Clause 47 - Detention centres: change of name
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
5:45 pm
Ms Angela Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Wallasey, Labour)
We need to remove 2,500 people per month to hit 30,000. One does not need to be much of a mathematician—I am not—to realise that. It is an ambitious figure. However, we are committed to gearing up the system to achieve 30,000. Hon. Members have the figures in front of them.
The amendments would make it harder for us to achieve the figure, partly because they create a distinction between what we have called removal centres and the decision to rename all detention centres removal centres. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam even suggested that we should have detention centres and removal centres and, I presume, shuttle individuals from one to the other depending on the status of their cases.
It is our intention to ensure integrity in the system and effect removals in good order. We will continue to keep immigration offenders as well as asylum cases in detention when there is a reasonable justification for doing so, in the circumstances I outlined. Hon. Members should remember that only a small minority of people are detained. I dispute the suggestion of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) that people are detained almost arbitrarily. I will not say that mistakes have never been made—he may have come across some—but there are opportunities to put them right and we do not take lightly a decision to detain someone.
I hope that, with that explanation of how removal centres will be used, the amendment will be withdrawn. If accepted, it would make it harder for us to run an effective removal system and to put more integrity into the system.