Anne McLaughlin: I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) on making me cry twice in a week. Thanks very much for that. The first time was last week at the beautiful event held at the Speaker’s House to mark this day. Today, it was understandable that there were few dry eyes in here. On 21 March 1960 an 82-year-old stonemason in Pretoria, South Africa, wrote a poem in Scottish Gaelic...
Anne McLaughlin: I sometimes do not know whether to laugh or cry in this place.
Anne McLaughlin: I agree. I wish that the hon. Member for Beckenham had stayed to listen, but perhaps we shall encourage him to read Hansard. To return to the hiding of positive black role models, it is obviously worse for those who are not just black but women as well. I want to tell the story of Mary Seacole, in case hon. Members do not know it. She was a Scots Jamaican nurse who raised the money to go to...
Anne McLaughlin: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many firms have been removed from the approved list of Green Deal installers in each calendar year of the scheme to date.
Anne McLaughlin: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what responsibility his Department takes for malpractice by accredited Green Deal installers.
Anne McLaughlin: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what criteria were used to draw up the list of approved installers under the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund.
Anne McLaughlin: I feel quite depressed now, because a number of questions have not been answered, although I accept that the Minister said he would write to us. I think I will write to him and remind him of some of those questions. One of the fundamental things he has not addressed is the gap between stated policy and practice. Policies are not being carried out in practice, and we have given numerous...
Anne McLaughlin: I received an email this morning saying that at the weekend, when people went to make their presence felt outside Dungavel, they saw staff patrolling with what looked like police dogs. I wonder if my hon. Friend would ask the Minister to find out what that is about. I am sure it is not the idea of the staff. There must be a Home Office directive saying that that is a good way to look after...
Anne McLaughlin: I beg to move, That this House has considered the detention of vulnerable persons. I have brought this debate to the Chamber because the arguments about detaining people simply because of their immigration status are not over. I will argue that that is not necessary, is extremely damaging and is not cost-effective. I will also argue that unless the Government get on with examining the...
Anne McLaughlin: I genuinely hope that the hon. Gentleman is right and the reason is not ideological, but we can only wait so long before we come to the conclusion that it is. Hopefully, though, it is not. In case the Minister thinks that I am coming to him with worst-case scenarios, I will start with the best-case scenario and tell him about Romeo—that is not his name, but he is a bit of a Romeo, so I have...
Anne McLaughlin: I will come on to say a little about that issue, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it. One of the most significant issues is that the system is not capable of dealing with people who have mental health problems, and the agreement was that people with mental health problems would not be detained, but unfortunately that is still happening. As I said, I will come to that.
Anne McLaughlin: I echo that call and hope that the Minister will respond to it. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) has fought long and hard for this woman. She is fortunate to have her, but so unfortunate to be in the situation she is in—it is so wrong.
Anne McLaughlin: I’m very popular today!
Anne McLaughlin: Absolutely. As I said, my personal experience of the Minister for Immigration is that he listens. He cannot be expected to know absolutely everything less than a year into the job. I hope that he will respond to that intervention and do as the right hon. Gentleman asks. Immigration detention attacks and destroys the soul—it is soul-destroying. As many of the groups have told me—some of...
Anne McLaughlin: Absolutely. It is very clear today that there is much cross-party consensus on this issue. On the length of time that people are held in detention, the Home Office’s own statistics show that migrants in detention are being held for longer since the publication of the review. That is astonishing. At the end of December 2015, the month before the Shaw review was published, 453 people had been...
Anne McLaughlin: What I am suggesting is that this Government will always raise that point. They will always say that. I am talking about people who have committed no crime. The Minister wants to talk about people who are in immigration detention because they have a criminal conviction; I am going to assume that they were sentenced, served a prison sentence and should be treated the same as any other...
Anne McLaughlin: Absolutely. I could not agree more. I was not here at that time; I was a Member of the Scottish Parliament, I think, and very aware of the arguments being used. I want to say a little about how we treat people with mental illness. Often they have an illness that did not exist or lay dormant before they were detained, and the detention exacerbates it. I mentioned some of the organisations that...
Anne McLaughlin: Actually, the thing that surprises me about that—I am not sure whether this is my hon. Friend’s point—is that the number is so low. I am telling the Minister that 78 is not the number of people in these circumstances feeling suicidal and considering suicide. Such people are human beings who the Government agree should not be put through this; yet they are being put through it and the...
Anne McLaughlin: In a recent two-year period, the bill for compensation for people detained illegally was about £10 million. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for all that he does and says—it cannot be easy for someone when their Government are involved—and for all his campaigning on behalf of people in these circumstances. There are a number of established alternatives to detention, such as the...
Anne McLaughlin: Absolutely. I pay tribute to my colleague, the hon. Gentleman, who is also on the Government Benches and has been a strong campaigner on this issue. I urge the Minister please to look at the different examples, domestically and internationally, because they save money and are more effective. Before the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, I was about to invite the Minister to guess how much we...