ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

HL Deb 09 June 1978 vol 392 cc1672-93

3.57 p.m.

Lord BROCKWAY rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will reconsider the present treatment of immigrants assumed to be illegal entrants by immigration officers, particularly in respect of powers of arrest and imprisonment, court procedures, and right of appeal against expulsion from this country on application only from abroad. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I regret the timing of this discussion. It was the only time available. I regret that a surprising number of Members who had indicated that they would support me are not able to be present. I particularly welcome the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is here, and I am quite sure that many in other parts of the House would have wished to oppose.

I am raising this issue not only in the interests of members of immigrant communities, but because it involves fundamental principles of human rights and of accepted judicial practice. I shall submit that, in the administration of immigration control, normal standards of human rights and accepted judicial principles are repudiated. The present procedure can be summarised, a little brusquely, in three paragraphs.

First, if an immigration officer concludes that an immigrant has committed an offence, the person can he arrested without a warrant and imprisoned, with no opportunity to apply for bail, and with no limit of the time in detention. He can be imprisoned not by a decision of a court but by the decision of a civil servant. Secondly, if the intervention of the courts is sought, they refuse to act unless the accused can prove his innocence. The cherished principle of "innocent until proved guilty" is reversed. When the Secretary of State decides that an immigrant shall be expelled from this country, the immigrant is told that he can appeal against this decision only from abroad. This means not only delay and a heavy cost, but places him in a position of great disadvantage when the trial takes place in his absence.

I shall discuss each of these items, but I think this broad statement is sufficient to indicate how the present procedure denies principles of justice in which we have all taken pride. We should have the greatest sympathy with immigration officers. To judge without prolonged investigation is impossible. They are asked to make decisions beyond an individual's power. Our immigration laws make discrimination inevitable. Consider how a white person is accepted at Heathrow as compared with a coloured person. There are Members or this House of different ethnic origin from most of us who can testify to the difference before they had the term "Lord" on their passports. There are white immigrants resident in this country as well as coloured. How many of them are intimidated on suspicion of being here illegally?

This is not principally a matter of immigrants detained at Heathrow. A person who has been settled in this country for many years, sometimes with the consent of the Home Office, can now be arrested and imprisoned on the order of an immigration officer and held by him to have been guilty of deception when he entered. These cases include cases where the alleged illegal entrant came here as a child; examples are Ataur Rahman and Javaid Akhtar. Secondly, there are cases where the accused came here as long ago as 1961; an example is Kwame Darko. Thirdly, there are cases where a deception had already been the subject, many years ago, of a successful prosecution but without a recommendation for deportation, or where the Director of Public Prosecutions had decided against prosecution; an example is the case of Daljit Singh. Fourthly, there are cases where the Home Office, knowing the facts, had stated that the person's settlement here was accepted. There are also cases where persons qualified under the Home Secretary's "amnesty" of 29th November 1977 made short trips abroad and therefore were held to be guilty; examples of these include Ataur Rahman, Ashiq Hussain and Javaid Akhtar.

Can we think calmly of what the deportation of persons long resident in this country means to them? Losing their jobs, giving up their homes, lifting their children, often born in this country, from their schools, seeking somehow for new security in countries with which they have lost familiarity, exiled, with perhaps nine months to wait before their distant appeal is heard.

In the last three months 102 persons were detained in prison as illegal immigrants under the authority of an immigration officer, awaiting the Home Secretary's decision on removal. Of these, 54 have been detained for one month or less, 22 for two months or less, 14 for three months or less, six for four months or less, and six for more than four months. Indeed, the longest period was almost 11 months in prison without trial, without the opportunity of bail, without knowing how long they were to be kept there, on the decision, not of a court, but of a civil servant. My Lords, I have not mentioned the most damning fact. The Home Office has admitted that in 1977, 61 persons, treated as illegal entrants, were subsequently "found not to be illegal entrants".

I turn to the second item, court procedure. The Home Office has told Members of Parliament that the accused has the opportunity to apply to the High Court for a prerogative writ or order. This is not only extremely expensive, and very few could afford it, but it is prejudiced by the decision of the Court of Appeal, in the case of ex parte Choudhary, May 1922, that the burden of proof is on the applicant, who is therefore assumed guilty until proved innocent, and that the remedy is by way of appeal after removal abroad and not by habeas corpus. The Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Widgery, put it succinctly in the Divisional Court in the case of Safder Hussain. In these matters, he said, "Questions of fact are ultimately questions of fact for the Secretary of State". I ask, in what other area of law would the courts allow the Executive such unfettered power over the liberty of an individual?

