The Home Affairs Select Committee is tasked with scrutinizing the expenditure, administration and policy of the Home Office – a remit that includes looking at the operation of the UK’s detention estate.
Yesterday the committee heard evidence on immigration detention from NGO experts who work in the sector: Kris Harris, Policy and Research Worker at Medical Justice, Gemma Lousley, Policy and Research Coordinator at Women for Refugee Women, and Tom Nunn, Legal Manager at Bail for Immigration Detainees.
The committee also heard evidence from the organisations who are responsible for the operation of Yarl’s Wood and Morton Hall detention centres: Rupert Soames and Julia Rogers from Serco, Morton Hall Centre Manager Karen Head and the HMPPS Prisons Group Director for Kent, Essex, IRCs and FNPs Phil Wrag.
The evidence heard examined the conditions, neglect, abuse and safeguarding procedures at detention centres, particularly Yarl’s Wood and Morton Hall, as well as the impact of the lack of a time limit.
You can watch the full session and read some of the online reaction below.
Watching @CommonsHomeAffs inquiry on detention: @gemmalousley @BIDdetention & @Medical_Justice doing a great job of firmly setting MPs straight on sensationalist Qs attempting to ramp up ‘danger of foreign criminals’ & asylum-seekers detained together https://t.co/FlUaxtT5hC
— Detention Action (@DetentionAction) March 20, 2018
Kris @Medical_Justice calling out the shocking absence of oversight across detention estate @CommonsHomeAffs on #detention https://t.co/FlUaxtT5hC #Time4aTimeLimit #TheseWallsMustFall
— Detention Action (@DetentionAction) March 20, 2018
Tom @BIDdetention : ‘The fundamental casualty of indefinite detention is trust. Look at the #HungerForFreedom strikers. They tried to exercise their rights & were met with accelerated deportation orders.’ @CommonsHomeAffs on #detention #Time4aTimeLimit
— Detention Action (@DetentionAction) March 20, 2018
Tom @BIDdetention speaking @CommonsHomeAffs on #detention: ‘The Rule 35 process is completely flawed…Shaw Review showed that 15% of all Rule 35 reports ended w/ release. Last quarter shows exactly the same figures = no changes, despite @ukhomeoffice promises.” #BrokenSystem
— Detention Action (@DetentionAction) March 20, 2018
Tom @BIDdetention: “@ukhomeoffice have a knack of using the phrase ‘exceptional circumstances’ so that it can mean whatever they want it to…the goalposts are always being moved.” @CommonsHomeAffs #Time4aTimeLimit #HungerForFreedom
— Detention Action (@DetentionAction) March 20, 2018
“We published a report last year that showed that 85% of the women that we had spoken to, who had claimed asylum and who had subsequently been detained in Yarl’s Wood, had suffered rape or other forms of gendered violence” @gemmalousley at @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“This is something we hear time and time again from the women we speak to: the fact that there is no time limit on immigration detention has such a detrimental effect on people’s mental health.” @gemmalousley at @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“My main concern is the way that the Home Office is dealing with this administrative indefinite detention. Many, many of the decisions to detain is based on no logic at all… Often it feels like people are completely forgotten.”
Tom Nunn at @BIDdetention— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“We have clear concerns about the operations in Yarl’s Wood… The routine intrusions on women’s privacy and dignity… Staff members barging into women’s rooms, including male staff.”@gemmalousley
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“There is a culture of disbelief. When women go and talk to mental health staff and other staff [in Yarl’s Wood], it is assumed that what they are saying about how they are feeling and what they are experiencing in terms of their health, is not true” @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“When the physical and mental health of people is deteriorating that information is supposed to be getting to the Home Office, but of course, if there is that culture of disbelief, that is going to be very difficult.” @gemmalousley @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“The Adults at Risk policy which is a huge area of concern for us… It is not working as advertised. It should lead to a reduction of detention of vulnerable people and length. Our experience is that it has done the opposite.” @Medical_Justice
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
Kris Harris spoke about the HMIP report on Morton Hall that said “there had been 4 incidents of serious self-harm and suicide attempts, yet there were no serious incident reviews and no systemic analysis. Only a month after that report, Five deaths.” @Medical_Justice
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“In Yarl’s Wood there is a clear sense of desperation. There is a lot of people eager to get legal advice and are unable to get it. When I go in, I have people waiting four hours for ten minutes of advice.” @BIDdetention
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“In Yarl’s Wood there is an extreme feeling of insecurity and anxiety. The prison inspectorate found that 47% of the women said that they felt unsafe. It was to do with the indefinite nature of their detention and not knowing what was going to happen to them.” @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
Kris Harris on FNOs: “It’s a false dichotomy. No one is in detention as part of a criminal offence, when we are talking about FNOs, we are talking about “sentence served” FNOs, had they been British they would have been released into the community under licence.” @Medical_Justice
