Immigration Act 2016, the original proposition was for pregnant women to be protected through guidance but ultimately it was recognised that that just would not be robust enough, and we saw the introduction of the time limit. I appreciate what my noble friend the Minister said in the previous group about updating the guidance following this Bill, but the gap between policy and practice was really only closed through the introduction of a clear time limit in primary legislation which reduced the elasticity of or room for interpretation of guidance. This protection should remain in primary legislation.

There is widespread support for this amendment from across this House, from the other place and from organisations such as the End Violence Against Women coalition, which is made up of 143 specialist women’s support services and experts, from Refuge, the largest domestic abuse organisation in the UK, from medical professionals, and from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. I will not detain your Lordships by reading out their supporter quotes but, believe me, they are very supportive. I am happy to share them at a more appropriate time.

This is a narrow amendment that would impact just a small number of vulnerable women and keep the protection against detention that pregnant women currently have. It would not create loopholes as it would not exempt women from the duty to remove. The known negative impacts of detention on pregnant women outweigh the un-evidenced—and in my view, incorrect—argument that this will incentivise women to cross in small boats.

This amendment is about protecting women, not putting them at further risk. It would maintain current protections that have been widely acknowledged as working well. If my noble friend the Minister still believes the current time limit should be removed, I would welcome an explanation of the specific reasons for that. I ask him to take into account the widespread support for this narrow amendment and to consider its merits ahead of Report.

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, this has been another interesting debate in which there has been one side only, and we face a series of debates where we are looking at fact versus forecasting. All of the speakers who have entered this debate in this short and very narrow area of work have been clear about the issues, which are evidenced—the health and well-being of pregnant women, the effect on unborn children, the dangers of restraint, which have been very well explained.

We are in exactly the same position as we were on the last group. We are asked to make a decision in this Committee based on unevidenced forecasting—in fact, we heard the Minister say earlier that he cannot be expected to look into a crystal ball. That is exactly what the Government are doing here, against all the evidence.

If you think about the number of organisations that have been referred to in this short debate, we are not talking about a small, narrow area of influence; we are talking about huge numbers of organisations representing women throughout this country, human rights and every other sphere you can imagine, believing that this is the wrong way to go. It is the wrong way because we do not have any evidence that it will do the job the Government want it to do.

The Government should stop their crystal ball-gazing to which they directed our attention earlier and concentrate on the evidence they have given. If they cannot provide the evidence themselves, listen to the evidence of the world around us.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, one of the major items in the Bill is the extension of the 72-hour detention of pregnant women. Research carried out in Yarl’s Wood in 2014 found women in detention there often missed antenatal appointments, had no ultrasound and did not have direct access to a midwife.

In a government-commissioned review of immigration detention in 2016, Sir Stephen Shaw stated that

“detention has an incontrovertibly deleterious effect on the health of pregnant women and their unborn child and I take this to be a statement of the obvious”.

That point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool. It was after this that the 72-hour rule was implemented. It was done for a reason, and to undo it would put women and unborn children at risk of serious harm. The actual number of pregnant women in detention is low. There were nine in 2022, so I would argue—and so, I believe, would other noble Lords who have taken part in this debate—that we are talking about a low number of children. The Government’s argument that somehow, the amendments would provide an incentive are difficult to understand.

However, to the women themselves, who are pregnant, it makes a huge difference. That is accepted by experts and by every lobby group that has written to noble Lords regarding this narrow amendment.

If I was to give a prize for the best speech of this group I would give it to the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg. Her speech was very cogent and well argued. On the other hand, the prize for the most impactful speech would go to my noble friend Lady Lister, who gave a powerful and angry speech. She was also very angry that we are having this debate at this time of the morning. I hope that the Minister will hear the unanimity of view that has been expressed by all noble Lords taking part in this short debate.

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, this group deals with the detention of pregnant women and the use of reasonable force to effect the detention and removal of children and pregnant women.

Amendments 68 and 76A deal with the detention of pregnant women. Before getting into the specifics, it is worth briefly reiterating some general points made by my noble friend Lord Murray when he responded to the previous group. Our aim is to ensure that no one is held in detention for longer than is absolutely necessary to effect their removal from the United Kingdom. The scheme is designed to be operated quickly and fairly, but holding people in detention is necessary to ensure that they are successfully removed under the scheme. The duty on the Home Secretary to make arrangements for the removal of all illegal entrants, save unaccompanied children, back to their home country or to a safe third country will, we calculate, send a clear message that vulnerable individuals, including pregnant women, cannot be exploited by the people smugglers facilitating their passage across the channel in small boats on the false promise of starting a new life in the United Kingdom. The only way to come to the United Kingdom for protection will be through safe and legal routes. This will take power out of the hands of the criminal gangs and protect vulnerable people.

I am happy to repeat for the benefit of the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett and Lady Chakrabarti, the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and my noble friend Lady Sugg that we must not create incentives for people-smuggling gangs to target pregnant women or provide opportunities for people to exploit any loopholes. I assure the Committee that pregnant women who have arrived illegally will not be removed from the United Kingdom when, based on medical assessments, they are not fit to travel. I offer that assurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
Before the Minister continues, can he tell me where that will appear in writing? An assurance in the Committee at 12.43 am is one thing, but where will that assurance be written down?

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
It will be in Hansard, the official record.

The document from which the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, quoted, referring to guidance from the NHS website, provides that, with the proper precautions, most women can travel safely well into their pregnancy. However, in any event, we will remove only persons who are fit to travel.

There has never been a complete bar on the detention and/or the removal of pregnant women, such as Amendment 76A seeks to provide. The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, referred correctly to the situation as presently advised, with a 72-hour period and a seven-day maximum detention thereafter. In answer to the noble Lord, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, and other noble Lords, that will continue to apply to women who have not arrived illegally on these shores.

Under the Bill, detention is not automatic. The Bill provides power to detain, and the appropriateness of detention will be considered on a case-by-case basis. We expect that a woman who is in the later stages of her pregnancy and who cannot be removed in the short term would not be detained, but instead released on immigration bail. That matter would of course be assessed by the body hearing the application.

00:45:00

As my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth advised the Committee earlier, and in relation to points raised by my noble friend Lady Sugg, we already operate our adults at risk policy for women who are detained in the earlier stages of pregnancy, which recognises pregnant women as a particular vulnerable group. For all cases in which a pregnant woman is being detained for removal, the fact of her pregnancy will automatically be regarded as amounting to level 3 evidence under the adults at risk policy, and the pregnancy will be afforded significant weight when assessing the risk of harm in detention. This means that a woman known to be pregnant should be detained only where the immigration control factors that apply in her case outweigh the evidence of her vulnerability—in this case, the evidence of her pregnancy. Such control factors at level 3 are where removal has been set for a date in the immediate future or there are public protection concerns. While in detention, pregnant women will receive appropriate healthcare provision.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, referred to the letter she has been promised. I am assured that it is in the process of being drafted. It will proceed under the name of my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth and will be with her soon.

Along with all other detained persons, it will be open to pregnant women to apply to the First-tier Tribunal for immigration bail after 28 days and it would be open to the Home Secretary to grant such bail at any time. An application for a writ of habeas corpus may be made at any point once an individual is detained. An equivalent procedure operates in Scotland by means of an application for an order for suspension and liberation to the Court of Session.

Amendment 70 would, in effect, prohibit the use of reasonable force to effect the detention or removal of either children or pregnant women. While I recognise the sentiment behind this amendment, we need to recognise that using control and restraint on children in family groups or pregnant women may, unfortunately, be necessary if a family is resisting removal. At the moment, our policy regarding children and pregnant women is that reasonable force may be used to prevent harm to individuals and others. However, we judge it not right that a family can prevent their lawful removal from the United Kingdom simply by leaving a room or by refusing to walk to the appropriate transport.

At this point, it is worth while expanding on what we mean by the use of reasonable force. The expression is fully and widely understood within the legal profession. I understand the concerns being raised here and it may help if I offer more explanation of what is meant by that expression or the use of control and restraint on pregnant women and children. It may involve no more than placing hands on the person; a typical example is what is known as a guiding hold, which may be used safely to escort a person by placing one hand over their wrist and the other on their upper arm.

It is and will continue to be the case that the use of force must be reasonable in the circumstances, must be the minimum amount required, must be an absolute necessity and must be proportionate. Officers are therefore trained to use it as a last resort only when other methods of engagement are not viable.

Again, the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, in her submission to the Committee, described forms of the use of force which are extreme in comparison with what would be deployed in foreseeable circumstances. If I may, it is somewhat analogous to the discussions earlier on in the context of the detention provisions: we heard what your Lordships had to say about the conscription—I seem to recollect that that was the expression—of shipmasters, train managers and others into the service of the Home Secretary acting in these capacities. It was worth while for my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth to remind the Committee that detention can be no more than simply refusing to open doors. Force need not equate with violence. But we judge that it is appropriate that persons should not be able to thwart the immigration system simply by refusing to co-operate.

Where we are reviewing our policies on control and restraint, we will pay particular attention to ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place, along with suitable training, officer accountability and reporting. Again, I think it is worth mentioning that these control and restraint techniques are in a constant process of review and evaluation, not only by police officers but also by others such as mental health nurses, prison officers, immigration officers and officials such as will receive such training for the purposes of the Bill. We will be consulting the children’s commissioners regarding changes to our current policy.

I conclude by reminding the Committee that the challenge we face in addressing the current levels of illegal entry into the United Kingdom calls for a new and radical approach. That means having to re-evaluate some legislation passed in recent years with the best of intentions. The challenges that we face now are different in kind and scale since Section 60 of the Immigration Act was enacted. Of course, pregnant women must be properly cared for while they are in detention and will be detained only in suitable accommodation with appropriate healthcare provision, but the fact that they are pregnant cannot of itself act as a bar on detention under the Bill. On that basis, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, first of all, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. All, apart from the Minister, spoke in support of the amendment. I am very grateful to them for staying until this ungodly hour and not allowing the Government to chase them off, in effect, through tiredness. I know that others have not spoken, but I have felt their support anyway. People are nodding, and I thank them. I know that others who cannot stay this late have had to leave.

My noble friend Lord Ponsonby remarked on my anger that we are discussing this at such a ridiculous time. Yes, I am angry about that, but I am also angry because, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, set out very clearly, we are having to refight the battles that we fought in 2016 at some length in this House and won. It is so depressing to have to put the same arguments yet again, because the Government and Theresa May accepted them then, and we reached a compromise. That is why, although in my heart I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, because that is what I argued for in 2016, with my head I say that we have to just try to get back to where we were. There is no point trying to go further, I am afraid, although I accept what he said in principle.

I should also note that there are a whole lot of other people here who probably would not normally sit in on our Committee proceedings, and I hope they have learned something. I hope they have learned through having to listen to what we are doing to pregnant women—what their Government are doing to pregnant women. I hope they will think about it. Some of their colleagues on the government Benches might have words, perhaps, afterwards, because as my noble friend said, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, made a very powerful case.

I thank the Minister for his response, but it was utterly disappointing. He utterly failed to engage with what his noble friend said about the vacuity of the  incentives argument, and he had no other argument to put. There is no case, really, because, as she made clear, that argument does not stand up. It was very depressing and disappointing that there was no case.

I am also disappointed that a number of the questions I asked were not answered. I am not going to press them now— it is nearly 1 o’clock in the morning.

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
I apologise to the noble Baroness. Any oversight was entirely a failure on my part. I will review the record and revert to the noble Baroness in writing, if that is acceptable.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
It is perfectly acceptable. I was just going to suggest that the Minister do that. I do not blame him at all, because I do not imagine he is that keen on arguing this out at 1 o’clock in the morning either.

We will return to this at Report—we have to. As a number of noble Lords said, this is a narrow amendment that does not drive a coach and horses through the whole Bill, much as I hate the Bill. It would not cost the Government anything to concede to this amendment before Report, rather than forcing us to come back then and go through the whole thing again, voting for the health of pregnant women and their babies. For now, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 68 withdrawn.

Amendment 69 not moved.

Clause 10 agreed.

Amendments 70 and 70A not moved.

Clause 11: Period for which persons may be detained

Amendment 71

Moved by

71: Clause 11, page 17, leave out lines 32 to 36
 Member's explanatory statement
 This amendment seeks to remove the possibility that the Secretary of State may extend the period of detention indefinitely in the circumstances referred to in this subsection.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 71 and 72, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. These amendments are designed to probe the meaning of two similar subclauses. I can almost taste the enthusiasm. They could have been multiplied because similar wording appears in three other parts of the clause. I said that I would deal with the noble Lord’s points on Hardial Singh on another day; little did I realise how soon that day would come, but I will do so.

Clause 11 is described in the Explanatory Notes as

“codifying, in part, the Hardial Singh principles”.

However, the Constitution Committee, on which I have the honour to serve, said in paragraph 13 of its report that it represents a departure from that jurisprudence in at least one important respect: by making the Secretary of State herself rather than the courts the judge of whether a period of time is reasonable.

On that last point, I will read two sentences from the judgment of Lord Justice Keene in the Queen on the application of A against the Secretary of State for the Home Department in 2007:

“It is to my mind a remarkable proposition that the courts should have only a limited role where the liberty of the individual is being curtailed by administrative detention. Classically the courts of this country have intervened by means of habeas corpus and other remedies to ensure that the detention of a person is lawful, and where such detention is only lawful when it endures for a reasonable period, it must be for the court itself to determine whether such a reasonable period has been exceeded.”
 

I do not need to ask the Minister whether the intention of the Bill is to reverse that authoritative statement of the separation of powers in our constitution because the Explanatory Notes make it perfectly clear at paragraph 94 that it is. The purpose of the clause, it would seem—and this is a striking application of the logic of deterrence—is to allow detention to endure in circumstances when, in the objective view of a court, it would be unreasonable.

01:00:00

I have a short question for the Minister and a longer one. First, is it right that this power, which the Bar Council describes as an “emergency wartime-style power”, can be applied to all immigration detention, including those who entered lawfully as visitors or via intracompany transfers? I had not appreciated that until I read the Bar Council’s briefing. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify. Regarding the longer question, it is lucky that we are debating at 1 in the morning, since minds need to be alert for this one. Can the Minister explain the intended effect of the subclauses which are subject to Amendments 71 and 72, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and their equivalents elsewhere in the clause?

