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Lord Kingsland moved Amendment No. 169:
- Page 30, line 6, at end insert "(in accordance with rules made by the Secretary of State)"
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 169 would require any searches carried out by detainee custody officers, under the powers to be conferred on them by the proposed new sub-paragraph (4) of paragraph 17 of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971, to be conducted in accordance with rules made by the Secretary of State. This amendment seeks to raise the question of how the conduct of detainee custody officers will be regulated when, as is envisaged under the provisions to be inserted under Clause 54 of the Bill, they enter premises to conduct searches and detain persons for whom they are responsible.
The Government propose to allow detainee custody officers to enter private premises without consent in order to conduct those searches—although they will be able to do so only where an immigration officer or a constable has entered the premises under a warrant. The existing power to search, the definition of which is referred to in the proposed new sub-paragraph (5) is contained in paragraph 2 of Schedule 13 to the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.
The conduct of police officers is obviously regulated by a number of well-known provisions, not least those of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The amendment seeks to clarify the provisions that will apply to detainee custody officers in circumstances where they have entered private premises by force for the purpose of carrying out a search.
Can the Minister tell the Committee whether the rules on the searches by those custody officers, which are referred to in paragraph 2(1)(a) of Schedule 13 to the 1999 Act, have been made; and, if so, whether they contain an adequate framework for the conduct of custody officers in the circumstances that will pertain if they exercise the powers conferred on them by this clause?
We have received some representations on this point from the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association and others who were concerned that there may be a deficiency in this respect. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to reassure the Committee on this point.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I start from the position that the amendment is unnecessary. I hope that I can give the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, the reassurance that he seeks.
The power for escorts to search a detained person is contained in paragraph 2(1)(a) of Schedule 13 to the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. That power must already be exercised in accordance with rules made by the Secretary of State regardless of the context in which the search is taking place.
Those rules are contained in the Detention Centre Rules 2001 (Statutory Instrument 238/2001). Specifically, Rule 7—it applies equally to escorts as it does to staff in removal centres—requires that detained persons shall be searched in as seemly a manner as is consistent with discovering anything concealed. It also requires that no detained person shall be stripped and searched in the sight of another detained person or in the sight of or presence of an officer or other person not of the same sex.
The amendment is properly put forward by the noble Lord acting on information put to him by practitioners. However, our contention is that it is an unnecessary duplication of an existing provision. In those terms, I believe that the noble Lord should feel assured, and comfortable in withdrawing the amendment.
Lord Dholakia: I do not want to repeat the Minister's reply in debate on a later amendment but did I hear him aright? Can the custody officer enter premises at present without the necessity for a search warrant signed by a responsible person?
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I think not; I think that the power is limited and that it can be exercised only when escorts are accompanying immigration or police officers to premises for which a warrant has been issued. I believe that that is the answer to the noble Lord's point but I shall seek further clarification and if I am wrong I shall write to him.
Lord Avebury: I listened carefully to the Minister's answer but I did not hear him address the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, about the rules mentioned in paragraph 2 of Schedule 13 to the 1991 Act. That provision gives the detaining custody officer the power to conduct those searches. It also states that that has to be in accordance with rules made by the Secretary of State. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, therefore asked: where are the rules and have they yet been made? The understanding of the agencies was that they still had not been published; that was also my understanding. If the Minister can assure us that the rules exist, I hope that he will also give us a reference to them so that we can look them up.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: I see that those in the Box are nodding; I take it that the rules have been made and laid. If Members of the Committee want further clarification, I shall happily provide them with a note confirming the situation. Meanwhile, I believe that the answer is on its way over to me. The rules are in paragraph 13(2) of Schedule 2. They have been made. Rule 7 of the detention centre rules is the relevant provision. I referred to that earlier. Rule 7 applies equally to escorts as to staff in removal centres.