On the third item I say only this: the experience of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, with which I am proud to be associated and whose Secretary, Ian Martin, has done so much to enlighten the public on these issues, is that to take an appeal in the absence of the appellant places his representative at an almost insuperable disadvantage, and is no effective remedy for injustice.

I took an active part during the Committee stage in this House of the 1971 Immigration Bill. I say without fear of contradiction that none of us, on either side of the House, contemplated this procedure of immigration control. It is un-British. It prejudices our championship of human rights. I hope the Government will end it.

4.10 p.m.

Lord AVEBURY

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has done the country a great service in raising this important matter this afternoon and I can only echo his disappointment that so few people are here to discuss a matter of fundamental principle relating to the exercise of powers by a Secretary of State, with no control over them by the courts, as the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has just described. I want to make it clear at the outset that I am not in favour of illegal immigration; I believe that proper measures have to be taken to prevent it at the port of entry and that such remedies ought to be applied after the offence has been committed as can be properly reconciled with our traditions of civil liberties in this country. But I believe that we have gone beyond that point. As the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has illustrated, the powers that we find in the 1971 Act have proved to be wholly beyond anything that we have contemplated in English law up until the point that that legislation came into force. I believe that those powers are dangerous and that they need now to be carefully reviewed.

If one takes the case of a person who entered the country legally and remains beyond the time limit which was permitted to him, under Section 3(5)(a) of the 1971 Act he is liable to deportation, by Section 5 the Secretary of State has the power to make an order against him and he may then, as the noble Lord has described, be arrested without a warrant by an immigration officer and he may be detained indefinitely without any right to be heard in a court of law. In these cases, as the noble Lord has described, application for prerogative orders has been found quite ineffective. Yet the fact remains, and the noble Lord has given us the figures, that very many people who have been detained in this way in prisons on the authority of an immigration officer have been subsequently found not to have been over-stayers or illegal entrants, as the case may be, and they have been granted indefinite leave to remain.

That indicates to me that further safeguards are necessary to be applied to these procedures, because in those cases, if the detainee had not had somebody to intervene on his behalf, like the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, it is very likely that he would have been deported. There must be many instances that are not known to us where this has, in fact, happened. By definition one cannot quote them but, if somebody had been there to intervene, perhaps a miscarriagee of justice would have been prevented.

I should like to give one or two examples. I am not sure whether I am allowed to mention this person's name so I will call him Mr. K. A. He entered the United Kingdom on 6th November 1974 to join his wife. He was arrested as an illegal entrant on 20th March 1977 and he was held in Nottingham prison from that point until I heard about the case on 17th June from the solicitors who represented him. They said that they had been unable to secure his release and they asked me to make representations on his behalf, which I did on the same date.

I wrote to the Parliamentary Secretary asking that Mr. K. A. be released pending the solicitors attempts to determine his status in the courts. Then I wrote again, having received papers from the solicitors, on 21st June, going into this case in greater detail and requesting that he he released forthwith and pointing out that he had already spend two months in detention. The Minister wrote back on 4th July saying that instructions had been given for him to be released. The case turned on whether he had been genuinely married to the person he claimed to be his wife. It was established that he was so married. He was living with her in Nottingham; he had two children by her; and the only doubt hanging over the marriage was that they had at one time had a minor tiff and had lived apart for a few weeks. As a result of that, this man had to spend two and a half months in prison waiting for the Parliamentary Secretary to determine whether he was eligible to remain here as the woman's spouse.

He was eligible to remain here, and I recommended him to apply through his MP to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration for redress for the injustice which had undoubtedly been caused to him. Is it not intolerable that any person should spend two and a half months in prison without having committed any offence, when he was living here peacefully and legally with his wife and children? I think this case illustrates the fact that people detained under the Immigration Act powers are unique among the prison population in that their future is entirely uncertain. Everybody else knows when he is next to appear in court or when his is to be released on completion of his sentence. The person detained under the Immigration Act powers has not the faintest idea when the Secretary of State will get around to considering his representations, if indeed he has been lucky enough to find anybody to make them on his behalf. The degree of uncertainty which is facing detainees in this position is undoubtedly a source of great distress and anxiety, and it is not surprising that some of them emerge from their ordeal suffering from severe mental ill health.