The clearest example, because it does not depend on cross-references and can be understood from the Bill, is that Clause 11(6)(3) appears to say that a person may be detained pending a decision whether to remove even if there is nothing to prevent that decision being made. Does that mean that a person may be detained even if everything is in place for a decision not to remove them? Is the Secretary of State deemed to have acted reasonably by continuing detention in those circumstances? If the Minister can explain the point of these subclauses, I will be grateful, because I am genuinely, not forensically, baffled.

Finally, since the night is yet young, I hope that I may be permitted a short comparison. Noble Lords who have been here longer than me will remember the issue of how long persons arrested on suspicion of terrorism could be detained before a charging decision. The period used to be 28 days. Attempts by Labour Governments to extend that period, first to 90 days and then to 42 days, were beaten back in this House. The coalition Government eventually reduced the period to 14 days, which is where it stands today, although repeated visits to the court, initially at intervals of 48 hours, are required by any police force wishing to detain someone for anything like that period. The law is full of anomalies but is it not remarkable that those who are not suspected of terrorism but may be fleeing from terrorism can be held for far longer periods than this, with the reasonableness of that period being judged by the Executive and with the possibility of applying to a court being specifically excluded under Clause 12 until 28 days have passed?

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, I must congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, on such a clear and articulate tour de force, explaining a very important legal principle at five past 1 in the morning. His simple and clear speech poses a question to the Minister. Will the question of what is a reasonable period of detention now be the preserve of the Government and Home Secretary of the day, or will we keep with our traditions in this country? I do not mean this new-fangled human rights stuff; not this international stuff that some noble Lords in the Committee might have an aversion to, but principles that go back to 1305, give or take—some would say earlier. This is a contentious matter in legal circles, and no doubt someone will have a pop at me, but I think that we can say 1305 with some certainty when we are talking about habeas corpus.

The Hardial Singh principle makes it clear that this applies to migrant people too—they should be able to challenge the reasonableness and lawfulness of their detention in a court. It is not up to just the Home Secretary, not even for the purposes of deterrence, to say that somebody should be subject to indefinite detention. It was of course the legendary English jurist and Conservative politician William Blackstone who wrote so powerfully about this writ or order, requiring that a person’s detention be accounted for in a court. That was in 1305, but we believe that similar procedural writs were probably used even earlier. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, will correct me, but there has been some discussion that some of these writs were available in English courts even before 1305.

This is not 1965; it is not hippie stuff. This is not 1945, post-war stuff. This is 1305. This is such an important principle that informed constitutions and bills of rights all over the world, when people had their liberation struggles. Of course, it then informed the post-war human rights framework, but it is not to be punished for that. If there are rights nationalists in the Committee, who like English rights or British rights but do not like international rights, that is fine: that people should not be indefinitely detained at the behest of the Home Secretary has an old and British enough provenance. The reasonableness of their detention for the purposes of effecting their removal, in this case, really ought to be capable of being tested and ultimately decided in a court.

For the clarity of the amendments and for their exposition, particularly under these circumstances, I am incredibly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. Members of your Lordships’ Committee who are dedicatedly glued to their third Marshalled List of amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill will, I am sure, have noted that my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has attached her name to Amendments 71 and 72, both of which have been very ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich. I have to say that I was extremely pleased to see the noble Lord in his place, as it did not fall to me to try to do that job.

That makes me reflect that we are missing two of the key people whose names are on these amendments—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. In our debates on the Bill, we have been discussing impact assessments and equality assessments a great deal. There is an extreme inequality in the way in which so many Members of your Lordships’ House have been excluded from amendments in which they clearly have a very strong interest by the ridiculous hour at which we are now debating.

However, in one way my noble friend Lady Jones and I are in our normal position, because my noble friend is a lark and I am an owl. Normally, we hand over around the late evening when my noble friend goes home and I pick up from her. The way we are going, we will be doing a morning handover for the first time, because my noble friend will be awake in about four hours, so perhaps we will hand over then.

I must admit that 1 am is probably not the ideal time to fully bone up on Hardial Singh principles, because my noble friend is much more of a specialist in this area of law than I am. So I was thinking about  how I could usefully add to this debate. From my understanding and from reading the Explanatory Notes, it seems to me that the key sentence is:

“If the Secretary of State does not consider that the examination, decision, removal or directions will be carried out, made or given within a reasonable period of time, the person may be detained for a further period”.
 

So the question I put to the Minister from looking at that is, how long do the Government really think this can go on for? We have incredibly overcrowded prisons with an increasing need for provision for old-age pensioners. Are we going to see the same thing in immigration detention? Is that really what the Government perceive as likely?

The other point that I want to make is a comparative one. If we look around other parts of Europe, we see that, already, even before the recent and planned extensions, we have one of the largest immigration detention suites in Europe. Why is that? France has a maximum of 32 days of immigration detention; in Germany, it is a sliding scale of six weeks, six months, or in extreme cases 18 months; in Hungary, it is six months. I know that the Government do not really like comparisons with Europe, but are we not putting ourselves as an utter global outlier through these provisions, unless they are changed along the lines of these amendments?

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I will come to my Amendment 71A in a moment; I will also speak to the opposition to the clause standing part.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, for enlightening us on the Hardial Singh principles and for reinforcing the view, expressed by lawyers in all sorts of documents that have come to us, that this clause increases the power of the Government and reduces the power of the courts, and that the balance of power between the three branches of our constitution is therefore being altered by this clause.

The first stage is quite clear: Clause 11 overturns the long-established common law principle that it is for the court to decide for itself whether the detention of a person for the purposes of removal is for a period that is reasonable. That is absolutely critical to prevent people, including the most vulnerable, languishing in detention and having their freedoms curtailed unjustifiably. The United Kingdom Government have always justified not having a time limit on detention because of the involvement of the courts. This is being done away with, and we will now see that detention for a short period pending removal may be much less likely. Again, the poor treatment of people is being used as a deterrent to others, and their rights are being infringed in the process. We believe on these Benches that the courts must have effective oversight. We cannot allow the Government’s power of administrative detention to be expanded. The balance is going in the wrong direction.

The purpose of immigration detention is to facilitate removal, and there is no evidence that these changes are needed to improve removals. They will mean that the Home Office will be able to detain people where there is a barrier to removal or where they are not pursuing removal as diligently as they could be. Given the lack of returns agreements in place—we have just one—this is likely to result in a growing number of people being detained indefinitely. That is hugely concerning. It would appear that it creates specific powers that people can be detained for longer than the current limited grace period after release has been decided upon: the Home Secretary will be able to detain for a period of time “reasonably necessary” to enable release.

This leads me to my amendment’s point. I would like to probe the Government to find out how and why they can marry the obligations under Article 5 of the ECHR with Clause 11. In its legal observations on the Bill, the UNHCR notes:

“Detention for the purpose of making arrangement for release … is arguably not permissible under Article 5 ECHR”.
 

How do the Government marry that view with the obligations under Article 5? Has the UNHCR, in their view, got it wrong? If so, what are their reasons for thinking this?

The period for which people will be detained will therefore be very uncertain. This uncertainty has profound mental health implications, including increasing feelings of hopelessness, which is one of the most prominent risk factors linked to suicide. The extended use of detention in such circumstances could leave tens of thousands of people in a long-term state of uncertainty and at an increased risk of suicide.

Of course, Clause 11 applies to all forms of detention, not just for those who arrived irregularly. For example, it is intended to allow a software engineer who overstayed her visa to be detained for far longer than a suspected terrorist, with far less judicial oversight. That is particularly concerning given how extraordinarily complex the Immigration Rules are anyway.

01:15:00

In line with the Hardial Singh principle, it should be for the courts to assess whether the period of detention is reasonable, and habeas corpus is insufficient as a defence because it is a defence only about whether the detention is lawful, and clearly this Bill would make it lawful. That is the problem about habeas corpus; it is an insufficient tool to deal with these powers. Where we are detaining people is also critical. Judicial oversight must not be purely in the hands of the Secretary of State. I believe that the power in Clause 11 has taken the relationship between the three parts of our constitution in the wrong direction.

Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, for his introduction to Amendment 71. It raises a hugely significant point of principle for us in the consideration of the Bill, as did the noble Lord, Lord German, with his point about Clause 11.

I am going to spend a couple of minutes reiterating this because I think it is important. As we all know, the Illegal Migration Bill basically means that everybody who arrives irregularly will be detained, without exception. Therefore, the rules around that detention are paramount. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, reminded us that Clause 11 deals with the detention period. In the Explanatory Notes, it is clear that it is the Home Secretary, rather than the courts, who will determine what is a reasonable period. I suggest that is a phenomenal digression from normal jurisprudence in this country. I am not a lawyer or a judge, but one of the bulwarks of our constitution and our democracy has always been that it is for the courts to determine reasonableness, not for politicians or Home Secretaries.

The truth of it is that, across the world, we criticise Governments and politicians for interfering and making judicial decisions. We quite rightly do that, for obvious reasons, as the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord German, have just made clear. But it is the Home Secretary who will determine what is a reasonable period for somebody subject to the Illegal Migration Bill to be kept in detention. I find that quite astonishing. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, quite rightly and half jokingly, said that it is good to see a lot of noble Lords here—more than would normally be here—because that is what noble Lords opposite are being asked to support. I am sure that nobody believes that the Conservative Government want an autocracy, but it undermines one of the fundamental principles of our democracy to allow a politician to determine for how long somebody should be detained. As I understand it—and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, will correct me if I am wrong—that goes to the heart of what Amendment 71 is about.

It is totally and utterly unacceptable, given the extent of the power which we are going to give the Home Secretary, that the Government will not—or cannot—tell us how long someone can actually be detained for. It is an unlimited period of time. The expectation is 28 days, but supposing you cannot remove somebody after 28 days. Can you keep them for 29 or 30? What if you still have not removed them—is it 31? Tell me when it is too many; we can go on and on, and if I was doing a filibuster, I would. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and one or two others will have been in the other place when that has happened, but we will not do that here.

The serious point is: how many days are too many? The Minister has to answer this, because he is asking this Parliament—this Chamber—to allow legislation to go through where people, including children, can de detained for an unspecified period on the say-so of the Home Secretary. How on earth can that be something we think is appropriate? Let the Minister answer that, please, specifically: why is it appropriate for the Home Secretary rather than the courts to determine what is a reasonable period, and how long can someone actually be detained for? Can we have a maximum rather than a minimum? What happens after 28 days?

I have a couple of other points because we want to talk about this properly, so we will do that. I am not going to rush this, because it is a really important point of principle about detaining people on the say-so of the Home Secretary. What are the practicalities of that? As the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and others will know, I went to the Government’s helpful fact sheet on the Bill. It asks:

“How many new detention spaces will be required?”
 

It says that they are building two but does not say how many, so they do not know. It then asks:

“Will the necessary … accommodation be available?”.
 

I say to the Government: if your Illegal Migration Bill is predicated on detaining everybody who arrives illegally or irregularly—and Clause 11 is headed “Period for which persons may be detained”—how on earth can the Government not say in their own fact sheet that the places will be available? It just does not make sense.

We not only have a Bill which in principle, in Clause 11, gives real, genuine concerns about undermining one of the pillars and principles of our democracy. We also have a government fact sheet dealing with Clause 11 which cannot tell this Parliament, or the people who read Home Office fact sheets—this one was published on 11 May 2023—that the new detention centres required by the Bill will be built. They cannot say categorically that the numbers of places will be available. If we have a period for which persons may be detained under Clause 11 but the Home Office cannot say where they are going to be detained, what is going to happen? We are told that the Home Secretary needs all these people to be detained, so how will that work when the Home Office cannot tell us where they are going to be detained and whether there will be enough places?

It starts with the very serious principle that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, outlined for us, which was followed up by the noble Lord, Lord German, about the arbitrary nature of the power that the Home Secretary will have to determine the detention of individuals for an unspecified amount of time rather than that being something which, in the past, this country has said that the courts should do and that a judge should determine. That is a really serious move away from something that has stood our country proud for centuries; and alongside our criticism of the fact that the Bill does not conform to the principles that we would want is its unworkability.

This Chamber deserves some answers on those points. It does not want any platitudes such as, “The Government are considering how to deal with this”. We need some genuine answers with some genuine facts for us to make a determination about the best way forward.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, Clause 11 clarifies the period of time that the Secretary of State may detain individuals for by placing two of the common law, so-called Hardial Singh, principles on a statutory footing. The Hardial Singh principles provide that a person may only be detained for a period that is reasonable in all the circumstances and if, before the expiry of the reasonable period, it becomes apparent that the Home Secretary will not be able to examine, effect removal or grant leave within a reasonable period, the Home Secretary should not seek to continue the detention.

Clause 11 also makes it clear that it is for the Secretary of State, rather than the courts, to determine what constitutes a reasonable time in which to detain an individual for the specific statutory purpose. This is as it should be, I suggest to the Committee. I can confirm that this change, further to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, will apply to all immigration detention powers.

I put it to noble Lords that it is properly a matter for the Home Secretary rather than the courts to decide such matters as it will be the Home Office which is in full possession of all the relevant facts—

Noble Lords
Oh!

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
—and which is best placed to decide whether continued detention is reasonable in all the circumstances. It will of course continue to be the case that a person’s detention will be subject to judicial oversight.

As we will come to when we debate Clause 12, while it is the case that a person will not be able to challenge their detention before the First-tier Tribunal or seek a judicial review within the first 28 days, they will at any time be able to make an application for a writ of habeas corpus or the equivalent in Scotland. This was elided in the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, when he suggested that judicial oversight was not available. In fact, it is, through the mechanism of habeas corpus.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords—

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Forgive me, I will take the point in just a second. The point was made good in the fact that Hardial Singh, the great decision of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, from the early 1980s, was a case concerning a habeas corpus application. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
I wondered if the Minister has seen what the Constitution Committee had to say about that argument.

“Although a writ of habeas corpus is available to a detainee in the first 28 days of detention, it is unlikely to be successful given the wide range of powers to detain in clauses 10 and 11”.
 

And did he see what the Bar Council had to say?

“While habeas corpus would remain available, that is a remedy rather than a limitation on the power of detention. Further, it does not test whether detention is reasonable”.
 

