Immigration detention should not exceed 28 days as Government defeated in Lords

The Government has been defeated in the Lords over how long people can be held in detention under its flagship Immigration Bill.

Peers voted by 187 votes to 170, a majority of 17, that detention periods should not exceed 28 days in total, unless a court decides otherwise due to exceptional circumstances.

Labour’s Lord Rosser insisted the limit was needed because indefinite detention had a negative impact on mental health. However, Lord Keen of Elie, the Advocate General for Scotland, strongly criticised the move, warning it would significantly undermine the Government’s ability to enforce immigration controls and make it more difficult to maintain public safety.

Lord Keen said the limit would give illegal migrants attempting to frustrate removal an “easy target” to aim for.

“The time limit created, 28 days, would give any non-compliant illegal migrant who wishes to frustrate removal an easy target to aim for.

“Such an amendment would significantly impact on our abilities to enforce immigration controls and maintain public safety.

“It should be borne in mind that an individual’s compliance history and the likelihood of them absconding form part of the consideration whether or not detention is necessary in the first place.

“The Government takes the issue of deprivation of liberty very seriously. There is a well established principle that for an individual to be detained pending removal there must be a realistic prospect of removal within a reasonable time, and that is carried out by virtue of judicial oversight,” Lord Keen said.

Lord Rosser said the change would let the courts decide the issue.

“The amendment does not preclude, or prevent, detention beyond 28 days, but it does mean, in a country where we uphold justice and the right to liberty, that at least after a period of time, the decision to continue to detain has to be a judicial one, not an administrative one,” the Labour peer said.

Crossbench peer Lord Ramsbotham said he had put forward the amendment to the Immigration Bill setting the 28 day detention limit because “the system is not working”.

Lib Dem Lord Roberts of Llandudno said people held in detention needed to be treated with more compassion.

“They are not criminals, they are people, people with lives and dreams,” Lord Roberts said.

Labour’s Baroness Lister of Burtersett said indefinite detention impacted on people’s mental health and the current situation was a “stain on this country’s human rights record.”

Lord Brown of Eaton-Under-Heywood said he broadly supported the move as the onus should be on the Home Secretary to produce reasons for an extension before a court.

However, the crossbench peer suggested nine months would be a better time limit, as Sweden has a 12-month cut-off point.

Crossbench peer Lord Green of Deddington said the 28-day time limit could lead to up to 10,000 people a year appealing for release from detention.

“The power of detention is essential to effective removal. It is fundamental to the whole immigration system. Broadly speaking, I would say that the system is working.

“It would encourage people to spin things out to get to 28 days, and then who knows, they may disappear,” Lord Green said.

The Lords also heard that non-white people will face discrimination from landlords under provisions in the Bill aimed at preventing illegal migrants from renting properties.

Lord Rosser said that “right-to-rent” requirements demanding that letting agents check the validity of tenants’ documents relating to their legal status to remain in the country will lead to landlords adopting a “risk-averse” attitude as the upper house debated the report stage of the Immigration Bill.

“The Bill creates new criminal offences for landlords and letting agents who do not comply with the right-to-rent scheme under which they are required to check the immigration status documents to avoid unlawful letting, or landlords, or letting agents who fail to evict tenants who do not have the right to rent, with a maximum sentence of five years,” Lord Rosser said.

The peer warned this situation would “probably result in at least some landlords taking a risk-averse approach by letting primarily to white British persons with passports”.

Home Office Minister Lord Bates said that landlords would not be prosecuted if they had reasonable cause to believe their tenants were in the country legally.

“The guidance to landlords makes it very clear that discrimination is unlawful,” the minister said.

Former deputy assistant commissioner in the Met Police, Lord Paddick, warned stop-and-search powers relating to a new offence of driving while unlawfully in the UK would take the country back to the “bad old days of poor police race relations”.

He told peers: “The days of police officers arresting black drivers on the spurious grounds that they were suspected of being an over-stayer had, I had hoped, thankfully been consigned to the history books.”

The Lib Dem peer said the Home Secretary had done a lot of good work on stop and search powers but a lot more needed to be done “if you are still over four times more likely to be stopped and searched if you are black than if you are white”.

He said: “All the evidence indicates the police are not yet ready, despite baby steps in the right direction, to be given more search powers and the power to arrest drivers for being suspected of being illegally in the UK.”

Lord Paddick warned such powers were likely to be used disproportionately against black people and urged ministers to reconsider this “draconian” move.

“Restrict the powers to immigration officers if you must but please don’t drag the police back to the bad old days when I was a constable on the beat,” he added.

Labour’s Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, the mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, also called for rejection of the clause, warning it would lead to discrimination “on our roads and in our houses”.

Pointing to unrest sparked by the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, she warned of the Bill’s “obvious potential to ramp up the discriminatory impact and inflame existing grievances”.

Lord Bates said the powers were needed to help trace migrants who had no legal right to remain in the country.

“Illegal immigrants should not be driving on our roads, they are showing disregard for the laws of this country.

“The intent is to use these powers in a reactive way after they have already stopped a vehicle. These powers will not be used by the police to stop vehicles simply in order to check the immigration status of drivers,” Lord Bates said.

Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2016, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Anna Gowthorpe / PA Wire.