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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

It is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). He was worried that his instinct to vote against the Bill was not shared by his colleagues or by anyone else in the House. He also gave a lucid explanation of one or two aspects of the Bill that he found wrong. The hon. Gentleman is not noticeably shy, and he has always stood up for causes that others, particularly in his own party, have abandoned—the euro and the European constitution, for example—so I think that he ought to go with his instinct on this occasion and force a vote, although my own Whips might not want me to say that. I appreciate having this chance to comment on the Bill. I particularly welcome the powers in clause 39 to extend monitoring operations to cover the escort services. I am concerned that the Bill is otherwise defective, however, in that it does not provide sufficient protection for detainees from arbitrary decisions. I am also worried that the Home Secretary has given his guarantee that the provisions of the Bill are compatible with the European convention on human rights. I shall query whether such a guarantee is appropriate in relation to some of the detainees who are facing return to places such as Zimbabwe. I had not intended to speak today, but events connected to Zimbabwean detainees in Yarl’s Wood in my constituency over the past three weeks—and particularly over the past 24 hours—have left me appalled at the way in which some of their cases are being handled. I want to make it clear to the House, and to the Minister, where I am coming from on this issue. I represent Yarl’s Wood, and I take very seriously my relationship with those who work there and those who pass through. I try to understand the asylum policy that we apply and, by and large, I support the principles behind it, as the Minister is aware. If a person has been properly represented and has gone through all the appeal processes and been adjudged to be not an asylum seeker but someone who needs to be returned, the policy must require that return, if it is to mean anything. I have defended such a system, and I have defended my constituents who work at Yarl’s Wood in difficult circumstances to make that policy work. However, my defence of that system was based on a sense of justice and decency, and I am now beyond defending it and the decisions of those who are behind it. Their cavalier treatment of the vulnerable people in their care is a scandal to our reputation as a decent nation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) spoke earlier of how the Government had let people down over the years. He mentioned briefly their proposal in 2001 to increase the number of removals. That was when my change of heart began in relation to this policy—when I found out that Yarl’s Wood was built on fraud. In November last year, the Prison Service ombudsman published his report on the 2002 fire at Yarl’s Wood, in which some 300 people avoided death purely by chance. That report exposed the fraudulent nature of Yarl’s Wood’s origins. It was built to enable the Government to meet a target of 30,000 removals a year, a commitment given in their 2001 election manifesto and on the Floor of the House by the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw). It transpired from the ombudsman’s report, however, that that target was nonsense. No one responsible in the Home Office or the immigration service believed in it. How did the Home Secretary come to rely on such a figure? As the report made clear, it was because the officials who challenged it were told that they were ““troublemakers””, and ““not one of us””. ““Reasoned debate””, said one senior figure, chillingly, ““was forbidden””. Immediately after the election, the new Home Secretary was informed that the target was undeliverable. Is it credible that it became undeliverable during the course of an election campaign, and that the Home Secretary did not know this? Frankly, no. It was either incompetence or deceit; the House must make up its own mind. In the rush to achieve that nonsensical target, an inadequate fire trap was built, in which people worked and were detained until it burnt down in minutes after being set on fire in a wicked act of arson perpetrated by persons unknown. The revelation of the story, chronicled in full in the ombudsman’s report, and the shameful failure of the Government to apologise for what had happened, or to counter the statement that reasoned debate about the targets was forbidden, profoundly changed my perception of the asylum system and those who were behind it. It offends my sense of justice not to see put right the things that were wrong. But that is history, although it has a bearing on the matters before us today. Let us come up to date. I am pleased that the Bill will extend powers of inspection to the escort services that take detainees to ports of departure. I should like to illustrate the kind of incident that the new monitoring service should look at. Three weeks ago, I met a Zimbabwean detainee who alleged that she and two others had been assaulted by the escort service taking them to the airport in pursuance of an order to remove them. She had been temporarily released, but had learned that one of the others, who was scheduled to have an X-ray at Bedford hospital, was being removed a few days before the appointment, and before the completion of the inquiry into the alleged assault in which she had been both a victim and a witness. That seemed strange, but not unusual. I had a written question answered by the Minister yesterday, in which I had inquired how many people who had made a complaint about the escort services were removed before the investigation had been completed. I was told that the answer could not be provided, because to do so would take up inordinate resources. So that recent incident cannot have been all that unusual. Problems with the escort services are not uncommon. They have a very difficult job to do. Those who do not want to leave the United Kingdom can make life very hard for the people whose job is to carry out the order. If those scheduled to return resist physically, it must be lawful to use reasonable force to get them to comply. But the problem can be seen immediately. What is reasonable force in those circumstances, particularly in the highly charged circumstances of a removal? And if allegations and cross-allegations are made, who is to judge what has happened if there is no independent witness? I, and other MPs, have taken this matter to the Home Office before. On a visit to Yarl’s Wood about a year ago, I was shocked by the vehemence of the women detainees when the question of the escort services was raised. There were too many accounts of casually inflicted violence and verbal abuse to dismiss out of hand. And while I understood very well how difficult it could be to move a powerful woman resisting removal, the majority of African and Asian women at Yarl’s Wood are not big people, and they were never in a one-to-one situation. It was obvious who would come off best in a physical confrontation.