It is a fine old remedy, now fallen into disuse, but it is no substitute for the power in a court to determine whether a period of detention is reasonable or unreasonable.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for reminding me of those two contributions, but I am afraid I do not agree with their analysis for the reason I identified immediately before the noble Lord’s contribution. The case of Hardial Singh was a habeas corpus application and in that decision the evaluation of reasonableness featured as part of the challenge of the lawfulness of detention.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister. He will understand why some of us are very concerned about this aspect of the Bill. He said a moment ago that the Secretary of State will now determine what a reasonable period is. The Minister made that very clear. There were gasps in the Committee, and not just from the lawyers. If the Secretary of State is now going to determine what a reasonable and therefore lawful period is—that could be a very long time or an indefinite period—then how will habeas corpus help anyone? Habeas corpus is only there to challenge the legality of detention, but if it is legal under the statute to detain someone indefinitely, how on earth will habeas corpus help in the way that it once helped Hardial Singh?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
The noble Baroness overlooks the fact that the Home Secretary’s discretion is subject to the other condition in the operation of the detention power. As I made clear earlier, if it becomes apparent that the Home Secretary will not be able to examine, effect removal or grant leave within a reasonable period, the Home Secretary should not seek to continue detention. It is not an unfettered decision of the Home Secretary to determine the length of custody, as it has been portrayed by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti—that is simply a mischaracterisation of the power in the Bill.

01:30:00

Baroness Ludford (LD)
It may be because of the hour that I have momentarily forgotten, but can the Minister remind us how the Home Secretary’s powers will be constrained if there is no court supervision? I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said about habeas corpus and leaving that aside. How will the Home Secretary be checked in any way?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
One cannot leave habeas corpus to one side. The ancient writ of habeas corpus is available before the High Court to challenge the legality of the detention, and it is a very important safeguard. From the expiry of the 28-day period, the person detained will be able to make application for bail or a judicial review. One will therefore see that there is ample avenue for a person believing themselves to be unlawfully detained to challenge that detention.

Lord Bach (Lab)
I think I heard the Minister right when he said that the Government think it better for the Secretary of State to decide, because she has all the facts. To me at least, that is a comment that could be made in any tinpot dictatorship. It is the way that you get rid of a decent judicial system and allow executive power to run riot. Does he not know the consequences of saying that in a British Parliament about our system? It is absolutely outrageous.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am afraid that I disagree with the noble Lord. In a “tinpot dictatorship”, they would not have recourse to the writ of habeas corpus, which entitles the High Court to review the legality of detention. I do not think many dictatorships would afford a detainee those safeguards.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I return to the same point about the suggestion that the Home Secretary has the most information so is the person who should decide. My reflections on this are undoubtedly influenced by being involved in the Financial Services and Markets Bill later today and with the upcoming economic crime Bill. I wonder whether the Government are considering making the same arguments when it comes to aspects of the financial sector and major commercial businesses. Are they going to decide that  they know best about how those things should go and take the courts out of all that, with just the Government deciding how businesses are to be able to operate?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am not sure that the noble Baroness’s suggestion is a very insightful parallel, but no doubt she can ask my noble friend Lady Penn that in the morning.

Noble Lords
It is the morning.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Later in the morning—I am grateful for the correction.

In considering the lawfulness of detention and a writ of habeas corpus, the High Court would undoubtedly apply the Hardial Singh principles. Given his remarks, I remind the noble Lord, Lord German, that those principles were established in that habeas corpus case, as I have already pointed out.

As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has set out, Amendments 71 and 72 seek to restrict the use of detention where there is a barrier that prevents the purpose of detention being carried out. The fear is that the provisions in Clause 11 will be used to extend detention indefinitely. This is simply not the case; the Bill does not provide for indefinite detention. Moreover, our aim is to ensure that people are not held in detention for any longer than is absolutely necessary. Circumstances can change in detention. Barriers are anticipated and, in many instances, can be resolved quickly with examination, decisions or removal still able to take place within a reasonable period. Where there is a significant and/or material change in a person’s circumstances, our policy is clear that detention must be reviewed. If it is considered that the anticipated period of detention is not reasonably necessary, the individual will be bailed.

Amendment 71A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord German, probes whether detention for the purpose of making arrangements for release is permissible under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Government’s position, as set out in our published ECHR memorandum, is that giving a discretionary power to the Secretary of State to detain an individual for a period that is reasonably necessary to enable arrangements for the person’s release is Article 5 compliant. It is a matter of common sense that it may be necessary to detain an individual for a short period of time to make practical arrangements for their release from detention. In accordance with Article 5, an individual will be able to challenge the lawfulness of their detention via the courts at all points of their detention, either via an application for a writ of habeas corpus, via judicial review or via an application for bail to the First-tier Tribunal after the first 28 days of detention have elapsed.

We continue to study the Constitution Committee’s report, and in preparing our full response we will take account of what has been said in this debate, but I do not accept the conclusion of the Constitution Committee that the detention provisions in the Bill are inappropriate. No doubt we will return to this at the next stage, by  which time we will aim to have responded formally to the Constitution Committee’s report. In the meantime, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
The Minister will say that I have been very slow, and it is quite possible that I have, but if I have heard the answer to the simple question of what these clauses mean, to which Amendments 71 and 72 are directed, I have not understood it. I took the simplest example from Clause 11(6), which says that a person may be detained, pending a decision whether to remove that person,

“regardless of whether there is anything that for the time being prevents the decision from being made”.

What does that mean? Does it mean that it is deemed to be reasonable for the Secretary of State to perpetuate the detention, even after a decision is ripe for the making and even after it becomes possible immediately to decide that the person should not be detained? I genuinely do not understand what these subsections seek to achieve, and I have not heard from the Minister what the Government say about that. I do not get it from the Explanatory Notes either, so I have some sympathy with him. Will he please do his best to explain this? If he cannot do it now, let us have it in writing.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I see that it is a complicated piece of drafting. Out of the respect for the hour, I will put the explanation into writing, send it to the noble Lord and circulate it appropriately.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I am very sorry, but I did not choose the hour; others chose the hour on my behalf, which may be how a detainee feels under this proposed legislation.

I want to understand the Minister’s position and explanation. Previously, he has been very clear that it is for the Secretary of State alone, with command of all the facts—just as a prosecutor always has command of all the facts, so that we can get rid of criminal custody time limits pre-charge as well—to determine what is a reasonable period. It has been made absolutely clear that it is not for a court but for the Secretary of State to determine what is a reasonable period for detention.

That gives concern to some of us that detention could be indefinite, not least because the Minister’s noble and learned friend from the Ministry of Justice said some hours ago—or was it days ago? I forget—that we do not necessarily have return agreements with everyone yet, so this could take rather a long time. We therefore have people who are potentially detained for a very long time or such period as the Secretary of State determines reasonable.

Then, however, in response to our concerns, the Minister says, “Don’t worry”, because people will be able to challenge their detention on habeas corpus. They may not be able to do very much for 28 days but, after 28 days—which is rather a long time to be detained—they will be able to go to a court. What can a court possibly do if it is for the Secretary of State alone to determine what is a reasonable period? Against what test will this court be able to say that a detention was unlawful? Can he give us some example of an occasion when it would be open to a court to say that a particular detention under this legislation was not lawful?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
The noble Baroness consciously disregards the other aspects of the test carefully set out in the draft legislation. Clearly, the decision on reasonableness will be subject to judicial review on conventional public law grounds. If it is Wednesbury unreasonable, it will of course be capable of challenge on those grounds.

If the noble Baroness looks at Clause 11, she will see that the apportionment of the decision on the period of time is very carefully hedged about with the case law that has flown from the decision of Hardial Singh, which is reflected in the subsections amending the various categories of detention. She will see in Clause 11(1)(b) the amendments to paragraph 17 of Schedule 2 to the 1971 Act; that relates to the period to enable the examination or removal to be carried out. Then, in Clause 11(2), at line 25 of page 18, there is the insertion into paragraph 2 of Schedule 3 to the 1971 Act, whereby a period of detention is authorised if it is “reasonably necessary” to enable a deportation to be made or the removal to be carried out. Clearly, a court would view the test of reasonable necessity in the context of the statutory provision enabling deportation or removal to be carried out.

As the noble Baroness reads on, the purpose of all these provisions is clear. I simply do not accept the characterisation that she makes that this is some overarching power for the Home Secretary to detain someone at will for an indefinite period; that is plainly not the case.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I am being slow now, but the Minister has said on a number of occasions that this Bill does not provide for “indefinite detention”. Where in the Bill does it place a limit on how long someone will be detained, and will someone going into detention know how long they will be in detention for? If not, then it is indefinite.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for asking me that question, because it allows me to point out that, under the present law—under Schedule 2 to the 1971 Act and the case law on Hardial Singh—there is no limit. On the same basis, it is now codified in the Bill. The power to detain is exactly the same, save for this change from an objective test of reasonableness to reasonableness in the view of the Home Secretary, governed by the other provisions in the Bill. It is impossible to set a time limit, as I was invited to by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. Although the noble Baroness suggests that there should be a time limit, that is simply not the way that the law has evolved in this area following Hardial Singh—there is no upper limit.

The court will evaluate and, obviously, a time would logically come when somebody had been detained for a long period and the court could not form a view that that period was reasonably necessary, for example, to enable the examination or removal to be carried out. It is a fact-sensitive decision in relation to the duration of detention.

01:45:00

Baroness Ludford (LD)
Can the Minister help me with the powers of the court? I know we are going to discuss Clause 12 in the next group, but it provides that

“In relation to detention during the relevant period, the decision is final”—
 

that is, the decision of the Secretary of State—

and is not liable to be questioned or set aside in any court or tribunal”.

What does that mean in light of what the Minister has just been telling us about the powers of the court?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
We will discuss Clause 12 in detail in the next group. Clause 12 relates to the powers to grant immigration bail. In Clause 12(4) the text of new paragraph 3A is inserted into Schedule 10 to the Immigration Act, which deals with immigration bail. I will address this in detail on the next group. It would make more sense to deal with it then, rather than now.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, may I go back to the question of “indefinite”? In effect, the Minister has said that the period is indefinite. We know that the current situation allows for indefinite detention, and many of us have argued many times that it should not because most other countries place a time limit on it. The Home Office comes back and says, “Oh no, it is not indefinite because you are not there for ever”. It uses a very unusual definition of indefinite. What does the Minister mean by indefinite if he is saying that this does not provide for indefinite detention, but has also just clearly said that it does?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I appreciate that the noble Baroness has campaigned for a time limit, but that is not the way it is done at present. This provision simply codifies the existing rule. While she and I may disagree on the meaning of “indefinite”, the context of the word—as perhaps advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker—is the idea of a period of detention such as that perhaps envisaged in circumstances of a whole-life sentence without any possibility of release. That is, in its purest form, indefinite detention. That is clearly not what is authorised by these provisions.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
With respect, I would say to the Committee that I think the Minister answered the point, but the answer was very telling. The answer was that the current situation, which is an objective test for what is a reasonable period—an objective test will ultimately be second-guessed and supervised by a court—is to be replaced with the opinion of the Home Secretary on what a reasonable period of detention is. That, I think, is the concern of the Committee. It may be indefinite already, and it is, but now it will be indefinite and subject to the opinion of the Home Secretary—not an objective test that can be reviewed properly and robustly in a court of law.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I disagree with the noble Baroness that the Home Secretary’s decision would in any way lack objectivity. The point I made—I think, powerfully—is that the Home Secretary is in possession of all the facts that relate to the interlocking factors which justify detention. Therefore, the Home Secretary is best placed to make the decision, not any other abstract body. That is why it is appropriate that the Home Secretary has that power.

Baroness Ludford (LD)
I thank the Minister. Again, as I think was picked up—I cannot remember by whom; it was either the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, or the noble Lord, Lord Bach—the Minister has just repeated his insistence that it is the Home Secretary who uniquely is in a position to decide the length of detention. Then the Minister told us that there are all these powers for the court, and he recently said that Clause 12, which I cited, applies only for seeking bail. I do not think that is right; commentaries from people much cleverer than me say that it ousts judicial review challenges to detention during the period. It is not just about bail; it ousts judicial review challenges to detention. The Minister has claimed that there is the ability to go to a court to challenge the length of the detention—that is what he said a few minutes ago. Is that true or not? Is it the Home Secretary who has carte blanche to decide, or can someone go to a court to challenge the length of their detention—or is that ousted by Clause 12, as I understand it?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
The noble Baroness is perhaps a little confused by the way that these provisions interrelate. The detention power is contained within Clauses 10 and 11, and the detention period is regulated by a number of factors set out in the provisions and depending on the purpose of the detention for which the person is held. For the Home Secretary, the question is how long is reasonable in the context of the particular act for which they are being held. As we know, a 28-day period is provided for by the legislation before which a person cannot apply for either bail or judicial review. That is the passage the noble Baroness refers to. Before that 28-day period, the writ of habeas corpus is preserved, as I think I made clear in my remarks. I hope that clarifies matters for the noble Baroness, and we will no doubt retread these waters at some length when we discuss Clause 12 in the next group.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, we have been presented with the picture of the Home Secretary impartially and carefully considering the facts—rather like a judge, it would seem. Is the Home Secretary no longer to be a politician?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Clearly, it is the Home Office which will have possession of the relevant facts and a court will be able to review, as we have already discussed, in the event of there being a challenge by the routes that I have identified.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
It is for me to conclude this fascinating debate. I am grateful to everyone who has spoken. The amendments to which I spoke were very small and technical ones. I am afraid that I am no wiser now than when I first stood up as to what the clauses I sought to amend mean, but I am grateful to the Minister for offering to write to me about that. I hope he will spread that letter around; I am sure it will attract huge interest around the Committee.

The debate of substance that we heard is one of huge importance. It was a relief to hear the Minister say that there is no intention to degrade the Hardial Singh principles or to depart from them. When the Explanatory Notes say they are to be partially codified, that does not mean to say the other part is to be discarded. I understood the Minister to be saying, from the Dispatch Box, that the Hardial Singh principles remain part of our law.