A case was drawn to my attention only recently of a person who had spent no less than 10 months in detention whilst his case was being considered here. This gentleman—a Mr. A—had originally come here from Pakistan in November 1975 with an entry clearance for a visit. He subsequently asked to be considered as a political refugee, having been a member of a political Party, the National Awami Party, which came under the displeasure of the Pakistan Government. He was arrested and thrown into prison. He appealed, he was released on bail; then he was re-arrested. He was held in prison awaiting his deportation. Representations were made on his behalf by the United Kingdom Immigrants Advisory Service in this case, and he had the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They said that he was a genuine refugee. But the Home Office disputed this. They were minded to deport him and they kept him in prison for 10 months, pending their consideration of his case. When he was finally released it was not that they admitted the justification of his case to remain here as a refugee; that matter still has not been determined. But at any rate, he at least has been freed and is now living with friends in the North of England. I am sorry to say that, as a result of his detention, his doctor reports that he is suffering from chronic anxiety and depression, and that this was caused by the ordeal which he had undergone for these 10 months in prison.

Again, this is absolutely intolerable that a person comes here as a refugee from a country where he is definitely under threat of persecution and where this fact has been confirmed by the representative in the United Kingdom of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, yet he remains in prison for such a long time as to cause him to suffer grave mental distress leading to illness from which he may take a very long while to recover.

This gentleman is not the only one to have spent such a long time in prison. The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, gave us some statistics, but I can illustrate it further by a case with which I had some dealings—that of Mr. Tashi Thondup, a Tibetan who had been here 14 years at the time of his detention with a view to deportation back to India. Of course, he could not be sent back to Tibet from which he was originally a refugee, but the Home Office were proposing to send him to India to join relatives there, whom he had not seen since he was a boy of seven. By this time he was now 21 and virtually the whole of his upbringing had been in this country and yet, my Lords, if you can believe this, this young man was thrown into prison and held there for 11 months, pending consideration of his case.

I wrote a fairly long letter to the Parliamentary Secretary on 6th April 1977, asking her not only to consider the substance of the case, but also to release him pending her determination of the outcome. I did not receive an answer to that letter until I put down a Parliamentary Question some 10 months later, except, to be quite fair, a short note informing me that he had been transferred temporarily to Friern Barnet Hospital where his state of health was being examined. That was in June 1977 and no word ever reached me that he had been taken back from the hospital into Pentonville Prison. The first I knew of this was when a social worker approached me right at the end of his ordeal to ask whether I knew that Mr. Thondup was back in Pentonville Prison. I said that I had no reason to assume that he was, because the last I had heard from the Home Office was that he was still in Friern Barnet Hospital.

So at the end of 10 months I put down a Question asking when I was going to receive an answer to my letter of 6th April, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was good enough to reply in some detail to this question. But whatever explanation he gave, one could not avoid the fact that here was a young man who had been resident in the country for 14 years, and following his detention under the powers of the Immigration Act had spent a very long time in prison, when it was quite clear that he should not have been there in the first place. He certainly needed some treatment for his mental condition, but he only received a few days' in the middle of this long detention.

Another case of a person who got into difficulties with the Immigration Act was that of Mr. Abdulla Chamou, which was taken up by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants with this person's Member of Parliament, who was not prepared to intervene and whose secretary refused even to allow the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants to be put through to the Member of Parliament to discuss the matter. If they had left it at that, Mr. Chamou would have been deported, but fortunately they were more persistent than that. They came on to me afterwards and I took the case up with the Minister. Towards the end of May I received a letter from the Home Office saying that, after careful consideration, it had been decided that he should be released from detention while further inquiries were made. He was accordingly released and he is not being required to leave the United Kingdom until his case has been fully considered.

The case turns on whether he is considered to have contracted a valid marriage with the lady with whom he has been living, and with whom he has certainly been through a form of marriage, and he wishes to remain with her permanently in this country. If he had not contacted the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, and if they had not been sufficiently persistent in finding someone else to take up the case with the Minister following the refusal of the man's Member of Parliament to look at it, then undoubtedly he would have been deported by now and would have been back in his own country, and would have been separated from the woman he loved.