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“It is my opinion that FNOs should be released at the end of their custodial sentence. There is no justification for why we should take away the liberty of a foreign national any more than a British person. We have a system for tracing persons within a community”@Medical_Justice
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
When questioned further: “There is clearly a difference between somebody who has spent time inside for a serious crime and someone who has never spent time in detention.” Kris Harris: “It’s difficult to generalise. Why are they in detention in the first place?” @Medical_Justice
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“We’ve spoken to a number of asylum seeking women who had served prison sentences because they had been criminalised by the asylum system. There was a women who had been trafficked to the UK on a false passport and was then subsequently imprisoned.” @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“We do need to be really careful about making these distinctions between the Foreign National Offenders and the other people in detention.” @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“When you have a deeply vulnerable population, locked up in these environments with nothing to do… with boredom, lack of purpose, anxiety over your case, fear for being returned to a country where you fear for your life, people might turn to drugs for relief” @Medical_Justice
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“Women there are peacefully protesting and they’ve been met with letters of removal… It’s an issue of trust. How on earth are they going to trust the system that they are contained within?” Gemma Lousley @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“The Home Office accept that people are victims of torture or have serious mental health problems, but then say that because of these exceptional reasons (“risk of absconding or whatever it is”) you are going to remain in detention.” @BIDdetention
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
Kris Harris says that the number of Rule 35 medical reports resulting in release was at about 35% but then after the introduction of the Adults at Risk policy it fell dramatically to about 10%. @Medical_Justice
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
On screening for vulnerability: “In my opinion, ‘we’ are responsible for all that harm that might happen [in detention]. We knew it might happen, we sat and waited for it to happen, we recorded it and then released people. I think that is completely unacceptable.”@Medical_Justice
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“Before people are detained there is certainly a problem. These questions are not being asked by the Home Office, they are not trying to actively identify the people that are vulnerable.” Gemma Lousley at @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“HMIP found that since the intro of the Adults at Risk policy, there are greater numbers of women being detained in YW, who have evidence they are victims of rape, trafficking and torture. They have the evidence but the Home Office is just not letting them out.” @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“I had a client who was waiting for an asylum interview inside detention for six months. One of the interviews was cancelled because the interpreter for the Home Office refused to take off his jacket. He then had to wait another three months.” @BIDdetention
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
“We have known a number of women who have been detained, sometimes several times, who have then gone on to get their refugee status. So why they are being detained in the first place really has to be looked at.” @4refugeewomen
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
Well done and thank you to Tom Nunn of @BIDdetention, Gemma Lousley of @4refugeewomen and Kris Harris of @Medical_Justice for the evidence you gave today on the injustices of immigration detention. Your testimonies were very powerful. /fin
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
.@YvetteCooperMP puts it to Rupert Soames CEO of Serco “If you were really doing your job to properly look after the welfare of the people within the detention centres, surely you would be raising the red flag a lot about all the cases that are going wrong!”
— AVID (@AVIDdetention) March 20, 2018
Gemma Lousley from @4refugeewomen tells the Home Affairs Select Committee: The majority of women detained in #yarlswood are survivors of rape and sexual violence, and 85% go on to continue their cases on release.
Detaining these women is senseless and inhumane.— WomensEqualityUK (@WEP_UK) March 20, 2018
‘We know a number of women who have been detained and have subsequently been granted refugee status. This raises the question of why these women were ever detained in the first place,’ our @gemmalousley tells @CommonsHomeAffs
— WomenforRefugeeWomen (@4refugeewomen) March 20, 2018
‘Our research on the Adults at Risk policy found that there is no proactive screening process to identify if someone is vulnerable before the point of detention,’ our @gemmalousley tells @CommonsHomeAffs
— WomenforRefugeeWomen (@4refugeewomen) March 20, 2018
‘Desperation is the right word for the atmosphere in Yarl’s Wood’ our @gemmalousley tells @CommonsHomeAffs #SetHerFree
— WomenforRefugeeWomen (@4refugeewomen) March 20, 2018
We are also supporting two women who were recently released from #YarlsWood to speak privately about their experiences to the @CommonsHomeAffs today. #SetHerFree https://t.co/01uEHy629z
— WomenforRefugeeWomen (@4refugeewomen) March 20, 2018
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