I think the noble Baroness Chakrabarti was absolutely right to identify the true issue of principle as that of who shall decide: which is the impartial body best equipped to decide whether a period of detention is reasonable? To take rather a simple analogy, the police have to detain people when they have arrested them and are wondering whether to charge them. You could say that the police have the best knowledge of all the elements of the case—they know the evidence as it is developing, they have access to the person and they can tell what kind of state they are in—so why not let the police decide how long they should be detained? No civilised country would do that. We entrust this to the powers of an impartial court.

I am sure that, when we come on to Clause 12, we will discuss just how extensive those powers are. However, when you see that the Explanatory Notes themselves say that the intention of this Bill is too reverse the paragraph of the judgment I read out, saying that it must be for the court and not the Home Secretary to make that decision, you have a pretty good idea of what Clauses 11 and 12 are all about. Obviously at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 71 withdrawn.

Amendments 71A to 72 not moved.

Clause 11 agreed.

Amendments 73 to 76B not moved.

Clause 12: Powers to grant immigration bail

Amendment 76C

Moved by

76C: Clause 12, page 21, line 3, leave out “(4)” and insert “(4A)”
 Member's explanatory statement
 This amendment is consequential on the insertion of new subsection (4A).

Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, before speaking to Amendment 76C, can I say for my own part how disgraceful I think it is that we are debating these important and serious matters at this hour in the morning? It is also disgraceful that Ministers of the Crown, who are busy, with real jobs to do, are having to stay here, obviously because they have been told to do so. I think the same applies to those sitting on their Back Benches. If it is any comfort to the Government, I do not intend to call a vote tonight which they might lose. I do not think any of my noble friends or anyone else on this side of the Committee plans to do that. It is so disappointing that the Bill is being dealt with in this way, at this hour of the morning.

I turn to Amendment 76C, which is consequential on Amendment 79 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who has very kindly allowed me to speak to it. We are now on Clause 12, on immigration bail. The amendment would amend the existing provision that requires an automatic bail hearing after four months of detention so as to require instead such a hearing after 28 days of detention. It would ensure that the provisions in the Bill authorising detention for a period of 28 days—which can be legitimately described as draconian because they involve no recourse to a bail application and no recourse to judicial review of the decision to detain—are ameliorated by a protective bail provision at the 28-day point in a person’s detention. That would serve as an essential safeguard for migrants, giving them certainty that their detention is subject to further independent judicial oversight.

That is particularly important given that the power to review detention by way of judicial review will be curtailed so that even an irrational decision cannot be challenged by a person who has been detained. Recourse to an automatic bail application would allow an independent court to assess the continued need and justification for the Home Office to maintain detention, alongside assessing the prospect of absconding if bail was granted.

The Minister can say, quite rightly—this takes us on to my second amendment—that existing provisions in the Bill will allow a person to apply for bail at the 28-day point. However, relying solely on the person detained to make an application will deter some people from applying, for reasons ranging from a belief that they need a legal representative to not being able, frankly, to properly understand the process. I am informed that the organisation Bail for Immigration Detainees comes across people who have not, and have never, applied for bail for these very reasons, despite the fact that they have been held under immigration powers for several months.

02:00:00

In addition, it is likely that a bail hearing would not take place for some days after an application is submitted after the 28-day point. Only at that point will it be listed for hearing, resulting in sometimes weeks of delays. Therefore, ensuring that a bail application is automatically listed for hearing at the 28-day point would act as a protective measure. The Government would not be giving very much away by allowing such a course to happen.

I want to put just three questions to the Minister. First, do the Government agree that some people who are detained for immigration reasons may be vulnerable and may not understand how to apply for bail? Is this not why the Government themselves introduced provision for automatic bail after four months? Secondly, if the Government intend to prevent people being able to make any applications for bail for at least 28 days, would it not assist access to justice and the protection of the right of the individual to ensure that persons who are detained for at least 28 days have an automatic opportunity for the decision to detain and not to grant bail to be considered by an independent court? Thirdly—we revert back to the position about children—is it not fair and right that vulnerable people, including children, who are alone, should have their detention reviewed and justified by the Secretary of State, and that an independent court should consider whether bail should be granted? I would be grateful to the Minister for an answer to that question.

I concede straightaway that the wording of the amendment is not perfect. I want to make that clear, so the Government do not need to make that point. It is the principle behind what I say that matters.

Amendment 79A is not about automatic bail but about the right to ask for bail, which, of course, as the Minister has reminded us, exists. Previously, a person could apply for immigration bail at any point when they had been present in the UK for eight days, during the course of their detention, and as often as they needed it. At present, the Immigration Act 2016 prevents a person applying for bail within 28 days of a previous refusal of bail unless there is a material change of circumstances. The proposed new clause in my Amendment 79 would amend that so that a person can apply for bail within the 28-day period, but, of course, the hearing of the application cannot take place until the 28-day period has expired, absent a material change of circumstances.

The advantages of such a course are that, first, it would be fairer to the detained person. Secondly, the amendment would enable the tribunal to plan listings according to the 28-day separation between hearing dates. Thirdly, tribunals and hearing centres sometimes have delays of two weeks before a case can be listed for hearing. This means that an application made after 28 days have passed will not be heard for 42 days after the previous hearing. That is unlikely to be what Parliament intended when it limited bail applications to every 28 days. This amendment seeks to ameliorate that problem and do it fairly.

I finish by telling the Committee that the former president of the First-tier Tribunal, Mr Clements, some time ago had what I am putting to your Lordships as an amendment put to him as a proposal. He wrote to the Home Office recommending that he and his fellow judges felt that this was a fairer way of doing things. The Home Office refused. I could read out the letter that Mr Clements sent but I am certainly not going to at this time of night. So there was some high-level judicial support for this some years ago. It seems, at least to me, that this is a possible change that sacrifices nothing of the controversial matters that surround every part of this Bill, and one that the Home Office should consider carefully. I hope the Minister will take that on board. I beg to move.

Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 77 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Paddick. Before I get to that, I express my frustration and anger, as have colleagues on this side of the House, that we are discussing at 2 o’clock in the morning this crucial issue of whether we are going to have arbitrary detention of vulnerable people. The Government have clearly encouraged their backers on the Benches behind them, but we have not heard a peep out of any of them. There are people there I respect, and I cannot believe that they have nothing to say on the issue of whether the Executive should have practically untrammelled powers to lock people up. We have been told how important the laws of the English courts are. This is not some foreign muck law that is being imposed on us; it is the law, developed through revolt and civil wars in this country, that there should be a restraint on the powers of the Executive to keep people in prison. Apparently, there is insufficient interest on the other side of the House, which deeply disappoints me.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said a little while ago that no one thinks the Conservatives want autocracy. I fear that some of the replies we have had from the Minister in the meantime have somewhat unsettled that conclusion. He has rather disabused us of the idea put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. It is a misapprehension that this Government do not want a warrant to act unlawfully, because apparently they do. I agree with the Bar Council, which has expressed the view that

“the Bill as currently drafted is incompatible with the principles which underly the rule of law”

in particular because it

“ousts the jurisdiction of the courts in key areas leaving the executive able to act without scrutiny (often a hallmark of authoritarianism)”.

That is the Bar Council—no doubt regarded as lefty lawyers by the other side of the Chamber, but for many of us it is flying the flag for justice and the rule of law.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who dealt very capably with this question on Clause 11, ended up concluding that he was still a little unsure what all the explanations added up to. On Monday, he usefully summarised what we are talking about when he said:

“The Government’s theory of deterrence is based, in significant part, on the neutering of the courts”.
 

That is really the whole flavour and point of this Bill: to deter people coming and then saying, “We will lock you up and give you no rights whatsoever and, if we can, we’ll chuck you out to Rwanda or somewhere else”—somewhere where there is currently no agreement. If I may carry on quoting him, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said:

“Some ouster clauses are aimed at restricting appeals or reviews from the decisions of a legally qualified tribunal. Examples include Clauses 49 and 51”,
 

which we have not yet got on to. He went on:

“More fundamental in their scope are the ousters in Clauses 4, 12 and 55. They bite not on claims that have already been adjudicated by tribunals but on claims that have never been adjudicated by any court or tribunal”.—[Official Report, 5/6/23; col. 1181.]
 

He raised this issue in relation to Clause 4; I do so now in relation to Clause 12.

In our debate on the previous group, we discussed the fact that Clause 12 appears to imply pretty much untrammelled powers for the Home Secretary—indeed, for a civil servant—to keep someone in detention. My contention is that new paragraph 3A, to be inserted by Clause 12(4), takes such insulation of detention decisions a step further by expressly ousting the powers of the court and making the Home Secretary’s decision final and not liable to be overturned in court for 28 days. The Minister made much of what powers the courts have. It is true that there are apparently exceptions for judicial review on limited grounds—those being “bad faith” and the fundamental denial of natural justice—but those are unlikely to arise in reality. The grounds for a challenge in the courts are therefore very limited.

Then there is the writ of habeas corpus, but it would be difficult to succeed via that means because a person would have to argue that they were being unlawfully detained when the Bill authorises the detention. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, asked, what is the handle or the purchase for someone trying to pursue a writ of habeas corpus when the whole point of the Bill—at least one of the points of it—is to authorise a blanket power of indefinite detention? How does someone argue to the court that the Home Secretary has exceeded her powers when the Bill is intended to give her precisely those unchallengeable powers? Habeas corpus is a historical but little-used legal route because judicial review has become more predominantly used and because it is so difficult. It is true, apparently—no doubt the lawyers will correct me if I am wrong—that the Hardial Singh case was a habeas corpus case but that was when the principles that are now being overturned applied.

The apparent force of the paragraph to be inserted by Clause 12(4) is to limit the grounds on which someone can challenge immigration detention to very narrow ones. I am afraid that the Minister still has to convince me—he did not manage to do so in our debate on the previous group—that there is much wiggle room for the courts beyond those exceptions of bad faith and the fundamental denial of natural justice, which are cited further down the paragraph.

02:15:00

The right to liberty—to be free of arbitrary detention—is one of the oldest and most emphasised human rights in constitutional thought, which is why our Constitution Committee is so troubled by this clause, among others. It is surely for the courts, not the Government, to decide on the reasonableness of detention, including what is a reasonable period. The committee concluded:

“Clauses 11 and 12 are partial ouster clauses of great constitutional concern”.

That is a pretty strong warning to us. The committee invites Members of this House

“to seek clarity on the operation of this provision and to examine the Government’s reasoning as to why such potential threats to the liberty of the individual are appropriate”.

That is the reason many of us, at least on this side of the House if not on the other, are extremely concerned about the Bill’s provisions and what the Minister has said about them tonight—or this morning—which has not removed our concerns. I hope that a Conservative Government who are true to some of their older  traditions, rather than the modern impulses that have seized them, will begin to care about this issue as much as those of us on this side of the House do.

The Lord Bishop of Southwark
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 78, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who is unable to be here at this early hour. I know that he is grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Neuberger, for their support.

A statutory regime of clinical screening for people at risk of harm in detention and for healthcare professionals to be able to report concerns to the Home Office has been a cornerstone of safeguarding in immigration detention since 2001—and rightly so. This amendment looks to ensure that this process does not become inconsequential by preventing the necessary legal oversight of detention decisions. Given the technical nature of the issues relating to medical reporting in detention centres, I will focus my comments on the context of this amendment and set out a few key questions for the Minister.

The harmful impact of being in detention on people’s mental health is widely evidenced. Professor Mary Bosworth’s literature review for Stephen Shaw’s 2016 Review into the Welfare in Detention of Vulnerable Persons summarised that evidence. She concluded:

“Literature from across all the different bodies of work and jurisdictions consistently finds evidence of a negative impact of detention on the mental health of detainees”.
 

This conclusion should not be set aside. It is most acute for those with pre-existing vulnerabilities. Given that, and the limitations of treating mental illness in detention, it is current Home Office policy not to routinely detain highly vulnerable people, including those with pre-existing mental illnesses and survivors of torture. Decisions to detain must be consistent with detention policies, in particular the adults at risk policy. This policy has statutory force under Section 59 of the Immigration Act 2016. The Government stated then that this policy would introduce into detention decision-making a clear presumption that people who are at risk should not be detained.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham has, I believe, thanked the Minster personally for the opportunity to visit two immigration removal centres—visits he greatly valued. Officials and operational staff alike spoke to him of how Shaw’s recommendations have filtered through to every level of working, while recognising that improvements are still to be made. A key component of this is the statutory duty of medical staff to provide clinical safeguarding reports, known as rule 35 or rule 32 reports, where it is believed that detention may cause significant harm to an individual. These are then brought to the attention of those with direct responsibility for authorising detention.

How will this system of detention review on medical grounds be impacted by the provisions in the Bill? Do the Government agree with Stephen Shaw, the adults at risk policy and former ministerial colleagues that those whose care and support needs make it particularly likely that they would suffer disproportionate detriment from being detained would generally be considered unsuitable for immigration detention?

I shall of course listen carefully to the Minister’s answer, but the Bill suggests that the answer is no. By refusing to allow those who are detained to challenge their detention during the first 28 days by way of judicial review, there is no longer a clear presumption that the vulnerable will not be detained. The adults at risk policy provides that vulnerable adults at particular risk of harm in detention should not normally be detained and can be detained only when immigration factors outweigh the presumption to release, but the Bill legislates that the immigration factors at play, namely the Secretary of State’s new duty to detain and deport, will supersede this. If I am incorrect in this assumption, I shall be happy for the Minister to state the true position.

Judicial review is a key mechanism to challenge the tension where professional evidence of medical harm is believed to have been given insufficient weight. In this situation, without recourse to the courts a vulnerable person would be at risk of clinical harm from continuing detention. I appreciate that Rule 35 is a reporting mechanism, not an automatic method of release for an individual in detention, but without legal safeguards, detention for whom it poses a greater risk of medical harm will almost certainly be guaranteed. This is not merely conjecture: the High Court has found a number of breaches of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to the detention of severely mentally ill people and found that continued detention would have amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.

If the Bill proceeds in its current form, what weight will the Home Secretary give to medical evidence from professionals, given that detention decisions will be entirely at her discretion and withheld from independent scrutiny? The ability to judicially review the lawfulness and reasonableness of decisions to detain is particularly important given recent independent evidence showing that safeguarding policies are not consistently followed. This concern has been raised often by the independent chief inspector.

