My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Avebury for introducing this debate. I believe that my noble friend follows the very great tradition of reformers who have brought such honour upon this country--people who devoted themselves, their lives and energy to the protection of the most disadvantaged in our society, whose only reward is to have bettered the lives of some of their fellow human beings. I am more than honoured to share membership of the same party with my noble friend.

I begin where the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, ended: by asking one or two questions specifically about Haslar and the treatment of detainees there. That issue is the primary task to which the board of visitors devoted itself. On 22nd January I received a letter from one of those detainees, Mr Gabriel Nkwelle. Mr Nkwelle comes from the Cameroons, a businessman who has served professionally in his country. He is one of the leading human rights campaigners in that country. He fell foul of the authorities. If ever there was an example of the kind of person for whom most of us would use the term "genuine" asylum seeker, Mr Nkwelle falls into that category.

I asked about him before I took great notice of what he said. I shall tell the House something of what he said in a moment. I asked innocently enough of the Haslar board of visitors. I felt that its members would probably know detainees in Haslar rather well. It was very innocent of me because by that time--22nd January--most of the Haslar board of visitors had already been told that they were not going to be re-appointed. One of them--whom I shall not name because I do not wish to see him dismissed as well--wrote to me recently about Mr Nkwelle saying that he believed him to be a brave and honest man. That particular visitor had spent some time with him.

Mr Nkwelle had written to a number of organisations, including the Home Office, Amnesty International and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to complain about some of the things going on in Haslar. In particular he complained about the use of racist language; the use of expired food in the kitchen; the fact that there were no doors and curtains in the cubicles where the detainees were living, and the fact that at least two detainees--let us not forget that people are meant to be detained only in the latter stages when they are due for deportation--had been there respectively for 15 and 20 months, each of them men who had undergone serious operations.

Mr Nkwelle stuck to his guns. He sent the letter to all and sundry, making no pretence about what he was saying. Not surprisingly, on 2nd February--just eight days after he wrote the letter--he was sent to Belmarsh high security prison in south London. There were indications in the race relations survey, details of which my noble friend Lord Avebury has given to the House, that one of the things that was sometimes said to detainees was that they might be "shipped away" if they made too many complaints and caused too much trouble. That was not a reference to violent trouble, to leading insurrections or carrying drugs and alcohol into the detention centre; it was a reference to simply complaining about some of the circumstances in which their fellow detainees were kept.

However, Mr Nkwelle was not a man to be silenced and he wrote again, this time from Belmarsh. He pointed out that in Belmarsh asylum seekers who had committed no crime were being held in the same wing as convicted criminals. He pointed out that they were sharing cells with convicted criminals. He pointed out that they remained locked up when convicted criminals were allowed out for exercise and when convicted criminals were allowed out to watch television. In short, non-sentenced asylum seekers, against whom no charge of any crime was alleged, were being kept in considerably harsher conditions than those who had been convicted of committing serious crime, and no one goes to Belmarsh unless he has committed a serious crime.

Given the immigration and nationality service rules, perhaps I should add that those asylum seekers were allowed precisely five minutes a day for a phone call and only one phone call per day, and they were not permitted to receive telephone calls or faxes from their solicitors. That appears to me to be a direct breach of what I understand to be the safeguards under the Human Rights Convention which we in this Parliament passed, agreed to and believed Ministers would enforce.

I turn back to that same board of visitors--the people charged with responsibility for upholding standards at Haslar, a job it did excellently. The members took on board the complaints of Mr Boateng, the Minister for prisons. The Minister had said, as had the much respected head of the Prison Service, Mr. Narey, that they were concerned that boards of visitors so often appeared to be non-reactive; that they allowed themselves to continue in formal office but not to draw attention to some of the things happening in the institutions for which they were responsible in the way that Ministers, the head of the Prison Service and others believed they should. It was against that background that the Haslar board of visitors decided to mount a race relations survey in the prison based upon the template of NACRO.

We know already from my noble friend Lord Avebury that every possible measure was taken by the governor at the time to stop the board of visitors from conducting that survey, including threats that all the members would lose their positions on the board if they proceeded with it. To their great credit they proceeded with the survey and at the end of the day it was the governor who was suspended and recognised eventually as not fit to be an active governor.

The board of visitors' report was praised by an astonishing range of people. It was praised by the Inspector of Prisons, by the head of NACRO, by the Race Relations Board. Indeed, it received praise which, if I had time, I would recite because in every single case that race relations survey was regarded as an outstanding piece of work and as being extremely helpful to those responsible for running our prisons. However, it does not appear to have stood the board of visitors in good stead to have received praise from all quarters, including senior officials charged with the responsibility for the Prison Service and the Chief Inspector of Prisons. Indeed, it seems to have done them nothing but damage.

At the triennial review three of the most active members of the board of visitors were told that their appointments would not be renewed. As my noble friend said, when in a triennial review precisely 11 members of boards of visitors in one third of all the prisons in England and Wales are told that they are no longer required, it is astonishing that three of the 11 should be among the most active members of this board of visitors which acted in a way that was so widely praised. As my noble friend Lord Dholakia said in his powerful speech, it is impossible to believe that they were not reappointed for any good reason.

One of them was relatively young. One of them was a JP. There is a requirement under the rules that at least two members of boards of visitors should be JPs; there are now no JPs on the board of visitors for Haslar. The chairman was a young woman committed to the welfare of the detainees under her care. It is extraordinary that they all went. I ask the Minister what reason was given by Mr Boateng, who had specifically authorised and encouraged the survey which appears to have caused so much trouble, for upholding these dismissals.

I turn to the situation of detainees, especially asylum-seeker detainees, in our prisons. I am deeply troubled by the fact that we, an honourable and decent country, are locking up in large numbers men and women some of whose crimes relate almost entirely to acts of conscience of a kind that we should applaud and uphold. Much is going wrong in our detention centres. At Oakington there are allegations, which have not been thoroughly investigated, of trafficking of young women by Chinese gangs. We are already aware of the situation in Haslar. At Her Majesty's Prison, Rochester, we have found that the detainees who protest or complain seem to find their way rather frequently to Belmarsh.

I conclude by saying that any decent, democratic society depends on the courage of its whistle-blowers, of those who speak out and say what is going wrong. It is in the interests of the Home Office, the Prison Service and all those related to it that acts of injustice, cruelty and brutality should not be permitted to occur within its ranks. I was once a prison Minister. I have great admiration for many in the Prison Service. Many prison officers and prison governors are dedicated to their jobs. Many members of the Prison Service, including its present head, have done everything possible to root out bad behaviour and injustice. They are being let down by those who dismiss the whistle-blowers for their courage and for having spoken out. We are all in their debt.

I again ask the Minister to request his colleague Mr Boateng to consider carefully whether, in view of the fact that the brave members of the Haslar board of visitors were doing exactly what he had twice asked them to do, this decision should be reversed.