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Lord Filkin: Before the noble Lord sits down, in order to seek to avoid running two debates at once, perhaps I could respond to his further questions about the PA press release. What I said when the noble Lord raised the issue with me earlier today was that I had the Home Office press release before me, I did not have the PA notice. The noble Lord has kindly provided me with the PA notice so I now have it in front of me.
I shall re-emphasise that I would like to check the accuracy of the record and therefore to respond in writing to the noble Lord when I have done so. What I am absolutely certain of is that the Home Secretary thinks that it is important that we make vigorous progress in improving the ability of the country to manage the asylum and immigration challenge that we face. I sense that no one in the House dissents from that challenge.
I am also certain that the noble Lord is keen for the Report stage of the Bill to be as early as possible when your Lordships' House reconvenes after the Summer Recess. Therefore, I am certain that that is the kind of issue that he will be seeking to address in his discussions within government, so that we come to Report after the benefit of a good period of consideration early on when we reconvene after the Recess. I shall write to him further on these points.
Lord Dholakia: I thank the Minister for the explanation that he has offered on that part. He noticed our concerns. In the first days he was kind enough to discuss with us the timetable for the Bill. We had no difficulty whatever in agreeing with the amount of days devoted to the Bill. To a great extent, we have not been responsible for the slowness of progress, in the sense that during the past five days of the Bill a number of Statements have been made, which have taken much time out from the Bill. One day there were a number of orders which exceeded their allocated time. So we are literally about four to five hours behind.
I can assure the Minister that there is no intention on our part to delay the Bill before us in Committee. I just say that the fault has not been ours. A statement of this nature reported in the press makes it uncomfortable, particularly for people on these Benches, because we felt that there was a push by the Home Secretary. I hope that the noble Lord will look into it and let us know at the appropriate time what is the correct position.
Lord Hylton: In relation to the point about Sangatte raised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, can the Minister tell us whether negotiations with the French turn on future arrangements to be made with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees? If so, can he tell us whether the Home Secretary already has sufficient powers to make more or less whatever arrangements he sees fit with the High Commissioner?
As for routine or automatic bail hearings, I have moved amendments on the subject to previous Bills, so I have a continuing interest. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has covered the matter so comprehensively that I have nothing to add. Nevertheless, I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Briefly, is the real reason for the provision that the Government will not do what they said in 1999 that they would do—I remember discussion of the subject at the time—because it would be a logistical nightmare?
We should not delay the Bill unduly by our discussion. We are talking much too much, if I may say so, and taking too long to make points. We should make our points more concisely and quickly, because we all want to deal with the problem of asylum. We should not spread out our discussion endlessly until the holiday and continue to spread it out on Report.
But my noble friend has given the Minister a chance to get off the hook. She suggests that the status quo should remain and that, in present circumstances, the
provision should be implemented as soon as possible. Will the Minister make plain whether the Government really consider that to be impossible?It is vital that asylum seekers should receive the correct impression of our justice system, and bail hearings are crucial. It is not a good idea to allow them to think that bail hearings are something that can be used rather casually by immigration officers, mixed up with all the other decisions that they take. The Government should consider my noble friend's amendment.
The Earl of Sandwich: I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness and I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said so succinctly. As he said, the need to preserve automatic bail hearings is linked with the necessity for full written reasons. One follows from the other. It is well understood from our earlier debates that removal does not mean exactly what the Government would like it to mean. In many cases, it is a mirage. For most asylum seekers, detention means exactly what it says. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned several case studies of bail for immigration detainees, so I shall not cite them, except to remind noble Lords that one case involved an asylum seeker who spent seven-and-a-half months without a hearing and then a further six weeks in detention.
During previous discussion, the Minister admitted that there have been failures in the system with regard to reasons for detention and he has undertaken to consider them before Report. Similarly, as we have heard, errors are occasionally made in the arrangements for bail hearings. The result is that many people with legitimate claims are overlooked and unnecessarily remain in stressful conditions before their claim is heard. The Minister must recognise that those errors would be minimised if there were a proper system for routine hearings.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, made some good suggestions. The fact that the presumption of liberty puts too much pressure on the Immigration Appellate Authority or interferes with the streamlining that we all want is neither here nor there. It is a human rights issue, as was plainly stated by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, that is justifiable only once a decision has been taken. If the person is not being removed, the requirement remains.
