Evidence submitted by Bail for Immigration
Detainees (BID)
1. Bail for Immigration Detainees is a registered
charity that exists to challenge immigration detention in the
UK. Since 1998, BID has worked with asylum seekers and migrants,
in removal centres and prisons, to allow them to exercise their
right to apply for bail. BID:
— Makes free applications for release,
on bail or temporary admission, from immigration detention for
asylum seekers and migrants.
— Runs bail workshops in detention
centres, publishes a Notebook on Bail and legal bulletins providing
information to detainees to empower them to make their own applications
for release.
— Encourages legal representatives
to make bail applications for their clients, by way of training
and the "Best Practice Guide to Challenging Immigration Detention".
— Carries out research and policy work
to push for the use of detention in the UK to be in line with
domestic and international law and human rights standards.
2. In addition to detention for the purposes
of removal from the UK, current detention policy allows for children
in families to be detained, and for newly arrived asylum claimants
to be detained for the fast processing of their asylum claim.
Official figures show that upwards of 30,000 people, including
2,000 children, are detained each year. BID has published evidence
about inadequacies and injustices in detention over the past four
years.[33]
There is also significant body of evidence documenting problems
and human rights concerns about the detention of asylum seekers,
particularly the most vulnerable; children, torture-survivors
and the mentally ill. For example, HM Inspectorate of Prisons
reports over a number of years, comments by the EU Human Rights
Commissioner, reports into disturbances and deaths in detention
by the Prison and Probation Ombudsman, and research by Amnesty
International and Save the Children (to which BID contributed).
3. BID is concerned about the proposed limitations
on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The deprivation of liberty
of asylum seekers and migrants for the administrative convenience
of the State is a matter of public concern and is also contentious.
A key part of our work is ensuring that the use of immigration
detention is transparent and that detaining authorities are accountable.
Whilst there remain significant areas of detention policy and
practice that are not open to scrutiny, the implementation of
the FOIA has greatly improved the public availability of information
about detention. Prior to the implementation of the FOI Act, key
information such as the number of children detained each year,
the outcome of detention and the cost of detention was not available
to public or parliamentary scrutiny.
4. BID has made a number of FOI requests
to the Home Office and the Department for Constitutional Affairs
since the implementation of the Act. On average, BID makes two
or three requests a month but, due to the specialised nature of
our work, these tend to be to the same two Government departments.
We are therefore concerned that the proposals to allow authorities
to aggregate requests may severely limit our ability to obtain
important information. In BID's view, the proposals will have
a disproportionate impact on specialised research, advocacy or
policy-focused charities as the nature of such work means that
multiple requests are made to the same authority.
5. BID has used the FOIA to obtain information
about the use of detention which has resulted in disclosure of
information that has contributed to public debate, scrutiny and
accountability, including by parliamentarians. For example, we
have obtained information about:
— the detention of children under Immigration
Act powers, including outcome of detention, age of the children,
the length of their detention;
— asylum appeals lodged by men and
women in the detained fast track, including the outcome of appeals
and whether detained appellants were legally represented or not;
— the number of bail hearings made
by detained asylum seekers and migrants and the outcome of such
hearings; and
— disclosure of the evaluation report
of the pilot phase of the detained fast track at Harmondsworth
Immigration Removal Centre (IRC).
Much of this information has been used to submit
to parliamentary inquiries, for example, the Joint Committee on
Human Rights recent inquiry into asylum seekers.
6. The requests made by BID have been genuinely
motivated by a desire to improve scrutiny of Home Office policy.
On many occasions BID has to make follow-up requests to extract
further clarification or detail on the response provided. Immigration
detainees are among the most vulnerable in the UK to abuse and
ill-treatment, so their situation deserves the most anxious scrutiny.
In addition, this area of public policy is politically contentious
and, in BID's experience, the Home Office have sought to restrict
the amount of information that is in the public domain about the
use of immigration detention. A number of the requests made by
BID, if the proposals are implemented, may fall foul of the proposal
to take into account the cost of considering an FOI request. BID
is concerned that information that is in the public interest may
therefore hit the upper cost limit and be refused.
7. BID is opposed to the introduction of
the proposed regulations on the basis that they will undermine
access to information that is of great public importance about
policy areas, such as detention, which engage serious issues of
human rights and justice.
Sarah Cutler
March 2007
33 "Working against the clock: inadequacy and
injustice in the fast track system", by BID, July 2006.
"Fit to be Detained? Challenging the detention of asylum
seekers and migrants with health needs" by BID, including
a report by Médicins Sans Frontiéres, May 2005.
Justice Denied-Asylum and Immigration Legal Aid-A System in Crisis-Evidence
from the front line-compiled by BID and Asylum Aid, April 2005.
"They took me away"-Women's experiences of immigration
detention in the UK, Asylum Aid and BID, September 2004.
"A Few Families too Many: The detention of asylum-seeking
families in the UK", March 2003.
Submission to the United Nations Worlking Group on Arbitrary Detention,
September 2002.
"A Crying Shame: pregnant asylum seekers and their babies
in detention" A joint publication by BID, Maternity Alliance
and the London Detainee Suport Group, September 2002. Back
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