Finally, may I mention a case which shows the difficulties facing those who try to advise persons detained under the Immigration Act. This is a case to which the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, made passing mention in his own speech. It is the case of Mr. Kwame Darko, a citizen of Ghana who, on the Home Office's own submission, was resident here for 10 years from 1962 to 1972. He then went back to Ghana for a period which is in dispute. We say that it was 18 months; the Home Office says that it was over two years. His entitlement to remain in the country depends on which of these assertions is true. I do not want to go into the details of this case which is enormously long and complicated and the file is quite a thick one. All I want to say about it is that the Home Office has all the documents in its possession including particularly the man's passport on which he went to Ghana in 1972 and on which he claims that he returned in 1974. I have said, inter alia, that, if we could look at the passport we could verify our assertion that he did in fact return here in 1974, less than two years after he had left in December 1972. But we do not have the right of access to the documents which are in the Home Office's possession and therefore it makes it extremely difficult for us to advise him properly.

I want to finish with what I hope will be some constructive suggestions. First, the Home Office is responsible for processing thousands of routine applications every year but it does not have a special procedure for looking at the cases of persons detained in prison who are alleged to be illegal entrants or over-stayers or recommended for deportation by the courts. That results in excessive delays, which causes suffering, as I have described, for the detainees, and I may add unnecessary expense for the taxpayer for the prolonged detention in prison. As a minimum we should ask for the establishment of a separate section in the Home Office with responsibility for processing cases of all those persons detained under the powers that we have been discussing this afternoon. I think that this section should have as its main remit the reduction of the time spent in prison by dealing expeditiously with all representations and by having a link with the private office, so that, when representations are made by Members of Parliament or Members of your Lordships' House, they can be processed with the Department instantly.

Thirdly, I believe that existing procedures result in people being held in detention without any clear idea of what is alleged against them. I understand that the Home Office has recently agreed to issue a new form to detainees which shows the legal authority for their detention. That clearly will help, but it remains true that many detainees are not properly informed of the progress of their cases and, if people are going to remain in prison for as long as the statistics show, clearly they ought to be kept up to date and informed at regular intervals of exactly what is happening and where the case has got to.

Those people whom the Home Secretary cannot agree to release temporarily pending a determination should not be detained in prison establishments because they have committed no offence. I may say that this view is shared by the Prison Governors' branch of the Society of Civil and Public Servants, who submitted evidence on the point to the Parliamentary Expenditure Committee. Where detention is considered essential, it should be in a place where full access is granted to the family and friends and relatives and any person whom the detainee wishes to see in order to get proper advice.

Finally, I want to mention a point which has been raised in a letter to The Times from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants: the fact that the Home Office is at the moment paying Securicor £21,000 a month to staff their detention centres at Harmondsworth and Gatwick, and a sum additional to that which cannot be quantified for escorting detainees between police stations and prisons and the courts. This letter, which I will not go into in detail, makes the point that it is not proper for such an important public service to be undertaken by a commercial company. It should be properly controlled within the public service so that it is fully accountable to Parliament.

I am sorry to detain your Lordships for so long at this hour of the afternoon, but I sincerely hope that these matters will be taken into careful consideration by the Home Office and that they will agree that, following the experience that we have had of the working of the 1971 Act, it is now in need of revision on the lines that we are suggesting.

4.30 p.m.

Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS

My Lords, it is not surprising that the two noble Lords who have spoken did not give me notice of the matters that they were going to raise, but I am bound to say that I am sure they would have given them to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and he will be entirely acquainted with the details of all those individual cases about which the noble Lords have spoken. One thing that I do know from my own exeprience at the Home Office is that it is comparatively easy to summarise a case in a few sentences, but that that summary seldom does justice to the complexity which one finds when one looks at the files. I certainly would not wish to comment upon any of the individual cases that the two noble Lords have raised, even if I were in a position to do so at such short notice.

The main thing that has emerged from the debate is that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, particularly, and certainly the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, on one occasion in his speech, asked for a constructive review of some of the procedures. Certainly if people are being kept in prison too long—and it sounds as though they are—then I should be very anxious to join in asking the Home Office to see with great earnestness whether there is anything they can do about it. I have little doubt that Ministers at the Home Office will be told what has been said by the speakers in this debate and will look very carefully at the matters that have been raised.