Given that the Government have been honest in accepting that improvements are still to be made to safeguarding systems to identify the most medically vulnerable in detention, I ask the Minister why disqualifying those with a clinical report from judicially reviewing their detention was deemed an acceptable risk. Stephen Shaw labelled the adults at risk policy in his progress report as “a work in progress”. How will the Government ensure that this further progress is not halted entirely by the Bill?

Amendment 78 would make an exception to the general ouster of judicial review during the first 28 days of detention where a person has been the subject of a report from a medical practitioner. To be clear, this is where the Home Office has evidence that a person’s health is likely to be injuriously affected by continued detention, they have suicidal intentions or there is concern that they may have been a victim of torture. It is hard to conceive of a more vulnerable grouping, where the stakes are higher, when considering detention.

I fear that preventing any means of legal challenge for those in a very dangerous and precarious medical state could be a disaster waiting to happen. I therefore agree with the Royal College of Psychiatrists that:

“The Bill is not compatible with the fundamental medical principle of doing no harm”.
 

For that reason I urge the Government to consider the amendment tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the safeguarding issues it highlights with due care.

Baroness Neuberger (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of University College London Hospitals Foundation NHS Trust and of Whittington Health NHS Trust which, given what we are discussing now, is perhaps relevant. There is very little that I can add to the extraordinarily powerful arguments just made by the right reverend Prelate, but I do want to say two things. One is about torture. If someone has been the victim of torture and medical professionals make a report to the Home Secretary to that fact, that person ought to be able to appeal against detention in those first 28 days. The reason for that—for those who have not spent time with those who have been victims of torture—is the very considerable terror that many of those people experience if detained in any way. If they experience that form of terror, they are then very likely to be suicidal and in a situation within detention where the sort of holistic treatment they would need is simply not available.

The second point is about young people particularly who have come to these shores and have experienced detention in their own countries. They have perhaps not been tortured but have been detained for very long periods away from families and friends. I have talked to quite a lot of them because we have a small family charity that provides access to education for young asylum seekers who have no recourse to public funds. They would say that they are unable to cope with being confined in small spaces because of their experience in their home countries. That is another group of people, not necessary those who have been tortured but those who already have either a defined mental illness or a predisposition to one, who ought to be given a protection in those first 28 days.

I very much hope that the Minister will be able to answer the points made by the right reverend Prelate and these two additional points and allow those people who have a medical report to make an appeal for judicial review within their first 28 days.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I was going to make a speech in support of Amendment 78, to which I have added my name, but the case has been made so well by the right reverend Prelate and by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, that I simply say that I hope the Minister will take note of what has been said and look kindly on this amendment. I am sure everyone will be very pleased that I am now going to sit down.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, after the powerful speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, I feel rather sad to return to the technical detail. But a point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, that I thought was worth addressing, particularly in the context of the Bar Council briefing. The noble Baroness asked: where is the purchase for the courts to take action? The Bar Council briefing has some really interesting reflections on this. It says that the Bill is unlawful by design and incompatible with the constitutional principle of the rule of law because the law forbids

“the exercise of state power in an arbitrary, oppressive or abusive manner; and that principle ‘cannot be set aside on utilitarian grounds’”.

None the less, the Bar Council says that the courts are

“unlikely to consider that these foundational constitutional principles could alter the government’s intended operation of the Act”,

and that the courts will see that Parliament has decided to trade off the fundamental rights of the rule of law against the Government’s utilitarian principles.

The Minister does not seem to like me cross-referring to other Bills, but I will cross-refer to the Law Society briefing and the Financial Services and Markets Bill, on which we have had a huge debate about the Government’s intention to make the UK’s financial sector competitive. The Law Society says that our global reputation for upholding the rule of law underpins all of our attractiveness to global investment.

02:30:00

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, we have heard some powerful speeches on these amendments. Those powerful messages underline that this clause restrains the courts’ ability to protect individual liberty. When the Minister replies he should pay attention to the issues that have been raised across the Chamber concerning the individual liberties of very vulnerable people—the most vulnerable people.

These provisions risk creating a situation where there is no meaningful avenue for judicial scrutiny of the exercise of the power to detain for the first 28 days of detention, and then only extremely limited scrutiny thereafter. Clause 12(3) and (4) are particularly significant because the majority of immigration detention is relatively short term. In 2022, 73% of the 20,446 people detained under immigration powers were held for 28 days or less, and 49% were held for seven days or less. The removal of the right to bail or the right to High Court review is therefore a de facto denial of the right to access the court for the majority of detainees and gives rise to a serious risk of the abuse of detention powers. This is a radical development. It aims at significantly expanding the power of administrative detention, denying or curtailing judicial scrutiny and drastically reducing remedies to challenge unlawful or unjustified detention.

It is obvious to me, and I expect to many Members of the Committee, that a large increase in detention facilities will be required as a result of the Bill, with many more people, including asylum seekers, children, pregnant women, and survivors of torture and trafficking, experiencing the devastating suffering and harm that detention is known to inflict, which can, in some cases, be permanent. There are no exceptions for medical vulnerabilities. I hope we will now receive some response to the amendments concerning those issues.

As we have heard, the Bar Council is seriously doubtful whether Clause 12 is compatible with Article 5(4) of the ECHR. Once again, I hope the Minister will tell us how Clause 12 is compatible with Article 5(4). Again, we have heard that it interferes with the principles of the rule of law and the separation of powers—something that we as a Parliament, standing between the Government, the Executive and the judiciary, should be very mindful of maintaining.

I have a series of questions. First, what evidence does the Minister have that there was a need to limit the power of judges in this way? The purpose appears to be to allow detention to endure in circumstances in which a court would likely conclude that detention could no longer reasonably be justified, but I would like to hear the Government’s evidence of why there was a need to increase this power.

Secondly, what is the justification for extending from eight days to 28 days the period in which an individual can seek judicial review of their detention? Again, we are trying to understand what lies behind this. What is the Government’s purpose?

It has long been acknowledged that vulnerable people in particular, including torture victims, should not be detained. Although not effectively enforced, the agreement has been there. What has changed that makes the Secretary of State now believe that it is justified to detain people in that category? Has the Secretary of State had any conversations with those operating detention centres about their willingness to support the detention of children, families and vulnerable people, not people in the current detention cohort? What training will be provided for those who work with such increasingly vulnerable detainees?

I think that all the speeches that we have heard have, once again, serious implications, not just for the individuals concerned but for the constitution of our country. I look forward to the Minister’s replies to try to make some sense of this.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, this group is about Clause 12, which severely restricts the jurisdiction of the High Court to review the lawfulness of the first 28 days of detention of people held under the new power in Clause 10 and a decision of the Home Secretary to refuse bail in that period. Currently, someone can challenge their detention through judicial review by arguing that the detention period breaches Hardial Singh principles or Home Office policy.

I thought that it might be useful, partly for myself, to read out those Hardial Singh principle. There are four of them. The first is:

“The Secretary of State must intend to deport the person and can only use the power to detain for that purpose”.
 

The second is:

“The deportee may only be detained for a period that is reasonable in all the circumstances”.
 

The third is:

“If, before the expiry of the reasonable period, it becomes apparent that the Secretary of State will not be able to effect deportation within that reasonable period, he should not seek to exercise the power of detention”.
 

The fourth is:

“The Secretary of State should act with reasonable diligence and expedition to effect removal.”
 

These principles can be used in both public and private law. There is no mention of a deterrent effect in those founding principles.

I was reflecting on my role as a magistrate when I make bail decisions and when I sentence people. When I sentence people, I take into account the deterrent effect in determining the appropriate sentence, which may be something I say when I give my reasons for sentencing somebody for an offence. However, when I make a bail decision, the deterrent effect is not a factor that I take into account. There may well be an analogy with what we are talking about in this different context.

My noble friend Lord Bach raised important questions in introducing this group and I look forward to the Minister’s answers to those questions. I could have quoted from the Bar Council, but the noble Baronesses, Lady Ludford and Lady Bennett, did so very effectively. I thought that the intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, supported by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark and my noble friend Lady Lister, was particularly poignant, given her experience of hospitals, people with suicidal ideation and the increased vulnerability of the people we are dealing with. That point was picked up by the noble Lord, Lord German.

look forward to the Minister’s response to this group. We are talking about extremely vulnerable people. I know that this is rather abstract in the law and how the law is interpreted, but I think that the whole Committee is conscious of the vulnerability of these people.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, this has been a thoughtful and interesting short debate. I was particularly grateful for the speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark.

Clause 12 will prevent the First-tier Tribunal from granting bail, where an individual is detained under the new statutory powers, for the first 28 days of detention, and it will place a restriction on someone challenging their detention during this period by way of judicial review. If I may, I will try to clear the fog that somehow descended during the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, on the last group, on how the ouster works in Clause 12. Perhaps I could invite the noble Baroness to look at Clause 12. She will see that Clause 12(4) inserts into Schedule 10 to the Immigration Act 2016, on provisions relating to bail, what will be new paragraph 3A. Sub-paragraph (2) provides the ouster. So the second part of the sentence states that

“the decision is final and is not liable to be questioned or set aside in any court or tribunal”.

Of course, that is prefaced by the words before the comma:

“In relation to detention during the relevant period”.
 

Turning the page, we see that “relevant period” for these purposes is defined in sub-paragraph (6) as

“the period of 28 days beginning with the date on which the person’s detention under the provision mentioned in sub-paragraph (1) began”.

While we are here, we can also see in sub-paragraph (5) the clarity of the drafting, which makes it clear that the ouster clause that the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, identified, which is of course contained in sub-paragraphs (2) and (3), does not affect the right of any person to

“apply for a writ of habeas corpus”

or its equivalent in Scotland. I hope that that clarifies the issue that arose in the last group.

Amendment 77, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, seeks to remove that general ouster. The use of detention is an integral means of ensuring that the Home Secretary can comply with her statutory duty under the Bill to make arrangements for removal. However, we should remember that a detained person can apply to the Home Secretary for bail at any time and can also apply for their release through an application to the High Court for a writ of habeas corpus. There will be no restriction on an individual’s ability to access damages in respect of unlawful detention in relation to the 28-day period.

I turn to the issue of preventing the First-tier Tribunal from granting bail in the first 28 days. Amendment 79, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, seeks to increase the existing four-month automatic referral for consideration of a grant of First-tier Tribunal bail to 28 days. Amendments 76C and 79A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, similarly require an automatic referral for consideration of a grant of First-tier Tribunal bail at 28 days and every 28 days thereafter.

The existing four-month automatic bail referral acts as an additional safeguard and does not change the fact that those who fall under the duty can apply for bail from the Home Secretary at any time and from the tribunal from 28 days. An application for habeas corpus, as I said, can be made at any point after an individual is detained. The scheme is designed to enable those within it to be promptly removed from the United Kingdom. Consequently, any period of detention will be kept as short as possible and can be only for a timeframe that is reasonably necessary. But holding people in detention is necessary to make sure that they are successfully removed under the scheme.

Our detention policy, which will be updated to reflect the new powers in the Bill, is clear that detention must be reviewed at a minimum of every 28 days or where there is a material and/or significant change in circumstances. It is important to remember that the Bill provides, in line with the current common-law position, that an individual may be detained only for a period that is reasonable, with reference to the specific statutory purpose for which they are detained. In response to a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, legal aid funded advice would be available to detainees through the detention duty advice scheme.

02:45:00

Amendment 78, spoken to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, would provide exceptions to the general ouster of judicial review during the 28 days of detention for a person for whom the Secretary of State has received a medical report evidencing their vulnerability to suffering harm in detention, including victims of torture or trafficking, pregnant women and those with mental health conditions.

The Home Office recognises that some groups of people can be at particular risk of harm in immigration detention and it already operates a bespoke policy that specifically considers all levels of vulnerability in immigration detention. As I said during the debates on previous groups, the policy on adults at risk in immigration detention, in an updated form, will continue to apply where detention decisions are made for those in the scope of the Bill, including where a medical report has been provided. In accordance with the policy, vulnerable people will be detained only where the evidence of vulnerability in their case is outweighed by immigration considerations. I assure the right reverend Prelate that this balancing process will not change as a result of the Bill.

The provisions in Clause 12 provide an appropriate and proportionate balance between effective detention powers and judicial oversight of continued detention and I accordingly invite the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, I will of course withdraw my amendment. This has been an excellent debate and I have to say that, were it not for the late hour, it would have been even better. This is a substantial issue. I am most grateful, as I am sure the Committee is, to the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, for her contribution and, of course, to the right reverend Prelate. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 76C withdrawn.

Amendments 77 to 79 not moved.

Clause 12 agreed.

Amendment 79A not moved.

Clause 13: Disapplication of duty to consult Independent Family Returns Panel

Debate on whether Clause 13 should stand part of the Bill.

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, the purpose of this stand part debate is to discover the rationale behind the Government’s disapplying the existing duty to consult the independent family returns panel prior to a decision to detain or make removal arrangements. The independent family returns panel was established to provide advice to the Home Office on safeguarding and welfare plans for the removal of families who do not have permission to remain in the UK. The IFRP comprises professionals with a range of relevant experience across the professions of social care, education, police and medical doctors. They look at the safeguarding and welfare needs of families with children who face an ensured return.

Removing the independent safeguard prior to the detention of children or families with children again increases the risk of arbitrary detention, without adequate regard to the best interests of the child, contrary to the duty in Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 to treat the welfare of children who are in the UK as the primary factor in exercising  immigration functions. In its evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody gave the view that

“the removal of this independent oversight … risks the safety of children during potentially dangerous enforced removals”.

The questions I have for the Minister are, first, why did the Home Office consider it necessary to remove this duty to consult, where the panel is purely advisory and has no decision-making capacity? Secondly, if the Bill is enacted and the time limit on the detention of children is brought into force, the IFRP will have an even greater role in ensuring that the welfare and safeguarding of children is properly taken into account in their detention. How can the disapplication of the duty to consult the IFRP be justified in this context?

Thirdly, the IFRP was introduced in the wake of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, when the Government introduced Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, which replicates Section 11 of the Children Act 2004. We already have a sense of the duties which Section 55 of the 2009 Act placed on public bodies to carry out their functions. This is a case where we could very much do with an independent assessment of what the needs are. How does the Home Office propose to meet its duties under the principle of “every child matters”, and under Section 55, in relation to children subject to removal and detention if it gets rid of the expert advice it has been receiving to enable it to do this?