Lord Kingsland: I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his response and clarification. I hope that he will allow me to go away and examine rule 7 in the light of what has been said in this short and extremely useful debate, and to come back, if necessary, on Report. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 56 [Detention centres: change of name]:
Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 169A:
- Page 30, line 39, leave out "removal" and insert "holding"
The noble Earl said: This amendment deals with the proposal in Clause 56 to change the name of detention centres to "removal centres". That sounds to me suspiciously like a pre-judgment of the case. My amendment would change the name to "holding centre", a much more neutral and balanced title.
Amendment No. 170, which stands in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, would provide that those centres were holding centres for people whom the Secretary of State was lawfully entitled to remove. That would achieve exactly the same effect as my amendment. If the Minister is prepared to accept either of those amendments, I am not going to be fussy about which it is; I should be content with either. However, if the Minister condemns both amendments, I will be reminded of the person who said, in the case of the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford, that it began to sound as if we would condemn him because we would condemn him. I hope that the Minister will agree to one of the amendments. I beg to move.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: As I understand it, the Government want detention centres to be called "removal centres" to make the point that detention may involve removal and that it is therefore better to give those centres that name even if they are still detention centres and will still detain people for purposes other than removal. The amendments of the official Opposition and of the Liberal Democrats neatly bracket the Government's position, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said. The Liberal Democrats approve of the Government's desire to change the name but they do so by involving both purposes, and the official Opposition's amendment acknowledges the Government's desire to introduce the concept of removal by making it the single purpose. As the noble Earl said, that is a very simple choice for the Government to make between the two amendments.
There is, within a mile of this place, a good test of the Government's logic. The Tate Gallery stands where Jeremy Bentham's Millbank penitentiary once stood. As one might expect of Bentham, it was in some senses a model prison and, indeed, a modern prison. The domestic arrangements in the cells were ones of which Stephen Tumim would have approved when he was Chief Inspector of Prisons. The penitentiary, which was adjacent to where prisoners took the tender to the larger ships that would transport them to Australia, was where they were held but the prisoners were not yet committed to going. On the eve of their being transported to Australia they were taken to cells on five floors below the Morpeth Arms—a pub which still stands on Millbank—and were held there. That would seem perfectly logical. The penitentiary might reasonably have been called the detention centre; the cells underneath the Morpeth Arms—which I believe are still there—could reasonably have been called a removal centre.
The Government's position, if I may say so, is straight out of Alice. It is Humpty Dumpty saying that he wants words to mean what he wants them to mean. If the Government regret that they were ever called detention centres, my recollection is that there is
another censorious character in Alice—perhaps the Caterpillar, perhaps the Red Queen, perhaps the Griffin, perhaps even Humpty Dumpty himself—who would have said, "If you wanted to call them removal centres, then that is what you should have called them in the first place", and I wholly concur with the noble Lord.
Lord Judd: I strongly support the amendment. It is not simply a matter of clarifying terminology and purpose. I believe that this amendment goes right to the heart of what this Bill is all about and how we want it to be perceived.
On Second Reading we spent a certain amount of time discussing the distinction between administering necessary policy justly in this area and playing to a negative public opinion by suggesting that the purpose of the legislation was to get rid of all of these people who should not really be here. Some of us argued that, while people who have no grounds for being here have no grounds for being here and will have to be removed, the primary purpose of the Bill is to ensure that all those with any entitlement to be here are able to stay. That is what the Bill is about.
As soon as we introduce the word "removal" into clauses such as this, whether or not the Government intend it, the message becomes confused. It panders to the irresponsible media and the rest, who want to talk in hysterical terms about the need to remove people rather than talk about our responsibility as a nation for ensuring that those who are entitled to be here are able to be here, while dealing sensitively but firmly with those who are not.
I believe that there is a great deal more to this amendment—if the noble Earl will forgive me on this occasion, because it is most unusual—than even he suggested. I believe that he was too modest. While there was something to commend the terminology of the Official Opposition, I think that his own term is a better one and I wish that he would stand more firmly by it.
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