But one has to get this matter into perspective. I was waiting in the divisional court in order to come on in a case the other day, when a habeas corpus application was made before the Lord Chief Justice and the two judges sitting with him. I do not, incidentally, know why the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, said that it was such an expensive process. It did not take very long and I am certain that it was legally-aided, in which case I really do not understand where the expensiveness comes in. Still, let that pass. The tale was one of mammoth deception. It was a tale of forged passports, of lies, of all sorts of manipulation of the system. Nevertheless, on the basis of these forgeries and deceptions, this man had got into the country and had been here for a short while before he was caught.

The noble Lords are really saying that there is in this particular area of illegal immigration a piece of machinery which allows people to be arrested and detained by the Executive, and which insists that any appeal which they should make should be heard from abroad, and that they should not be allowed to stay pending the appeal. I notice that neither noble Lord objected to a person being sent back to the country from which he had come in order to make his appeal from there if he was caught at the port of entry. Neither noble Lord suggested that there was anything wrong with that, and I am bound to say that I do not think there is anything wrong with that if they are caught before they have actually got into this country.

The people to whom reference has been made are, I would suggest to your Lordships, not all that different in the large majority of cases. They are the ones who had no more right than those who were caught, but they managed to insinuate their way in. It is those for the main part who, when they are caught, are detained and are sent away and told that they may appeal from their own country, in exactly the same way as they would have had to do had they been caught and if the deception, or whatever it was, had been found out at Heathrow or at the port, or wherever it was they came into the country.

As a matter of principle, I am bound to say I cannot see where the distinction lies between the person who is caught at the airport and the person who insinuates his way into this country by some ruse and is subsequently caught. I believe that the same rules should apply to both of them.

Lord BROCKWAY

My Lords, the noble Viscount will be aware that when a decision is reached at Heathrow that men shall be immediately sent back, immediately when their case is reported to a Member of the other place or of this place, the Home Office agrees that he should not be sent back and that an investigation should be made. I would say that probably in the majority of cases that procedure is followed.

Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS

Yes, my Lords, that is one of the reasons, I have a strong suspicion, why it is that some of the people concerned stay in detention for such a long time. When representations are made by either of the noble Lords or any other Member of this House or of another place, of course it is right that that case should be carefully looked into by the Home Office, and would be horrified if anything else should happen. But I am speaking of the normal case, where at that stage there is no intervention by a Member of either House.

If that is the ordinary case, the stories that we have been hearing are, I think, the hard cases and, to judge by what noble Lords have said, there are indeed matters which give rise to a certain amount of anxiety. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said we need to have some safeguards. I think I agree with him on the face of it, on the basis of what he said; and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, will be able to give some indication whether there is a degree of urgency given to the case of somebody who has been detained for deportation under this executive form of procedure, but who has, nevertheless, for one reason or another, languished in detention for quite some time.

I see that it would be desirable that these cases should be processed as quickly as possible. By the same token, I must admit that if you have the intervention of somebody like the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees, the complications are likely to be such—and I recognise this sort of difficulty from files that I have myself seen—that you will not be able, realistically, to get a quick decision. It is no use people supposing that when that sort of person intervenes, on what sounded to me like a particularly difficult political refugee case, the Home Office can overnight form a proper and sound judgment upon it. They must take some time for thought and advice, and I would prefer that they should do that rather than come to a wrong and unfair answer.

Therefore, what we have really is this. It is a fairly simple area of complaint, though a worrying one in so far as it has been exemplified today. We are not really considering, I think, the question of allowing all these people who have insinuated themselves in and been caught, to have their appeals heard while they are still in this country; at least, if that is being suggested I could not support it, because it puts a premium on deceit at the airport and would seem to me to be quite inexcusable and quite unsustainable. We cannot really be asking about that.

We are asking about the difficult cases, where somebody has been in this country for some time and where, for reasons that I do not know in these individual cases, instead of arresting and trying that person for an offence against the Immigration Acts, whether it be for overstaying or whatever it may be, and going through the ordinary processes of law which, normally speaking, would, I should have thought, be the likely way of dealing with a case of doubt of this sort, nevertheless, the executive action has been taken.

So, therefore, if the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, either today or later, as a result of having heard this debate, can pass on to the Home Office the suggestions that have been made, and if the Home Office can think of any way whereby speed can be involved in dealing with cases of people who are in detention, that, at least, must be a good thing and that I would support. But, beyond that, I do not think I would wish to go very far because it seems to me that most of the people dealt with in this category really have no business to be in this country at all.

4.39 p.m.

Lord WELLS-PESTELL

My Lords, I, too, feel it is rather a pity that on an Unstarred Question which raises a number of very important issues, there are not more Members of your Lordships' House present. May I say that I am in some difficulty because my noble friend Lord Brockway raised a number of specific cases. I was not given notice of them. There is no reason why I should have been given notice of them, and I am not complaining about that at all; but it is difficult to deal with specific cases if one does not know that they are to be raised and if one does not know the circumstances. However, I know my noble friend well enough to know that he has probably taken some action already in the matter of those cases. I think much the same applies to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, who did mention to me one particular case. He, too, certainly is personally involved in bringing to the attention of the Home Office a number of cases and matters which he feels need attention.

May I just say, by way of an introduction, that I know that both my noble friends have raised this matter today because of their concern lest the power available to detain and removed somebody from this country as an illegal entrant is being used harshly or arbitrarily and with insufficient regard to basic human rights. I accept that this is their sole ground for raising these matters in your Lordships' House this afternoon. I would be the first to acknowledge that the power available is a very substantial one. Where-ever one can exercise power, one has to exercise it with a great deal of care and a great deal of concern, and I am hoping that, by the time I sit down, I shall have been able, perhaps not to convince my two noble friends, but at least to assure them that we are not unmindful of what all this means to individuals involved.

I should like to make clear what is an illegal entrant. The Immigration Act 1971 defines an illegal entrant as a person unlawfully entering or seeking to enter in breach of a deportation order or of the immigration laws", and it includes a person who has so entered. When the Immigration Bill was before Parliament illegal entry was thought of mainly in terms of clandestine entry, and it was on that basis that provision was made for the immigration authorities to secure the ready removal of illegal entrants by giving appropriate directions administratively.

There is a good deal of criticism—and it is made repeatedly—about the actions taken by immigration officers. But I think we ought to be clear about one thing: they are acting in accordance with what is laid down in the Immigration Act 1971. If we do not like it, we ought to be doing something about it. I say this very kindly to my noble friend Lord Brockway and to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. If this Act is really open to question—and I am not saying that it is not—it would be a good thing if people who feel deeply concerned about it got together and sought to amend it.

I should have thought that in the long run this would be a good way of dealing with any Act of Parliament. Nobody is suggesting that every Act of Parliament is perfect. I think there is something deficient probably in every Act, and from time to time the deficiency gets put right. We have to acknowledge that those working the Act are working to the authority given to them, and if it has fallen short in some way it would perhaps be a good thing for individuals and organisations—and there are many individuals and many organisations who feel very strongly about this—to get together to see whether, from their point of view, something could not be done to amend it.

Since the Act came into operation the courts have declared that entry by deception as to identity or entitlement under the immigration laws is just as much illegal as entry over the beaches. This means that the power of administrative removal applies to such people also. Let me make it quite clear that the power of detention and removal does not apply to people who properly secure leave to enter and overstay their time limit, nor to those who in securing leave to enter mis-state their circumstance or intentions, but who, had the full facts been known, were not necessarily ineligible for admission under the immigration law and in respect of whom the immigration officer could have exercised his discretion to admit them. The courts have established that entry by deception is illegal if the deception, misrepresentation or fraud was material to the decision to grant leave, and that in these circumstances the leave is nullified by the deception practised.

What then is the Government's attitude to those who are found to have entered illegally, whether clandestinely or by deception? The Government have made it clear on a number of occasions that they take a very serious view of illegal entry and are determined to take firm action to deal with it. However, because of the distate for retrospective legislation, the Government decided not to use the power of administrative removal retrospectively, and accordingly the announcements of 11th April 1974, which related to an amnesty for those who had entered clandestinely, and 29th November 1977, which dealt with those who had come in by deception—they were then both put on the same level; the Home Secretary then gave opportunity for Commonwealth and Pakistan citizens who last entered illegally before 1st January 1973, when the 1971 Act came fully into operation, to have their stay regularised on application to the Home Office and the verification of the facts. With these exceptions we have made it clear that it will be the normal practice to send away people found to have entered illegally.