Fourthly, what measures are being put in place to ensure that similar protections are in place once the IFRP’s work ceases? The Home Office’s fact sheet on detention states that the Bill limits

“the duty to consult the Family Returns Panel in relation to the detention of accompanied children”.

Does the Minister acknowledge that this is misleading with regard to what Clause 13 will do? For example, is Clause 13 much broader than what is stated in the fact sheet?

Fifthly, the role of the IFRP is to ensure that any use of detention is for a limited period and only that which is necessary. Given its absence, what measures will the Secretary of State have in place to ensure that detention is used only for a period that is necessary for a child’s removal? What timescale does the Secretary of State envisage to be reasonable to detain a child for the purpose of removal?

Finally, without the advice of the specialist panel, what measures will the Secretary of State put in place to support children not only while they are detained and removed but in the event that they are released after the traumatising experience of a period in detention? Those are a number of probing questions we would like answered in order to judge the impact of this clause.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I was pleased to add my name to the notice opposing Clause 13 standing part, to which the noble Lord, Lord German, has spoken. It challenges the disapplication of the Home Secretary’s duty to consult the Independent Family Returns Panel regarding the families covered by this Bill.

The panel’s website says that, importantly, its role is to ensure that the return process

“considers the best interest of children and the welfare of a family”.

According to the Children’s Commissioner, it plays a vital role in safeguarding families and children from harm while awaiting removal by ensuring that they are returned to a country that is safe and can meet their needs.

As the noble Lord said, the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody has also voiced its concern. The panel noted in its evidence to the JCHR that, when asked about this clause, the Prime Minister said that

“the Home Office can do that itself”,

betraying a complete lack of understanding of the meaning and value of independence: it is the Independent Family Returns Panel. It is akin to saying that Herod can just as well take responsibility for the best interest of infants. As the Children’s Commissioner has asked, how exactly will the Government ensure that there is appropriate scrutiny of the plans for the removal of a child? Can the Minister explain, please?

In its unanswered letter to the Home Secretary, which I mentioned in an earlier group, the panel asked her to clarify why the Bill proposes to remove this duty and whether she will publish any risk assessment she has completed. Will the Minister please answer the question now? Of course, first, can he tell us whether a risk assessment has indeed been carried out and if not, why not?

The answer to the question why in fact came in a Written Answer to Caroline Nokes, MP, from the Immigration Minister. He said that the duty to consult is being removed

“in order to swiftly remove those families who fall for removal under the … Bill”.

He said a dialogue was continuing with the panel and that it

“will continue to play an important role in the removal of families with children who do not fall within the remit”

of this Bill. While there may be some families who came here before this March who will be removed, it is difficult to see that we are talking about many families here. Can the Minister explain to us the assumption about the panel’s future workload underlying this comment?

I fear that once again, the best interests of children are being treated as of secondary rather than primary importance, this time in the name of speedy removal. In the words of the Children’s Commissioner, this clause

“must be removed from the Bill”.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, this group is about Clause 13, which removes the safeguard of the duty to consult with the Independent Family Returns Panel for accompanied and unaccompanied children. This increases the risk of decisions being made without adequate regard to the best interests of children, and on an arbitrary basis. The Independent Family Returns Panel is designed to ensure that the best interests of children are properly taken into account when decisions to remove and detain families with children are considered.

The noble Lord, Lord German, set out six clear questions and my noble friend Lady Lister added further questions. I am not sure there is much I can add, other than to say that the Government’s reason for doing it—which my noble friend just read out and which was given in response to a Question from Caroline Nokes in the other place—to make the whole process quicker, seems to value speed above the interests of children. I would be interested to hear what the noble Lord has to say in answer to the questions.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, Clause 13 disapplies the duty to consult the Independent Family Returns Panel in respect of those families who fall to be removed under the provisions of the Bill. The Independent Family Returns Panel provides independent advice to the Home Office on how best to safeguard children’s welfare during a family’s enforced return. The panel has no decision-making responsibility, as the noble Lord, Lord German, observed, in respect of whether a family is returned. Instead, the panel considers how the specific welfare needs of the children and family are met and comments on the suitability of detaining a family in pre-departure accommodation pending their removal from the- United Kingdom.

While I recognise the valuable role performed by the Independent Family Returns Panel, a key feature of the scheme provided for in this Bill is that those who arrive in the UK illegally are promptly returned to their home country or removed to a safe third country. It follows, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, observed, that the intent is underlined by the fact that we need to remove all barriers to such prompt removals, and it is therefore necessary to disapply the duty to consult the panel in the case of those families to be removed pursuant to the duty in Clause 2.

03:00:00

That said, as Mr Jenrick said in answer to Caroline Nokes, we remain in open dialogue with the Independent Family Returns Panel about the role it can have in the removal of those families with children who fall within the remit of the Bill. I remind the Committee that the Independent Family Returns Panel will continue to play an important role in the removal of families with children who do not fall within the remit of the Bill—for example, those who are to be removed having overstayed their leave to remain.

All that having been said, I ask that Clause 13 stand part of the Bill.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I specifically asked the Minister what the assumption is about how large the panel’s workload will be. Are we talking about it advising on many families or very few? I also asked about the question raised in the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody’s letter to the Home Secretary, which still has not been answered. The noble Lord, Lord German, had a whole string of questions that I do not think have been answered. I do not necessarily expect the Minister to answer them now, given that it is 3 am, but perhaps he could write to the Committee with the answers to all the questions we have asked.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Of course, my officials and I will look through Hansard and make sure that we have answered all the questions, although I think I addressed all the key questions that I was asked. I will check that.

The panel workload question is dependent on the extent of family crossings and illegal entries. That will predicate the workload. The dialogue with the Independent Family Returns Panel and the role it can have on removal is progressing, but there can be no hard and fast figures about what its workload might be.

Lord German (LD)
The one question that particularly interests me, which has not yet been answered, is what provision the Home Office has made to deal with the sort of advice that previously came from the independent panel. Given the mix of people involved, a range of skills are needed to inform the Secretary of State’s decision. The Minister may want to write to me about this, but what provisions are being put in place to assist in providing advice to the Secretary of State?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am certainly happy to write to the noble Lord about that but, as I say, the Independent Family Returns Panel will still have a role. It simply will not have a duty or obligation, as at present, but I will write to the noble Lord on that.

Clause 13 agreed.

Clause 14: Electronic devices etc

Debate on whether Clause 14 should stand part of the Bill.

Lord German (LD)
I think this will be a very short debate on how the Government intend to deal with the confiscation of mobile phones from those who are seeking support in entering this country. As the Minister may recollect, there was a court case last year which had two principal features. The first was that it was declared illegal to confiscate the phones, the basis for which was that there was no legal standing in the country’s law to permit that to happen.

More importantly, the second part of the decision of the High Court was that the Government were also wrong to try to extract information that was concealed behind PINs on phones. Think about the situation faced by migrants entering this country. As we all know, they have had tortuous journeys and their only means of communication with family, friends or anyone in their own language is their mobile phone. That mobile phone is people’s lifeline.

Therefore, it is important to understand what the confiscation is intended to find out. Is the intention to go through all the material contained on the phone? Is it simply to ensure that they have no means of communication? These are matters which the High Court determined were more important than simply that of confiscation. So do the Government have in mind what they want to do with the handsets and mobile phones they are going to confiscate from those being put in detention? If so, how do they propose to find a route which allows them to do it beyond the decision of the High Court last year?

Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I have Amendment 79B in this group. When I drafted it, it did not stem from the proceedings and findings of the court to which my noble friend has just referred. Like him, I am aware of how many asylum seekers have contacts stored on their phone. If the phone is retained—and it appears that many have been retained for a long time and that not every phone has been returned to its owner—and they cannot get at the contacts, they are not able to get in touch with their family to let them know where they are. This is an extremely mild amendment that merely provides for arrangements so that contact can be made.

There must be people who are even more of a dinosaur than me, because I do understand that the mobile phone is a central element of modern life. It is not a luxury. I am never comfortable about having the whole of my life recorded on a tiny device. I do it, and I am reassured because my contacts are also available through my computer and so on, and we have the luxury of having technical support to help us retrieve what sometimes seems to go astray. I well understand why an asylum seeker—to the extent that I can put myself in an asylum seeker’s shoes—regards the phone as essential. Cutting off contact with family at home piles cruelty on cruelty.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I rise briefly to support noble Lords who have spoken to their amendments, and I totally endorse what has been said. Crucially, we want to hear from the Minister what the purpose of the searches is. I remind the Committee that these are not criminal suspects or criminal defendants, let alone convicted people. They are, on one analysis, illegal migrants because they came in an irregular fashion, but on another analysis some of them are refugees; none the less, they are not in the criminal justice system. We understand the purposes of searches in that context, and we have to understand the purpose here.

I wholly agree with the noble baroness, Lady Hamwee, because we have seen what it does to victims in the criminal justice system, rape complainants in particular, when, for the purpose of investigating crimes against them, their mobile phones are taken. It is devastating because a lot of people do not even keep notes of their loved ones’ phone numbers any more. The name is in the phone next to the number, so to be deprived of one’s electronic device for any length of time is crippling, even for us. We probably feel like detainees in this Committee at the moment but, generally speaking, we are not in these people’s state of vulnerability. We need to hear from the Minister about the purpose of this, and about the protections for these people. We are talking as if these people have no rights at all. They are going to be detained for 28 days without the possibility of bail. In our system, it is only suspected terrorists who get held for 28 days without charge. These people are being robbed of their dignity and humanity, and it seems to me that this is just another aspect of the same thing.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, extremely briefly, I wish to make a point about the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. It is about the other people who are being punished by the seizure of these devices and the loss of their contact details. We all know how many tragedies and disasters have happened, where people drowned in oceans or suffocated in the back of lorries. Think about all the families and friends who these refugees are then not able to contact to say that they are alive. That is what we are doing to those families who are left without knowing what has happened to their loved one.

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, it seems that the reason the Government are putting these provisions in the Bill is to try to respond to the High Court decision in 2022, which the noble Lord, Lord German, referred to. The fundamental question was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and by my noble friend: what is the purpose behind this? We all know how important our communication devices are and how much more important they must be for people in these situations. However, I will say that, on the trip my noble friend Lord Coaker and I made to Manston a couple of weeks ago, one of the officials we were dealing with pointed out that access to mobile phones aided youths to abscond and to be taken away. When we were talking, that was a concern of his because these youths are going missing, and it is through the use of their mobile phones. Nevertheless, it is for the Minister to say what the purpose behind this is, given that they are such vital pieces of equipment.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, Clause. 14 and Schedule 2 are included to ensure that we have the necessary broader powers to tackle and prevent illegal migration. I am going to address head-on the questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord German, as to the purpose of these provisions.

These powers enable immigration officers to search for and seize electronic devices, such as mobile phones, provided certain conditions are met. They allow for such devices to be retained for as long as necessary. They also allow for the information stored on them to be accessed and examined, and for any relevant information to be copied, retained and used for any purpose relating to a function of the Home Secretary in relation to immigration, asylum, nationality or a function of an immigration officer.

The noble Lord, Lord German, suggested that this is a confiscation power; that is not the case. Mobile phones and other electronic devices contain a wealth of information which can directly or indirectly facilitate the confirmation of a person’s identity and an understanding of their activities. They can therefore assist in determining a person’s immigration status or right to be in the UK, as well as in developing a better understanding more broadly of the wider illegal migration picture, providing evidence which can be used in criminal prosecutions of the people smugglers.

We all know that mobile telephones contain a wealth of data relating not just to the owner of the phone but to where that phone has been and who they have been with—all of which can be used to build up an intelligence picture which can facilitate criminal prosecutions. While a number of powers enabling immigration officers to seize electronic devices already exist, these new powers seek to address the gaps in the current powers and provide immigration officers with additional tools—vital, I suggest, to investigate, disrupt and prevent the dangerous crossings of the channel and other dangerous forms of illegal migration.

03:15:00

Amendment 79B, put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, would have the effect that electronic devices cannot be retained

“unless the immigration officer makes arrangements for the relevant person to record the contact details of such persons as they request and enables the person to make contact with such persons for the primary purpose of informing them of the person’s whereabouts”.

I thank the noble Baroness for this amendment, which raises an important issue. Given that these are new powers, I reassure her that associated guidance will be developed to underpin their use. This guidance will consider how access will be provided to an individual’s information, including the contact details stored on the device.

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I am conscious of the words used around accessing these mobile phones, but the court ruled that you could not demand the PIN number from the owner. I do not know whether there are now technical ways by which you can bypass the PIN number on Apple phones—I have no idea whether that is possible. Is that the process being made legal here, rather than the demanding of the PIN number?

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I think the noble Lord is referring to the case of HM. In that case, the court was evaluating whether the practice of taking phones from those arriving at Western Jet Foil, under a certain statutory power, was within that power. The court held that it was not. That is really the long and short of that case. These are fresh powers. The case of HM was decided on the powers that we used in that particular case. These are a new suite of powers. I suggest that it is a fresh source of intelligence that can be used to tackle the crimes we see being committed by the people smugglers and to prevent illegal migration.

Returning to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, it would not be wise, in our view, to put provisions in the Bill similar to this amendment, given the need to cater to the wide range of circumstances in which a relevant person or relevant article may be encountered. Additionally, it will be important fully to consider any potential perverse consequences that could arise from implementing such a measure in the wrong way. For example, if a person was to know that their mobile phone was going to be seized and retained and that they could access the contact list once more beforehand, they could use this as an opportunity to delete important evidence of criminal offending. We therefore consider that the best way to address this issue is through guidance. For those reasons, I commend Clause 14 and Schedule 2 to the Committee, and hope that the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I will withdraw my amendment. I probably do not understand all the complexities related to this, but I am very uneasy at the prospect of the retention of the device and the information on it without that being subject to the sort of arrangements that I have referred to. We will not have an opportunity to debate the guidance, unless it is in regulations, which I do not suppose it will be. Let me make it quite clear that I think that the sine qua non of the retention of those two aspects should be subject to, and not possible unless there have been, arrangements to treat asylum seekers as human beings and not the criminals that they are being cast as now. That was rather the way that the Minister was portraying them: as suspects who will make dodgy use of their own phones, contacts and information. The primary consideration is extracting the information, as if they were criminals and not victims.

