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Baroness Whitaker: I am not sure whether I am in support of the amendment. That may depend on the response given by my noble friend the Minister. It is slightly tied in with the position of children. Although it is the subject of later amendments, it seems to me that six months is too long in the life of a child, especially if he is attending school inside the accommodation centre. I am talking about children who are already deprived of their rights under the UN convention because of the UK Government's reservations. If my noble friend were able to give some assurance that families with children would be fast tracked so that a shorter period than six months would apply—indeed, 10 weeks would be excellent, but even three months would be better—I would not need to support the amendment.

Lord Greaves: I shall speak to the three amendments included in this grouping that are tabled in my name, and those of my noble friends Lord Russell and Lord Dholakia. I refer to Amendments Nos. 107B, 111A and 111B. We are seeking to extend the time limit, which the noble Baroness's amendment sets at 10 weeks, to six months. The three amendments simply place the six months' limit in different parts in the Bill: in regard to the power to provide accommodation; in regard to the requirement on asylum seekers to reside in that accommodation; and to prevent them being kept in there after six months.

This matter was debated at great length in another place. A number of assurances were given by the Government as to their intentions and wishes, which are also set out in the Minister's letter to my noble friend Lord Avebury, to which he referred. But nothing has yet been done to set down in tablets of stone—in legislation or anywhere else—any guarantees that the six-month limit will be kept to.

There is a general view that six months is the absolute limit for the stay in an accommodation centre. As the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, said, for young children receiving an education, six months in a centre is too long a period. We are not suggesting that a period of six months should be the norm. We are suggesting that it should be the absolute limit.

Indeed, the Home Secretary himself is reported as saying in another place on 7th February:

"God forbid that anyone should be in an accommodation centre for six months".—[Official Report, Commons, 7/2/02; col. 1037.]

Clearly, some people will be there for six months, whatever God may or may not say, and we must hope that they are very few.

There are good reasons why in some cases it may not be possible to process claims fully through both the initial stage and the appeal stage in less than that time. The "two plus four" formula has been referred to; namely, that two months should be the limit for the processing of initial applications for refugee status or

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leave to remain and that four months after that should be the limit for the two stages of appeals which will then be available.

For people who come to this country without any documents or information, with no proof of who they are or where they have come from, it sometimes takes quite a long time to obtain a certain amount of documentary evidence as to what they have suffered and what is the basis of their application for refugee status. If they do not have the opportunity to obtain those documents, it is simply their word against what the adjudicator may think. In those circumstances their application is less likely to succeed.

So, in fairness to the applicants, they need to be given sufficient time to try to obtain the necessary information to support their claims. I know from personal experience that obtaining documents from such countries as Iran or Afghanistan can be time-consuming. Getting them translated accurately also takes time. So there are processes to be gone through which take time and which justify saying that in many cases the initial decision cannot be made in less than two months. The same applies to the appeal process. At that stage people will have realised what is holding up their claim and will know what extra documentation and proof they have to find.

We believe—a point put forward in another place by my honourable friend Simon Hughes—that six months as a limit is not unreasonable. However, six months in an accommodation centre is bordering on the unreasonable. If it is the Government's belief that people should not be in accommodation centres for longer than six months, that ought to be clearly laid down somewhere. If the Minister is not prepared to accept the amendment on the face of the Bill—I can understand the reasons why he might not—what is he prepared to do to provide a guarantee in black and white that people will not remain in the centres for more than six months?

One of the reasons put forward in another place was that having an absolute cut-off line was unreasonable because it might actually be unfair and unreasonable to individuals in some circumstances. People whose claim had been accepted on the border of six months, or whatever time was put forward, ought to be given a little time before being kicked out into the wide world to find their own accommodation. Alternatively, if someone was waiting for a decision that was due in a few days or the following week it would be unreasonable to make them find other accommodation in the community or to transfer them there. Similarly, to force people who had had their claims refused and who were waiting to be removed from the country into interim accommodation pending their removal might be unreasonable.

Those are good, sensible arguments, but they are arguments of detail, not arguments against the basic principle that six months in an accommodation centre is long enough for anybody, and certainly long enough for any family. Any person or family who is going to be settled in this country must start integrating into the

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community before six months. People who are going to be removed ought not to be held for longer than that. We ought to be able to deal with their cases.

What guarantees can the Government give us to allay our fears so that we are content to withdraw the amendment, as I am sure the Minister will ask us to do?

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Six months is a very long time for children. The Refugee Children's Consortium told the Joint Committee on Human Rights that children should not be in accommodation centres at all. The consortium made nine points, which are put in legalistic terms, but they are very sensible. The shorter the time for children the better. If it can be reduced to 10 weeks, perhaps we can accept the idea of families being incarcerated in this way. I do not know what the noble Lord is going to say, but that seems to be an argument.

The Earl of Sandwich: I support the noble Baroness. Her earlier simple amendment on numbers turned into an hour and a half long debate. This is a critical issue. The amount of time that people are going to spend in accommodation centres determines the nature of the centres and the resources that we commit to services. The more services and the larger the numbers, the longer people are going to stay in the centres.

The Government believe in targets, so why not set a target? It may not be on the face of the Bill, but let us hear a more definite target along the lines suggested by the noble Baroness.

I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, was going to mention detention. Many of us who have sat through these Bills have complained about how long people have to spend in detention centres. We believe that the Government are going to shorten those periods. Why can they not turn their attention to accommodation centres in the same spirit?

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: I shall be extremely brief in support of my noble friend. I have read the Commons Committee debate on 9th May at cols. 106 to 119 of the Official Report. It was a long debate. If I may be allowed a Wimbledonian metaphor, by the final column the debate was at about deuce. Mr Malins, serving, raised a question about the words, "in exceptional circumstances". I acknowledge that the Minister, Angela Eagle, blocked it. I further acknowledge that the matter was resolved by force majeur in a vote in the next column so that the Committee could move on with proceedings on the Bill.

I also noticed the words that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, quoted. On 7th February, the Home Secretary was saying God forbid that anybody should be in an accommodation centre for six months, but by col. 118, just before the Committee debate came to deuce, Angela Eagle said:

"On Second Reading, the Home Secretary said that six months was about right".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee E, 9/5/02; col. 118.]

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That is clearly a different quotation from that which was used on 7th February. There has been some movement from the Government, possibly in the wrong direction. I have not found the Home Secretary's specific words at Second Reading, because the reference is not given in the text. As, in my view, it was about deuce after 12 columns of debate and my parliamentary neighbour in Kensington North—who had an asylum caseload very similar to my own in Westminster, South—expressed her own sympathy for the spirit of the amendments that we were moving, I shall be very interested to listen to the Minister when he responds to the remark about "in exceptional circumstances", given the fact that that is an addition to the amendment, since we moved a simpler amendment without it in Committee in the Commons.

9.45 p.m.

Lord Hylton: I think that 10 weeks, as stated rather baldly in the amendment, is by itself too short. Can the Minister say how he envisages these accommodation centres working in practice? For example, will they be used in combination with reporting or in combination with cards giving access to various necessary services? If that were the case, then it might be possible to take only part of the total asylum decision-making process within the accommodation centres, allowing the possibility for the individuals or families to move on to another stage sooner than six months.

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