Immigration Bill - Commons Reasons and Amendments

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 5:30 pm on 26 April 2016.

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Photo of Baroness Lister of Burtersett Baroness Lister of Burtersett Labour 5:30, 26 April 2016

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment D1, but as a member of the all-party inquiry into detention I also want to make clear my support for Amendments C1 and C2.

I should first acknowledge that the Government’s Motion D represents progress on the status quo ante. However, it does not reach Shaw’s recommendation of an absolute exclusion of pregnant women embodied in Lords Amendment 85B. I can do no better than echo the Conservative MP, Richard Fuller, who said yesterday that for him it was a matter of principle that we should never detain a pregnant woman when we have the choice not to do so. That principle was also voiced recently by the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe.

However, in a spirit of compromise—and with some regret—I will not insist that we stick to our principles today. Instead, my alternative to the Government’s amendment does three main things, all of which are designed to meet the Government’s own intentions and strengthen their amendment through the addition of safeguards. The first would write in,

“the over-riding principle that no pregnant woman shall be detained … save in the most exceptional circumstances”.

This is exactly what the Government say happens now, but all the evidence suggests that this is not the case, as confirmed by Stephen Shaw and those who gave evidence to him. However, if, in the noble and learned Lord’s view the inclusion of “most” makes this measure too restrictive, I would be open to the Government removing “most” and just saying “in exceptional circumstances”. However, at Third Reading, the noble and learned Lord was unable to give me any assurances that “exceptional” will truly mean exceptional in future. When scepticism was raised about Home Office procedures yesterday, the only assurance given was that this was something Stephen Shaw could look at when he reviews the measures. Welcome as this commitment to this further review is, we cannot wait another 12 to 18 months, during which time pregnant women could continue to be detained in other than exceptional circumstances. Therefore, it is crucial that we write this principle into the Bill.

Secondly, the amendment would change the meaning of “the relevant time” from which the 72-hour clock starts ticking from the later to “the earlier” of either,

“the time at which the Secretary of State is … satisfied that the woman is pregnant”,

or,

“the time at which the detention begins”.

Otherwise, 72 hours’ detention could in practice very easily become, say, 144 hours or more, if it takes time to establish that a woman is pregnant. Yet all the Government have said is that the period will be only up to 72 hours. If there are technical problems with the way I have done it, I am happy for those to be considered. However, “up to 72 hours” should be up to 72 hours. It may be that the power to redetain addresses some of the problems which the noble and learned Lord raised. Although I certainly would not want the power to redetain to be used as a norm, my amendment does not omit it—that is part of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which is designed to see what the Government’s intentions were. We do not want the kind of cat-and-mouse policy we had with the suffragettes where women are in and out, in and out. I am relieved that the Minister said that that was not the intention.

Thirdly, and finally, I come to the more complicated bit. I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I do not go into it in detail. In effect, it introduces into the Bill similar safeguards to those that exist in the case of families with children, as set out in the Immigration Act 2014. I thank ILPA for its invaluable help with this. Specifically, it limits the places in which a pregnant woman can be detained and the transfers to which she can be made subject. It requires that pregnant women already in the country must have 28 days’ notice of removal and detention, to ensure that they are not subject to dawn raids and long journeys in vans, which are detrimental to their health and well-being, and makes provision for the Independent Family Returns Panel, duly constituted with maternity experts, to be involved in cases where pregnant women are to be detained.

These provisions do no more than put into the Bill what the Government say they want to achieve. As the noble and learned Lord said, the Home Secretary stated, in a Written Statement of 18 April, that the government amendment would be:

“Similar to the arrangements put in place as part of ending routine detention for families with children in 2014”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/4/16; col. 12WS.]

Yesterday, the Minister explained that we are using “precisely” the model introduced to end the general detention of children.

The evidence from bodies such as the Royal College of Midwives and Medical Justice is that any detention can be harmful to this particularly vulnerable group of pregnant women with complex health and psychosocial problems. In a witness statement to the High Court, the director of midwifery at the Royal College of Midwives argued that what can be especially harmful is the process of detention which this amendment attempts to address. She notes that there appears to be little or no particular consideration given to the ways in which these women experience arrest, transfer and detention and that the experience of arrest and detention is psychologically damaging and physically stressful for a pregnant woman. She provides much more detail of the risks to health at various stages of pregnancy.

A number of noble Lords may have received from ILPA, with the kind consent of the women involved, some shocking details of the cases of three pregnant women who were the subject of an urgent application to the High Court last week. All three described lengthy, uncomfortable journeys when transferred to the reception centre, with no account taken of their pregnancy. In transit, they vomited on themselves and one was advised that, if she needed to urinate, she could do so in a bag, in the van, in front of her escorts, two of whom were male. In one case, a woman with a serious mental health condition was subject to a no-notice arrest, which this amendment would prevent. It meant that she did not have either her antenatal records or her antidepressants with her. In another case, the woman had a high-risk and complex pregnancy which required special monitoring. She too was subject to a no-notice arrest. She had to wait four hours at the immigration office, during which time she was visibly distressed. When she told them that she was pregnant, the escorts did collect her medication from her house, but they did not collect her antenatal documents. The journey to Yarl’s Wood took three hours and she was offered no comfort breaks. She then had to wait a further two hours before being booked in. I could go on, but I will not.

This shows that no-notice arrests create too great a risk for pregnant women, regardless of the length of their detention. From a Written Answer just provided to Paul Blomfield MP, it would appear that there is no intention to provide notice in future. While it is welcome that the Minister in the Commons agreed to look at transportation, which this amendment addresses—I hope I have explained to the noble and learned Lord why there needs to be a limit on the length of the transfer journey—we need a review of the whole process of arrest and detention of pregnant women, including how their medical needs are taken into account.

Questions were raised in the Commons about where pregnant women will be detained. The Minister replied that the feedback from organisations is that Yarl’s Wood remains “the most appropriate place”. But the feedback I have received suggests that Yarl’s Wood is not well placed to meet the needs of pregnant women and that is why we need to find an alternative. The Minister also said he would continue to reflect on how best to create greater transparency about procedures. I suggest that one way would be to commit now to making statistics on the detention of pregnant women available for public scrutiny on a regular basis. This has been called for by bodies such as Women for Refugee Women and the Royal College of Midwives.

There is much more I could say but in the interests of time I will conclude by emphasising again that Amendment 85C aims by means of legal safeguards to make a reality of what the Government say is their intention. I had hoped, perhaps naively, that the Government might be able to accept it, given that, and I accept there may well be technical problems with it, but these can be smoothed out. What we are concerned about here are questions of principle and even if we have had to row back on the basic principle of no absolute exclusion, important principles are involved in ensuring safeguards where we can. I argue that it does not upset in any way the balance that the Home Secretary said the Government want to achieve between protecting vulnerable women and maintaining effective and proportionate immigration control, but it would provide some assurance that the Government are really serious about protecting this particularly vulnerable group of women. This is the very least we can do while we still have the opportunity.