MS NICOLA ROGERS AND MRS SALLY TARSHISH

TUESDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2003

  520. Okay, or perhaps you have another case where there is no problem.
  (Mrs Tarshish) Okay.

  Mr Prosser: We respect that.

  521. The other point I wanted to bounce off Ms Rogers. We were told when we visited Eaton House, which is an enforcement centre near Heathrow Airport, that of those required to report, only about 60% are ever seen.
  (Mrs Tarshish) I cannot comment.
  (Ms Rogers) I cannot comment on that, I am afraid.

  522. I think you were suggesting earlier that the odds are that most people would show up. I am putting it to you that rather a lot of them do not.
  (Ms Rogers) I do not know of those cases, so I do not know why they did not report. I have known of cases myself, cases in which I have been involved, where there are misunderstandings between various arms of the Home Office about where a person is to be reporting, at what time and to whom. It may be that reporting restrictions have been changed and Eaton House is not aware of it. I know even cases from Eaton House—

  523. Yes, but 40% non appearance is a bit too large to account for that, is it not?
  (Ms Rogers) My evidence is not to suggest that every single asylum seeker is an angel or every single illegal immigrant is an angel. I do not seek to suggest that. I am seeking practical ways in which to effect removals. That was my evidence.

  Chairman: We have a common objective there. Mrs Dean.

  524. Thank you, Chairman. Turning to automatic bail hearings, there is a clause to allow them in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 which was not implemented. What is the problem with not giving detainees automatic bail hearings if they can still apply for a hearing?
  (Ms Rogers) They can still apply for bail if they know they can apply for it. One of the problems within detention facilities is, as Sally has touched upon, the lack of interpreters there. People who do not have representatives may not actually be aware of their right to make a bail application unless it is automatic. That is how people remain in detention for very long periods of time without any judicial oversight. The danger is the lack of judicial oversight. In fact, it is not simply that that part is not being implemented; it has now been repealed as a result of the 2002 Act.

  525. You talked about groups that are detained and perhaps should not be, but are there any groups which are exempt for detention for reasons of vulnerability?
  (Ms Rogers) The detention criteria are such that a person who is unfit for detention (in terms of psychological or physical reason) are not supposed to be detained. Pregnant women, for instance, are supposed to be detained only in exceptional circumstances. Children are supposed to be detained only in exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately, the evidence bears out that those groups are being detained. One of the problems, for instance, with unfitness for detention, is the assessment of that or, indeed, the lack of assessment of that. As regards children, we have had evidence today about children being detained for very long periods, outside of the exceptional category and in excess of the shortest time period, and, indeed, last year there was a report by BID (Bail for Immigration Detainees) of pregnant women being detained.

  526. This might be a question for Mrs Tarshish: you mentioned earlier about the effect on children and their education. Are there other examples of effects on children?
  (Mrs Tarshish) Yes. One of the cases that came to our attention was that of a mother of two small children aged six years old and, I think, 18 months. She was detained for 111 days, finally got bail and was released, and it took six months for the six-year old child to regain the weight she had lost while in detention. These are strikingly tragic examples.

  527. I am sorry, the child was how old?
  (Mrs Tarshish) Six years old and lost a great deal of weight—I do not know the exact figure but it was a significant number of kilograms—and it took six months after they had been released on bail to regain that weight. One of the things I would really strongly recommend that this panel take away with them is that this facility for detaining families is very recent. Before, there was only one place, Tinsley House, and it was usually for very short periods of time. Now we are getting these very long periods at Dungavel and I think there should be some overall monitoring as to the effects on children, and probably the best placed government organisation to do that would be Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons. We have no idea at the moment what the effect, short term or long term, will be on these children. We are one of the few countries I know of—I cannot think of another one off the top of my head—that detains families.

  528. What are the reasons for detaining families for a long time?
  (Mrs Tarshish) I think it probably goes back to the same administration problems of documentation. I do not know, I am not privy to this. Remember, we are an organisation that visits. Sometimes people tell us, sometimes they do not. I am just reporting to you the effect of this on people.

  529. Turning to the legal advice: you have obviously said that is not good enough in centres, what needs to change to make it better?
  (Ms Rogers) I think people need to have routine access to legal advice. If you are detained in a prison establishment or if you are detained pending charge, for instance, you have access to a duty solicitor and routine legal advice. The problem in immigration detention is there is no such routine access, and, whilst the two organisations which give legal advice, the Immigration Advisory Service and the Refugee Legal Centre, quite often have a telephone service within detention centres for detainees, those organisations are extremely stretched and cannot often take on cases.

  530. Do they not automatically go into the centres for surgery type events?
  (Ms Rogers) No. I am sure AVID have better information on this but my experience is that they do not. Sometimes in the past they were operating such advice, but as a matter of routine it is not the case now.

  531. And that applies to all services?
  (Ms Rogers) I think that reflects their lack of resources, their lack of ability to take on a case. It is very disheartening as a representative to go into a detention centre and say, "These are your rights but, I am sorry, we do not have the facility to help you, sorry." I think that may reflect the fact that these organisations are very overstretched and cannot take on more work, so they do not hold those surgeries.
  (Mrs Tarshish) I read recently that there is a proposal for a duty scheme by the Legal Services Commission. That would be a very positive step. But I think we have to bear in mind that some of these removal centres are very far away now from the south-east of England where there is a concentration of good practising legal representation. This is not the case in other areas of the country where the removal centres are, so there is just a dearth of people who could actually even provide this service. That automatically excludes people from accessing the service that would help removal, would help resolve this situation.
  (Ms Rogers) Certainly our members' experiences are that representation of a detained case involves much more work than for someone who is on the outside, because of setting up meetings. If you are based in London and your detainee is, first, for instance, at Harmondsworth (which is quite convenient to visit, which makes it quite easy to facilitate legal representation) but then is moved to Haslar or, worse still, to Dungavel, representation actually becomes very difficult and very difficult to achieve on an LSC contract.

  532. You talked before about some people held in detention for long periods of time. In theory can a person be kept indefinitely?
  (Ms Rogers) All immigration detention is indeterminate in length, in the sense that, unless they have removal directions and removal directions are set, they do not know how long the detention is going to be for. There is a certain group of people, those detained under the anti-terrorism legislation, who are indefinitely detained.

  533. Is that a different issue?
  (Ms Rogers) It is, yes.

  534. