Asylum Seekers: Detention (Hansard, 13 February 2002)

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Rooker)
My Lords, the Government have pursued a strategy of detaining those held solely under immigration powers in dedicated long-term Immigration Service facilities. Part of that strategy has been the opening of three new removal centres towards the end of last year. To this 1093 end, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced on 3rd October last year that he was committed to cease using Prison Service accommodation for holding immigration detainees beyond January 2002. I am pleased to say that that commitment has been met.

§ Lord Chan
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. However, no mention has been made of Walton prison in Liverpool, which I have visited. Can the Minister confirm that immigration detainees are today being held in dedicated prison establishments? Will he explain the difference between a prison and an Immigration Service removal centre where asylum seekers are detained, particularly in terms of the cost per prisoner or immigration detainee?

§ Lord Rooker
My Lords, it is important to get the facts right first. There are no immigration detainees being held solely under immigration rules in any prison at the present time. Whatever the date the noble Lord visited Walton, there are no immigration detainees being held there today. There have not been any detainees in any prison since the middle of January. There are five dedicated immigration removal centres—previously called detention centres. There are two former prisons—Haslar and Lindholme—which are now removal centres and have been legally such since 8th February. It will take time to get all the facilities organised on the scale of our new purpose-built removal centres, but for solely immigration purposes there are no asylum seekers or immigration detainees in prisons. There could be occasionally in Northern Ireland, where there are no dedicated immigration removal facilities, but anyone held there has the option of coming to the mainland and going to one of the Immigration Service establishments. That is not to say that there are no asylum seekers in prison, but if they are in prison they are there because of non-immigration related offences.

§ Lord Dholakia
My Lords, I welcome the discontinuation of holding asylum seekers in prisons, but who is responsible for making sure that the rules in detention and holding centres are adequately observed? Perhaps I may draw the Minister's attention to rule 4, which is a compact that allows the detainees to know their rights in detention, and to rule 9, which places a duty on the Home Secretary to ensure that the reasons for detention are adequately explained to the detainees every month. In many of the detention centres of which I know, these rules are not properly observed. Will the Minister ensure, particularly in relation to the Gatwick detention centre, that these rules are adequately observed and that such information is passed to the detainees at the earliest possible opportunity?

§ Lord Rooker
My Lords, I shall check into what the noble Lord has said. I am not aware—I stand to be corrected later—of any complaint about people in removal centres not being made aware of the rules. As to who is responsible, the Immigration Department is 1094 responsible. Even though HMPs Haslar and Lindholme are managed by the Prison Service, they are under the direct operational control of the Immigration Department. To that end, it is my department and the Immigration Department that are responsible. I am not aware of any difficulties at Tinsley House. I have visited all the dedicated removal centres and that matter has not been drawn to my attention. But I shall check on it.

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, when HMP Haslar moved from Prison Service to Home Office control, what changes took place among the staff, and what retraining took place if the same staff are still in the same establishment?

§ Lord Rooker
My Lords, re-training is on-going. The staff were not necessarily moved; they came under different control and a different set of rules. It is the facilities for the people being detained that have changed. The rules have changed from prison rules to detention rules. I appreciate that it is also a change for prison officers to move from operating under prison rules to operating under detention rules. Therefore retraining is taking place. It will necessarily take a short while before the culture at Haslar and Lindholme is the same as the culture at Harmondsworth, Tinsley, Dungavel and Yarl's wood, but the legal change took place on 8th February.

§ Lord Avebury
My Lords, is the Minister aware that there are difficulties in gaining access to the detention centre rules, particularly at Yarl's wood. While a copy of the rules may be lodged in the library there, there is not a notice on the publicly available notice board seen by the inmates that tells them how to access those rules in any language, even English.

§ Lord Rooker
My Lords, no one is detained in a removal centre without knowing why they are there. I must make it clear that they are not picked up and taken there without any knowledge of why they are there in the first place. As to the rules not being publicly available, I shall check on that matter. Yarl's wood is currently coming on stream. It is not fully operational in the sense that it is full to capacity and will not be so for a few months. It will have a large capacity, some 900. I visited the establishment during its early days when there were just over 100 people there and the rest of the facility was still being brought into operation. But, as I said, as far as I am aware, no one has made any complaint to my office about the rules not being made available. The noble Lord has done so on the Floor of the House and I shall check on the matter.

§ The Countess of Mar
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I recently visited Harmondsworth in my capacity as a member of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal? We were shown in very great detail all the procedures that are undertaken. It was extremely impressive. If all the centres are to be like Harmondsworth, then it is about time that the Home Office was congratulated on getting something right.

§ Lord Rooker
My Lords, on behalf of the staff and all those involved, I am grateful to the noble Countess for that vote of thanks. I, too, have visited Harmondsworth. It was built from scratch, from the signing of the contract to people being housed there, in about 10 months. It is an excellent example of what can be achieved as a result of partnership and cooperation. The facilities are excellent. It is necessarily a detention centre. It has been renamed a "removal" centre and that is what it is, not a prison but a removal centre. Therefore, people are not free to come and go. But we do our best to make people's stay there as fruitful and useful as possible and we try to make it less onerous. The centre is certainly a vast improvement on the previous arrangements.

§ Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, following the incident last week in which the brakes of a Eurostar train were tampered with, putting passengers in danger, is the Minister aware that many people believe that criminals such as those involved should be put in gaol? Is it not a fact that asylum seekers from eastern Europe cannot now be fleeing from political persecution? They may be economic migrants; but they may also be criminals who are escaping punishment in their own country. Will the Minister take that into account in future policy-making relating to asylum seekers?

§ Lord Rooker
Yes, my Lords, there are occasions when we return people to their own country on the basis that their main claim was fear of prosecution rather than persecution. Taking an axe to sever brake cables on a moving train is outrageous. It is a threat to everyone concerned—those on the train as well as the clandestines. The matter is being looked into and I shall be having discussions later this week with the transport Minister.