If it is a question of cost, what about the vast cost of detention? As to absconding, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, already mentioned in respect of another matter, the Minister in another place, Ms Angela Eagle, never responded to Mr Neil Gerrard when he cited the South Bank University report that more than 90 per cent of those in the sample who were given bail complied with their bail conditions. That was at col. 254 of the proceedings on 14th May.
So, as the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, said, if Part 3 of the 1999 Act is still valid but cannot yet be implemented, it should at least remain on the statute book.
Lord Dholakia: Perhaps I may now speak to the amendment, having already responded on a previous matter. First, let me say how delighted I am on behalf of the Liberal Democrat Front Benches to support the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the case made by my noble friend Lord Avebury. I shall be brief and shall make only three points.
First, when the 1999 Act was introduced, we were delighted that, despite some negative aspects, it introduced the concept of automatic bail provision. We genuinely welcomed that. The point is that, after all this time, it has not even been tried. It causes us serious concern about what value we can place on government promises to introduce a measure when that has not even been tried but is now being repealed. That is a matter of grave concern to all those who believe and trust many of the promises that Ministers make in this House.
Secondly, at no stage should we ever consider administrative convenience at the expense of the fairness of our judicial system. Granting of bail is part of that fair system. It is fundamentally wrong that administration costs should take priority over fairness to the individual.
Thirdly, the rest of the world follows many of the good examples and practices that we adopt in this country. It will be a tragedy when they see that we trample on some of the basic rights, such as the right of people who are being removed to ask for bail. What sort of example does that set for the rest of the world?
I hope that, even at this late stage, the Minister will consider taking the issue away and returning to us with some reasonable suggestions as to how we can speedily handle applications for bail from people who are being detained.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: This does not seem to be a good week for the Home Secretary. I allude to the events late on Monday mentioned by my noble friend Lady Anelay and those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. However, the jury is still out on both matters, so we should obviously get on with the rest of our business.
No doubt the Government gained no little credit both inside and outside Parliament for introducing Part 3 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. My late noble kinsman, told me that when he was an undergraduate, there was a club in his college—which is also the college of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, called the Husteron Proteron Club, taken from the Greek for "later earlier". Every term, the club lived one day backwards. Its members would rise, drink a glass of whisky and play some bridge and end up having porridge late at night.
By introducing Part 3 of the Act into the Bill, the Government appear to be following somewhat the same practice. They appear to have legislated for the provision—as I said, perhaps gaining no little credit for that—and then, as the then Minister, Angela Eagle, told the Committee in the Commons, undertaken considerable research that persuaded them that it would be quite wrong to implement the provision that they had already enacted.
On Monday, I alluded to the fact that during the previous Parliament, through what it would be wrong to call the activity of the Home Office because it was due more to its inactivity, I found myself writing to it 40 times more often than I had done in Parliaments previous to that one. One was prepared to do all that was needed on behalf of one's constituents, but what I found trying was that no Home Office Minister in that Parliament would ever admit to having got anything wrong. That was a little provocative, as it was clear that some of the decisions were going wrong. In the retraction of those provisions, we have an acknowledgement that the decision taken in the previous Parliament was, in the eyes of the Government, wrong. I suppose that that represents some improvement. The Home Office Ministers from the previous Parliament who would not acknowledge that anything was wrong are no longer Ministers. There will be no names and no pack drill.
The fact remains that we are getting an acknowledgement that the Government think that they got it wrong. To their mind, they got it wrong on cost grounds. I must say that, although there may be such costs, there is a greater cost to those for whom the previous provisions were brought in. I join my noble friend on the Front Bench in support of the amendment.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Filkin: There is, I think, consensus in the Committee that detention, properly managed, is part of a sensible system of asylum and immigration control. There is, at times, a need to use detention powers on entry, although, as has been said, immigration officers will, for obvious reasons, generally seek to minimise the use of the powers. There is also a need to use detention at the end of the process, when people are found to have no further right of residence in Britain either because their asylum claim has not been accepted or because their presence in the country is illegal for another reason.