Clause 14 agreed.

Schedule 2: Electronic devices etc

Amendment 79B not moved.

Schedule 2 agreed.

Clause 15: Accommodation and other support for unaccompanied migrant children

Amendments 79C and 80 not moved.

Debate on whether Clause 15 should stand part of the Bill.

Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, it is 3.20 am, and we are about to start discussing the accommodation and services for unaccompanied children seeking asylum—some of the most vulnerable children in the world. They will have experienced great trauma on their journey to the UK and will have many needs which should be taken into consideration in terms of where they are accommodated, their rights under the Children Act, and their absolute right to have all the services and protections afforded to them that corporate parenting brings.

The Children’s Commissioner has made it clear very loudly that the Home Office should not be provided with the legal power to accommodate children, in Clause 15, or to direct a looked-after child to be returned to Home Office accommodation, in Clause 16. The Children’s Commissioner is clear that every child should be living in a setting that can provide them with care under Section 20 of the Children Act. The Children’s Commissioner says that it is not clear, under the Bill, whether the Home Office-run accommodation will be registered as a children’s home and will therefore be subject to the Ofsted inspection regime. The first question I ask the Minister is: will the accommodations that will be provided by the Home Office be Ofsted-inspected, and will they be registered as children’s homes?

The provisions in Clause 15 are quite wide:

“The Secretary of State may provide, or arrange for the provision of, accommodation in England for unaccompanied children in England”.
 

I ask the Minister: under what circumstances will such accommodation be provided? How long is the maximum time that is envisaged that a child will be held in such accommodation?

Clause 15(3) is quite telling, in terms of the provisions in the Children Act and of what may or may not be provided in these accommodations. It says:

“While a child is residing in accommodation for unaccompanied migrant children, the Secretary of State may provide, or arrange for the provision of, other types of support to the child”.
 

How does that clause fit with the legal duties under the Children Act 1989? I do not know which Minister will answer, but the Front Bench should be listening, because there are provisions which the Home Office will have to take into consideration. How does Clause 15(3) sit with the legal duties of the Children Act, particularly the Section 20(3) provisions on what should be provided for accommodation? What minimum standards will be provided in such accommodation?

My other worry about Clause 16 is the potential for children to become pawns on a chessboard. The Government and the Home Office are talking about children being moved between local authority accommodation and this new type of accommodation. Once a child is in the care of a local authority, under what circumstances does the Home Office expect that child to leave the care of the local authority, with all the provisions that the Children Act and corporate parenting bring for a child under local authority care? If they are moved back to unaccompanied migrant children’s accommodation, will the provisions that they had in local authority care under the Children Act still be afforded to them?

I am not clear under what circumstances the Home Office would wish to bring a child out of local authority care, other than potentially removing the child to their parents for a short period or back to their home country or to what the Government call a safe third country. Can the Minister explain in what circumstances a child would be moved by the Secretary of State to Home Office accommodation and away from local authority accommodation? If a child was in Home Office accommodation, would a local authority employee be allowed to enter to see whether the corporate parent provisions of the Children Act applied and, if so, to remove that child, or would the Home Office have the final say on whether such a child was removed?

I am asking these detailed questions because the Committee needs to understand exactly what the Home Office is thinking. All it seems to be doing is putting in law the ridiculous situation we have at the moment, where unaccompanied children are residing in hotels. It seems to be finally putting into law the mess that has been created in those hotels. I see no other reason for doing this. As we discussed earlier, there is detention in the Bill, in case somebody is being removed, so I am not at all clear what this provision is for. This accommodation seems absolutely vital to deal with unaccompanied migrant children. I think most people in the Committee will be clear that once a child is under the care of a local authority, that is where they should stay.

Under what circumstances would the Government seek to get the information they require from a local authority? It is quite interesting that certain information is specified in Clause 17(2)(a), but Clause 17(2)(b) says that

“such other information as may be specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”

may be required from a local authority. Other than the information specified in Clause 17(2)(a), what information would the Home Office require? What does it think is missing from Clause 17(2)(a) that it will require under Clause 17(2)(b), and for what purpose would information over and above that specified in Clause 17(2)(a) be used?

The other amendments in this group that I and others have put our names to, particularly Amendment 83, would ensure that that nothing in the Bill will undermine the Children Act 1989. With the current provision of accommodation, particularly hotel accommodation, before a child is put under the care of the local authority there is no corporate parent, and the Home Office does not have corporate parent responsibility. In the Explanatory Notes it is clearly stated that it will not have corporate parent responsibility and that the Government are not going to change the provisions of the Children Act 1989. Therefore, when a child is in this Home Office accommodation, who will be their corporate parent and what provisions under the Children Act 1989 will they not be afforded if they are under the care of a local authority?

03:30:00

It is clear that, at the moment, when children are in Home Office hotel accommodation, they are not afforded the full protection of the Children Act 1989. That is very clear indeed. If the Minister says that they are, the local authority will be able to enter that accommodation and, if it decides that it is not in the interests of the child, it will be able to remove that child. That is very clear. If the local authority is not able to do that, the full provisions of the Children Act 1989 are not complied with. This amendment tries to make sure that every single provision that is in the Children Act 1989 that protects the rights and needs of the child is in the Bill.

Amendment 83A, the final amendment, on the guidance and welfare of children, is also signed by my noble friend Lady Brinton, so I will leave it to her to speak to that.

With those questions and that general overview of these clauses and amendments, I wait with interest to hear the detailed responses of the Minister.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, about the way the Home Office has been looking after unaccompanied children—or not. I share the concerns that were expressed in this Committee by my noble friend Lord Touhig the other day in no uncertain terms. We think that about 100 children have gone missing from Home Office care, which is appalling negligence on the part of the Home Department.

I slightly smell a rat with Clause 15, because it is now creating a power for the Secretary of State to arrange accommodation. We are very fortunate to have, even at this early hour of a new day, a law officer answering on behalf of the Government. Does it mean that the Government have discovered that in fact they have been acting in breach of the law to date? We are now creating a new power for the Secretary of State to provide or arrange for this accommodation for unaccompanied children. Is that because currently, under the law as it stands, there is no such power? In other words, are the Government currently in breach of the Children Act? I think this Committee would probably be grateful for an answer to that question.

Whether or not the Government are in breach, of course it is open to Ministers to cite parliamentary sovereignty and say, “We are now going to override the Children Act with this new legislation and discriminate between unaccompanied British children and lawfully resident children, and these illegal entrants”. That is all very well except that, as was put so well in Committee not that many days ago by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the Children Act implements the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which cannot just be trumped, even by parliamentary sovereignty. That convention, like other human rights conventions, does not allow discrimination between this child and that child. Their best interests come from the fact that they are children and are little human beings, and they cannot be treated so callously.

I particularly want to know what the legal basis has been for holding these children in hotels, losing them and, as far as I can tell, doing nothing about finding them, such is the responsibility, and care and concern, of the Home Office with its crocodile tears for these poor people who have been smuggled by the people smugglers. If people are illegal entrants and must be punished, I do not think the children should be punished. We have real concerns.

I hope that this is the last group, but I am conscious that this was the target group for yesterday and there may be a new target for today that I am not aware of. I am thinking that this might be the last group. I want to speak in support of Amendment 81A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about protecting medical confidentiality. It is yet another amendment that noble Lords have put down to restore some basic decency and humanity to these vulnerable people who have had so much stripped away by their circumstances and will now have so much more of their human dignity stripped away by way of this legislation.

Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I have signed Amendment 83A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Scriven, and will come back to that. I am very grateful for the help of the General Medical Council and the British Medical Association. 

My Amendment 81A in Clause 17 is a probing amendment to understand the information that the Secretary of State may require from local authorities, including health information, and registered individuals looking after an unaccompanied migrant child. Clause 17(2)(b) refers to

“such other information as may be specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”.

That is so general that it could include requests for a migrant child’s health data. I can see some eyebrows being raised on the Front Bench, but I am particularly pleased that the Chief Whip is in her place, as she may feel a sense of déjà vu. The previous Home Secretary demanded similar access to information held by certain public authorities, including doctors and local authorities, which included patients’ confidential personal data, during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. This then reappeared in the Bill that became the Health and Care Act of last year. Both Bills were amended, and satisfaction was given by the Minister at the Dispatch Box, who made it absolutely plain that the Home Secretary and the Home Office could not demand any information that overrode the confidentiality rules that doctors and other registered professionals must follow.

The General Medical Council, in its regulation of doctors, sets ethics frameworks by which they and only they can release confidential data without the consent of the patient, usually at the request of the police or some other body because somebody else’s life is at risk. The problem with how it was framed in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was that it was so general. When I probed, it could have related to witnesses at scenes of crimes, or to somebody connected, but not to somebody who was just suspected of a crime. So I was really grateful to the then Home Office Minister for her assistance in making this happen.

The difficulty with Clause 17 is that we must protect the data of that patient—in this case, the migrant child —as confidential to them and to the healthcare professionals who look after them, for example the child’s social worker or the care worker where they are residing, since all three of them may have access to shared care records. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Markham, is not in his place, because shared care records are very important in the improving of services to looked-after children, to ensure that all those who need to know have access to the relevant information. We are moving into a world where we have social workers, the social care providers who are looking after looked-after children, the doctors and, imminently, pharmacists, because they too will be able to provide some medical care under changes that are happening.

All of those professionals are bound by confidentiality rules. The problem with the text at the moment is that there is no boundary on any information that the Secretary of State might demand. Can the Minister tell us whether the corporate parent—the local authority—or the child’s social care provider currently has any discretion on whether and when to share personal information? Obviously, I am asking particularly about health-related information, but I suspect it also raises a wider issue about the non-health information held in a child’s shared care record.

There is another perspective to this too. Social workers, in a similar way to doctors and other health professionals, depend entirely on establishing a relationship of trust with their clients, and they may owe them a common-law professional duty of confidence. If this is the case, the provision could undermine that relationship of trust and interfere with these duties, which would be highly problematic. It would place social workers in a very different position to health professionals, because social workers work for the local authority, and it is the local authority that the Secretary of State is asking for that information.

At present, shared care records are controlled by health integrated care boards. However, this controllership and the composition of ICBs is naturally subject to change, depending on the will of government—it seems to change about every two years at the moment. As such, we want to take steps to ensure that, as far as reasonably possible, patients’ data is protected, unless it is given up by a doctor who has consulted the GMC framework and then come to their own decision. Will the Minister agree to have a meeting with me, the General Medical Council and the British Medical Association? I know that a number of civil servants in the Home Office are familiar with this argument. The Information Commissioner’s Office may wish to be present as well: it was at two sets of meetings in the course of the other Bill. This is a very serious matter. It may seem outwith the scope of this Bill, but because of the powers that the Home Secretary is giving herself, it is absolutely not.

I move extremely briefly to Amendment 83A, which is after Clause 20 and picks up a point that is also reflected in Amendment 82 from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. It is designed to ensure that, where there is any transfer of a child between different authorities and any relevant partners interacting with that child, the child is protected from maltreatment and from impairment of their mental and physical health and development and to ensure their well-being and, most importantly, safeguarding.

There is a particular relevance to the issues we were discussing earlier this evening, when we discussed how Kent does not have on its books any of the children who arrive in Kent. They have been allocated all over the country, and the Afghan children, in particular, are now sometimes being moved to their third local authority, but the first local authority they were booked with remains responsible for their care; that does not transfer. As a result, there needs to be something explicit about the work of any other agency and partners looking after these children in their area, as they will be. Perhaps the Minister could respond to that as well.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I will be extremely brief, but I must begin by commending the energy and attention to detail of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, in introducing this group and both noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Brinton. At 3.44 am as I speak, their energy and attention to detail is truly impressive. I shall address just one of the amendments, Amendment 83, which would make it clear that nothing in the Bill would conflict with the duties and responsibilities of the Children Act 1989, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, essentially seeks to deliver the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Since I have quite a lot of Bills to make comparisons with, I am going to make a comparison with the Online Safety Bill. About two weeks ago, we were debating a remarkably similar amendment that was seeking to write into that Bill the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. What I am saying now was being said then: how could anyone not say that a Bill should include the provisions of what the world has agreed are the basic protections that every child should have available to them? How could there be an objection to that?

03:45:00

Let us imagine two 12-year-old children, both of whom have sadly had a whole range of adverse childhood experiences, as the jargon goes. One of them is a child who has grown up in Britain—as we know, sadly there are many children growing up here who are exposed to a number of adverse childhood experiences and end up with no real related responsible adult looking after them—and the other is a refugee child who has arrived in the UK by irregular means. How can they not be covered by the same basic protections? What could be a more awful example of discrimination than that?

Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I thank everybody who has entered into this discussion today. I think I can sum it up very briefly, in the words of my noble friend Lord Scriven: what is this clause for? Given that the clause is only for England, it is not needed in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland—so why is it needed in England?

Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, I have a couple of questions about this important group dealing with the accommodation and support for unaccompanied migrant children. I will try to be specific for the Minister.

First, do these clauses mean an attempt by the Government to end the use as far as possible of hotels for unaccompanied children? As my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti just referred to—it is an interesting point that I also had down—it appears that Clause 15 gives the Home Secretary more power, or a new power, to create accommodation rather than just searching randomly for hotels. Is this giving the Home Secretary the power to build her own accommodation, or more of it, for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children? It would be interesting to know the answer to that.

The other point associated with that is whether the Minister could say something about the relationship between Home Office accommodation as it is now and local authority accommodation, which is where all unaccompanied children should be. It would be helpful for us to have some statistics. How many unaccompanied children are in Home Office accommodation, in hotels, and how many are in local authority accommodation? What are the current figures for that?

My next question is about the point that my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti made. What are the Government doing to stop children going missing? There are 200 missing children—is that still the latest figure, or is there any update on the number of missing children? As I say, the latest figure I think we have all had is 200 children. Is there any update on that? Have any of them been found? It would be helpful if the Minister could say something about the latest statistics on that.

The last question is: what happens to unaccompanied migrant children in terms of accommodation if they are to be removed and they reach the age of 18? What happens to them then as they wait to be removed on attaining that age? I would be interested to know what happens there.

I have asked a few questions. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Bennett, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti made some of the more general points, which are very important. I just wanted to add a couple of specific points and questions about the statistics and the Government’s thinking around this area to add to that.