Applications in respect of both the statements made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State at the Home Office on 11th April 1974 and 29th November 1977 must be made before the end of the year. Where someone believed to be an illegal entrant comes to notice by whatever means, the immigration service inquires into all the circumstances of his entry to the country, his activities here and any factors which might warrant his being treated exceptionally. Only when these inquiries are completed is a decision taken whether to remove him, and any representations made by him or on his behalf are taken fully into account. If it is concluded that the entry was illegal, and in the absence of substantial extenuating factors, removal then proceeds.

The Act gives power, where an immigration officer is satisfied that there are grounds to conclude that a person is an illegal entrant, for him to he detained on the authority of the immigration officer while his case is considered and while arrangements for his removal are completed. Provision is also made w here a person is liable to detention for him to be temporarily admitted without prejudice to his subsequent redetention.

The question of temporary admission of someone liable to detention is always carefully considered by the immigration service, and any representations made in this respect are also carefully considered. Full account is taken of any compassionate circumstances, but the risk that the person concerned will disappear if released has also to be taken into account. It is the aim to keep detention to the minimum, but it is unrealistic to expect the universal use of temporary admission, as a person who knows that he is likely to be removed ultimately as an illegal entrant has a very strong incentive to abscond. In fact temporary admission has currently been granted in something like 20 per cent. of people liable to detention as illegal entrants. Even so, in some such cases the persons concerned cannot now be traced.

It is the aim, in all cases where someone is detained as an illegal entrant, to reach a decision as soon as possible, both in his own interests and in the public interest. If I may say so, if for no other reason, it is very costly to keep him in detention. But that is not the main reason. We are concerned, however much the facts may appear to be against it, that the person should be released at the earliest opportunity. And we must take into account that it is an unprofitable thing from a financial point of view to keep people detained for an unlimited time.

Detention, however, is sometimes longer than we would wish, usually because of the need to consider and investigate representations made, sometimes successfully, by Members of Parliament, solicitors and others, and on occasions there may be delays in obtaining documents, or a person's particulars have to be checked in the country of origin. I know, from the inquiries I have made, that these sometimes do take many months. But I think one could argue that, in the last analysis, it is in the interests of the immigrant that that deep kind of inquiry should be made, particularly, of course, if his story is true.

Another matter that has been mentioned is the question of the right to appeal. The Act does provide a right of appeal against removal of an illegal entrant on the limited ground that the person is not an illegal entrant: but, as has been said, the appeal has to be made from abroad. I do not think that I want to cross the "t's" and dot the "i's" of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, on this matter. He dealt with it succinctly and I do not think there is anything I can add to what the noble Viscount said. This is a similar right to that given to someone refused entry at a port who does not possess any entry clearance.

The normal right of access to our courts, where someone believes he is wrongly detained, also exists, and is not infrequently exercised. There is also the opportunity of representation made by Members of Parliament to be considered by Ministers, and as I have already indicated—and I know this from the inquiries that I myself have made—very substantial use is made of this. I think the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, made the point in relation to when he was Minister of State at the Home Office.

We have no grounds to believe that people legally settled in this country are wrongfully removed. I am aware of no successful appeal on the ground that a person removed as an illegal entrant was not, in fact, an illegal entrant. This is my information. Provision for appeal on the fact of illegal entry does exist. Whether someone who is an illegal entrant should be allowed to stay exceptionally for humanitarian or other reasons, is a matter for the exercise of ministerial discretion. It has been suggested that the power to remove illegal entrants administratively should not be used and that instead the police should prosecute, or that removal should be effected by means of a deportation order.

While it is true that at the time the Bill was considered Parliament was mainly concerned with the administrative removal of clandestine entrants, it is difficult to distinguish in principle entry under a false identity or on forged papers from a clandestine entry. Nor is it possible to distinguish it from the returning deportee who gets leave to enter by concealing his status, and Parliament explicitly provided for such a person to be subject to administrative removal with no right of appeal before removal takes place save on the narrow ground that the deportation order refers to somebody else altogether. The object is the same in all cases; that is, premeditated evasion of the entry control from the outset.