We all recognise that it is crucial that we should be more successful at removing people who do not have a right of presence in the country. We are not motivated by any sense of punitiveness, but, unless we reduce the success rate of traffickers who charge people money to bring them here, we are likely to see a continuation of such attempts at trafficking. It is crucial, therefore, that removals take place when there is no longer a justification for someone's presence. Detention is a necessary part of ensuring greater success with removals, and the expansion of the detention estate to 4,000 places is, in large part, a product of that objective.
Many members of the Committee have spoken about what the Government did in 1999. I can understand why those points were made. However, we are now three years on in our experience of trying to cope fairly but firmly with asylum and immigration. We now recognise the need for a larger detention estate and more success at removals. Having a detention estate of 4,000 places would, as we said at Second Reading, mean that the implementation of Part III
would lead to some 36,000 bail hearings per annum. That is impracticable and would be a significant diversion of immigration officers' time from other crucial duties.As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, said, we cannot plead administrative convenience as the sole justification for an action, although it plays a part. The realities of government mean that one must, sometimes, consider how to manage within available resources. Therefore, it is important to consider how one ensures that people who are necessarily detained can petition effectively for release under bail provisions, should they wish to do so. That is the point to which the debate must return. Given that detention is necessary and that a routine bail process is unrealistic, how do we ensure that people can apply for bail when they wish to do so?
Everybody who is detained—with two exceptions—has a right to apply for bail. One exception relates to those who have been in the country for fewer than seven days. The Committee will realise that that exception allows for the first stage of evidential checking. However, that exception should not cause us great anxiety. The other relates to detention of those due to be deported under Schedule 3 to the Immigration Act 1971 who do not have a pending appeal of the type referred to in paragraph (3) of Schedule (3). Those who have a pending appeal will have a right to apply for bail, but it is common sense that those who have exhausted their appeals and are in the process of being removed should not.
Most people will continue to have the right to apply for bail. The question is whether, in practice, that right can be effectively exercised by people who are detained. As part of my preparation for the Committee stage, I read the notice that is given to detainees setting out the reasons for their detention and their bail rights. Taking cognizance of the wise words of the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, who said that we should get on with things, I shall not read it all out. However, it sets out people's rights in clear, if—how shall I put it?—official language. In practice, it is also translated, so that each person detained is informed orally by a translator of their right to apply for bail.
The charge is sometimes made that people may not, in the heat of the moment, understand what is said to them. I can believe that there will be occasions on which that will be true. However, 85 per cent of detainees are asylum claimants, as we would expect, and most are legally represented. I shall not be flippant about it, but I am less concerned about asylum claimants who have representation; even if they do not understand what is explained to them in their own language, their advocate or representative will. In most cases, excellent advice is given to asylum claimants in this country, and advisers will be able to give advice on the right to apply for bail.
We intend to go further and publish a pamphlet that will be clear but simple and will deal with the entire process of asylum claims. It will be given to every person who claims asylum in this country. It will set out their right to apply for bail clearly and
categorically and in language that is as simple and clear as is consistent with the duty to be legally accurate. That pamphlet will be translated into the 30-odd main languages that we come across when dealing with asylum seekers. I would like to give an absolute commitment about when that pamphlet will be available in those 30 languages. I shall do my best to make it highly likely that it will be produced before Royal Assent to the Bill is signified. That is the timetable on which we should operate. The sooner that such advice and information is in people's hands, the better. In a sense, they will have belt and braces—an advocate and a document for themselves that seeks to give an understanding of the process.
I shall turn to some of the questions—not all—that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked important questions about the average time spent in detention. There are no figures for that, but I can say that over 55 per cent of those detained, excluding those at Oakington, spend less than two months in detention.
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