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, these clauses and amendments bring us on to the provisions regarding the accommodation and support of unaccompanied children.

I will explain briefly what Clauses 15 to 20 seek to do. As the Committee heard in the context of Clauses 2 and 3, unaccompanied children are not subject to the duty to make arrangements for removal while they remain children, but there is a power to remove them in limited circumstances, with decisions being taken on a case-by-case basis. It follows that, if an unaccompanied child is not to be removed before they turn 18, provision needs to be made for their accommodation and care. The Government expect local authorities to meet their statutory obligations to unaccompanied children from the date of arrival, and the Bill does not change that.

However, in answer to the noble Lord’s point, we need to recognise that it is not always possible immediately to transfer an unaccompanied child who has just arrived in Dover on a small boat into the care of a local authority. It has therefore been necessary for the Home Office to accommodate them on a temporary basis. Our intention is—here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and indeed the sentiments of the entire Committee—that a child’s stay in Home Office-provided accommodation will be a temporary one and for the shortest possible time, and that they will be transferred into local authority care as soon as practicable. These clauses simply formalise the current position, building on the existing burden-sharing arrangements in the Immigration Act 2016.

On the question posed—again, I think initially by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven—as to the status of Home Office accommodation and Ofsted inspections, we are currently considering with the Department for Education appropriate inspection arrangements. The matter is under consideration. No doubt we will revert to the matter in due course.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, asked about the status of the corporate parent and the role of the Home Office in that regard. The Home Office does not have, and therefore cannot discharge, duties under Part 3 of the Children Act 1989. It is for the local authority where an unaccompanied child is located to consider its duties under the Children Act 1989. Nothing in this Bill changes that position.

Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, there is a fundamental issue here that I think the Home Office really does not understand—I do not think that it has been done out of malice, but there is a real misunderstanding. There is a difference between safeguarding and a looked-after child. That is the key issue that we are trying to determine. Once a child hits the shores, they should have the same status as if they were under a local authority as a looked-after child, with all the provisions that come in the Children Act 1989. Why will there be two classes of unaccompanied children seeking asylum depending on what type of accommodation the Home Office is able to put them in? That is the key question.

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, as I explained—or sought to explain—it will not necessarily be possible immediately to transfer an unaccompanied child into local authority care and local authority accommodation. Something must be done to bridge the gap until that can be done.

Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I am now concerned as to what the legality has been to date. I take entirely the Minister’s point that he wants any Home Office responsibility for these children to be absolutely minimal, from when they have just come on the boat until they can be dispersed to a local authority; I hear him, and that seems quite right to me. But what is the current legal basis for what has been happening to date? There are children who have been housed in hotels and have gone missing from those hotels—what was the legal basis for putting them in the hotels? Who was responsible and under what statutory provision were they acting? It may just be that it is 4 am, but I am now really concerned about the legal basis for what has gone on. They have disappeared and someone has been grossly negligent. This will no doubt all be resolved at some point in the future, but what was the purported legal basis for putting those unaccompanied children in hotels?

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, that is not a question that arises at this stage in considering the provisions of the Bill, and I do not intend to answer it.

Baroness Brinton (LD)
I am sorry that I cannot stand up, but I thank the Minister for giving way. This is exactly the issue that I raised with his colleague earlier this evening: the gap before a child is allocated to a local authority. While it was good news that yesterday the number of those who had not been allocated was zero, we know that there have been gaps and, because there have been gaps, there is concern. That is why we are trying to find out what the status is and who is responsible. If the Home Office is not responsible and the child has not been allocated to a local authority, who is responsible for them—even if it is for only a few days?

Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, this is exactly the problem that the children’s organisations raised, even before the legislation saw the light of day, when the problems in hotels became clear. It certainly took me a little while to get my head around the problem. The Minister has his brief and it is understandable  that he does not have all the answers—this is historical, from before the publication of the Bill—but it is a very serious and continuing issue.

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, I recognise that this point has now been raised by three respected Members of the Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is correct: I do not have the answers in my brief. I think the best thing is if I undertake to correspond with the noble Baronesses; indeed, my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth will write.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, from the Opposition Front Bench, asked a couple of questions about statistics. I will come to them; I am not wrapping up what I have to say yet. The position in relation to unaccompanied children in Home Office accommodation, as we heard earlier from my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy, is that there are none. In relation to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in England who are not in Home Office accommodation, the most recent figure I have is 5,570.

Lord Scriven (LD)
How many children who have been in Home Office accommodation are still missing? What is the latest statistic?

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
Again, my Lords, that is not a question that arises directly from consideration of the Bill in Committee—but I appreciate the basis on which the noble Lord posed it. I now have the answer, thanks to the benefits of mobile technology, about which the Committee has been hearing. The number is 154.

I reiterate that the clauses formalise the current position, building on the existing burden-sharing arrangements set forth in the Immigration Act 2016.

I now turn to the amendments. Amendment 80A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, seeks to remove the Secretary of State’s power to transfer a child out of local authority care into accommodation provided by the Secretary of State. Amendment 81 tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham addresses the same point, save that it seeks to limit rather than remove the Secretary of State’s power in this regard.

Clause 16 provides the power to direct a local authority in England to cease looking after an unaccompanied migrant child and to transfer that child into Home Office-provided accommodation after five working days of the direction being made. In making decisions about transfers back into Home Office accommodation, the Home Office will continue to comply with its duties under Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 to make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK in discharging its immigration functions.

04:00:00

Lord Scriven (LD)
I am sorry to keep interrupting the Minister. In a previous answer a couple of moments ago, he said in relation to safeguarding that, as soon as the child hit their local authority area, they were the responsibility of the local authority. Will it have access to the Home Office accommodation and, if in carrying out its safeguarding responsibilities it decides it is not a safe place for a child, will it have the ability to remove them?

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
As I said a minute ago, I think we are still looking into the inspection regime which would apply.

Lord Scriven (LD)
Sorry—the Minister needs to understand. This is not about an inspection regime. It is about the safeguarding responsibility that a local authority has legally, and it is about understanding how the local authority’s safeguarding responsibility for its area interacts with the Home Office accommodation. Will it be able to use its safeguarding responsibilities under the Children Act in the Home Office accommodation and determine, if it is unsafe, that a child can be removed under the statutory duties that a local authority has for safeguarding?

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
Again, I mentioned the inspection regime which is presently under discussion and the same applies: this matter is still subject to negotiation.

The subsections which Amendment 80A seeks to omit are a necessary corollary of the power in Clause 3 to make arrangements for the removal of an unaccompanied child. It may be, for example, that an unaccompanied child is in the care of a local authority but, after a period of weeks, a parent has been located back in the country of origin, and arrangements are made to reunite child and parent. Ahead of their return to the home country, it may be appropriate for the child to come into Home Office-provided accommodation for a short period, pending their return home. This would naturally be preferable to detention of the child, which may be the alternative. As I said a moment ago, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Murray for the direction, we are still working through the operational processes relating to unaccompanied children and the circumstances in which we will use the power in these subsections.

Baroness Brinton (LD)
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister again. Just to be clear about this, his arguments so far have been about the practical implications of delivering this Bill when he say things are still being worked on. Does that mean that for the 5,570 children who have arrived, of whom 154 are still missing, there has not been an arrangement in place to provide safeguarding for these children in the gaps before they are allocated to a local authority? Or what happens if things change and the only people who could be responsible for them are the Home Office, although he has told us that it is not?

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
In relation to the question posed by the noble Baroness, we will include that detail in the letter, which will be framed.

The process of working through arrangements, being carried out at some speed, in relation to unaccompanied children and the circumstances in which we will use the power in these subsections, is a matter which is being worked through with interested bodies and stakeholders to understand their concerns relating to this power to transfer unaccompanied children into Home Office accommodation.

In relation to Amendment 83A, this proposed new clause, touched on by the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is not necessary as the Department for Education already issues statutory guidance, entitled Working Together to Safeguard Children, on interagency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

In relation to Amendment 81, I add that Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 already requires the Secretary of State to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children when exercising immigration functions. To that extent, the amendment is unnecessary. The Section 55 duty does not mean that it is the only factor that must be considered, and other relevant factors must be taken into account.

I turn to points and amendments raised in relation to information sharing. Amendments 81 and 82 seek to limit the information-sharing power in Clause 17. Clause 17 is based on a very similar information-sharing power in Section 70 of the Immigration Act 2016, which applies for the purpose of the transfer of responsibility for the care of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from one local authority to another. As with the existing powers in the 2016 Act, Clause 17 is intended as a backstop. In practice, it has not been necessary to use the direction-making powers in Section 70 of the 2016 Act as the Home Office and local authorities readily make use of the existing data-sharing process for the national transfer scheme, which relies on permissive data-sharing gateways under other existing legislation and related statutory guidance, including under the Children Act 2004 and Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, which offer guidance on the sharing of data. We envisage the provisions in this Bill operating on a similar basis. None the less, we consider it important to retain the backstop power in Clause 17 should relevant information for whatever reason not be forthcoming.

In relation to a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I can assure her that any information provided pursuant to a direction under Clause 17 may be used only for the purpose of helping the Secretary of State make a decision under Clause 16(1) to (4). As for Amendment 81A, the power in Clause 17 can be used only to direct a local authority to provide information that it holds. The power cannot be used to request a third party, such as a child’s doctor, to provide information. Nor can the regulation-making power in Clause 17(2)(b) be used to expand the power in this way—any regulations may specify only other information that would be held by a local authority. That being said, I think the Committee needs to be clear that there is information that it is appropriate to share about a child’s medical needs to allow agencies to carry out their statutory functions and to safeguard children and ensure their needs are met. A local authority which held such information may, for example, wish to tell the Home Office that the child is seriously ill and not fit to travel.

The noble Baroness sought a meeting with a range of bodies. I can undertake to say that that proposal will be considered—

Baroness Brinton (LD)
With me as well.

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
With the noble Baroness present as well, but I am sure she will understand that from the Dispatch Box I cannot commit to if or when.

Baroness Brinton (LD)
I hope it will be before Report. What the Minister has just said is extremely serious. He referred to information being shared and it is one thing for the local authority to choose to give it, but Clause 17 says:

“The Secretary of State may direct”
 

and direct the form in which it is received. My particular concern is that this new arrangement over shared care records means that that data is much more available for a local authority to provide. The person who is responsible for sharing that information remains the doctor even if the local authority holds it. I am very aware of the hour, but this is a very complex area. It is about the most important confidential information that any individual can have and all the laws and arrangements that he quoted earlier did not include anything relating to medical confidentiality. I would be really grateful for that meeting as soon as possible.

Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
I am grateful for that indication. The noble Baroness has my original position and we on the Front Bench have the points which she wishes to raise in any such meeting from the official record and from the note taken.

Concerning Amendment 83, the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has explained that this proposed new clause seeks to ensure that the established duties under the Children Act 1989 are not undermined by the requirements of the Bill. On a point of drafting which goes to the heart of the amendment, the proposed new clause refers to the Secretary of State’s obligations, duties and responsibilities under the Children Act 1989, whereas the 1989 Act is principally about the duties and functions of local authorities and the courts. As I have indicated, the Bill does not alter local authorities’ existing statutory duties in relation to unaccompanied children, so in practice Amendment 83 does not take us any further forward or change the current legal framework, and there is a risk that, in seeking to clarify the current law, the amendment will sow confusion and doubt.

Amendment 83A calling for guidance, which was spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, would require the Secretary of State for Education to issue guidance to local authorities and others with duties and responsibilities under the Bill. There is already a wealth of guidance available to local authorities and others, notably Working Together to Safeguard Children, which is the core statutory guidance for all organisations, agencies and  individuals involved in safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in England. We will work with the Department for Education to ensure that any relevant guidance is updated as necessary to reflect the journey of children under the provisions of this Bill. I submit that it would not be helpful to issue freestanding guidance in the way envisaged by the amendment against that background of existing guidance.

The provisions in Clauses 15 to 20 provide clarity under the law. I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord German, I think, about the devolution point towards the end of our discussion. On the issue of the geographical extent of accommodation and the transfer powers in Clauses 15 to 18, the noble Lord pointedly said that this applies to England and not anywhere else—I think he put it more pithily yet. The provisions will initially apply to England but the Bill includes a power by regulation to apply them to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These provisions relate to immigration, including asylum, which are reserved matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and therefore matters for the UK Government. I am not able at this time to provide specific details on the operation of these powers, including regulations or timings. I think we can as a Committee agree on the importance of national distribution relating to the care of these children so that all parts of the UK pay their fair share.

These clauses are not a device by which the Home Office can take over the long-established responsibilities of local authorities for the care of unaccompanied children. If it is necessary for the Home Office to provide for the accommodation of children who meet the conditions in Clause 2, this will be, as I said earlier, for the shortest possible time. I have sought to reassure noble Lords about the need for these provisions and about how they will be applied. On that basis, and standing my commitments to correspond with noble Lords on a variety of matters, I ask the Committee to support Clause 15 standing part of the Bill.

Lord Scriven (LD)
I thank the Minister for such a detailed response to the issues that have been put in this particular group. Having said that, I think there is still far too much confusion about these clauses, which I assume we will probably want to come back to on Report, depending on what the correspondence from the Minister says. The crux of the issue for the Committee is that these children should have looked-after status from the moment they arrive in the care of the UK. If the Government are going to use money for accommodation, that money should be distributed to local authorities so that they can purchase places and those children can automatically become looked-after children. That would seem to be the right way for this to happen, and therefore I think this will be an issue that we will return to on Report.

Before I finish I want to congratulate the stamina of the Deputy Chairman of Committees, who has sat through this long session and carried out his duties diligently. I beg leave to withdraw my opposition to Clause 15 standing part.

Clause 15 agreed.

The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)
The Deputy Chairman says that he is very content with the kind words from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven.

04:15:00

Clause 16: Transfer of children from Secretary of State to local authority and vice versa

Amendments 80A and 81 not moved.

Clause 16 agreed.

Clause 17: Duty of local authority to provide information to the Secretary of State

Amendments 81A and 82 not moved.

Clause 17 agreed.

Clauses 18 to 20 agreed.

Amendments 83 and 83A not moved.

Clause 21: Provisions relating to removal and leave

Amendment 84 not moved.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 4.16 am.