Representations have also been made that the amnesty should be extended to people who entered illegally before 1973 who left voluntarily and subsequently re-entered by deception. It is claimed that to remove such people on the basis of the court's judgment as having entered illegally after 1st January 1973 is to apply the judgment to them retrospectively. The Government do not think so. Such people would be removed under the law as it existed at the time of their re-entry and not under retrospective powers. This can be argued but this is the Government view.

These are all matters to which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is giving consideration in the light of the representations made to him, and he will be dealing with them in due course. I know that is a form of words that is often heard in this Chamber, but I know the content of the representations made to my right honourable friend by the Joint Council for the Welfare of the Immigrant, by noble Lords who have spoken, and many others. I know that my right honourable friend has gone a long way to arriving at decisions on the various matters which he has been considering, and this is not something he will do in the near future. It really is something that I know personally he is doing currently.

Finally, I should like to repeat that it is the Government's intention to deal firmly with people found to enter illegally other than those eligible to benefit under the announcements relating to amnesty.

Regard will continue to be had, however, to compassionate and other exception factors, and where close ties have been established with this country these will be taken into account. Where public faith has been pledged to people who admitted the circumstances of their illegal entry to the authorities and were given an assurance that, despite that, they would be regarded as settlers here, this will be honoured.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, raised five points. The first related to a specific case on which I do not feel competent to make a comment. He raised a number of rather interesting points: that there was no special procedure for considering the position of those immigrants held in prison, that they are just fed into the machine. I do not think the noble Lord will mind my saying that we had a word about this earlier on. I have made inquiries. I know that it does not go as far as he wants it to go. He wants a special office which should have access to the private office of the Secretary of State. I can only say that my information is that special priority is in fact given to those in custody for two purposes: first, because they are in custody and one does not want to keep them in custody longer than is necessary; and secondly, as I said, because of the expense that is involved so far as the State is concerned.

The noble Lord also raised the question of a large number of detainees in prisons not kept informed of what is happening. He feels that there ought to be some means whereby they can be notified from time to time as to the progress of their application. I am grateful to him for saying that he felt that the Home Office had done something useful in issuing a form quite recently which undoubtedly must be of benefit to people finding themselves in that position. I cannot give him an answer on this. I can only say that I will communicate this. It will be in Hansard, but, over and above that, I will see that this is brought to the notice of my right honourable friend in the hope perhaps—I think I can go further than that and commit somebody, because if I say so somebody will have to do it—that it will be looked into. If noble Lords raise matters that have some substance, they are perhaps entitled to an assurance that the matters will be looked into. They may not get the reply they want.

Then there was the special place of detention needed, not in prison. This does present something of a problem. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, would accept that we could not do this perhaps outside a place such a London, because one could not set up special places of detention all over the country. There would be one here and two there and none somewhere else. But temporary admission is granted. I was looking into this matter, and what I want to say is that no suitable alternative secure accommodation exists at the present moment outside the prisons. We are examining the feasibility of expanding the detention centre at Harmondsworth to enable it to cope with larger numbers of detainees in conditions of tighter security, but this, if feasible, would be a fairly long-term project. I think that the point that the noble Lord has made is one which has occurred to people who are dealing with this. This is why the question is certainly being looked into of trying to do something with Harmondsworth to make it perhaps a better place than it is at the moment and expand it so that it could take more people than it is taking at the moment and out of the environment of prison.

I will be quite honest about this. I do not want to be drawn on the question of Securicor and what they are doing, except to say that the Home Office is well aware of the feelings that have been expressed, not only in a letter to The Times, but which have been expressed in other ways and through other means. I can give an assurance to the noble Lord that this matter is being looked at, as to whether it is the most desirable means of dealing with that situation. I can assure him that there are many other people who feel precisely as he does about it. The Home Office had taken this on board before this debate took place, and I was very pleased to find that it was well aware of the feelings that were being expressed in a number of places.

I do not think that I can say anything more that is useful, except to finish where I began by saying that if people really feel that the Act needs to be looked at, it would be a very good exercise if a group of people did that. In the last analysis one wants to see that whatever Acts are on the Statute Book are not only workable Acts but Acts which are not liable to bring criticism.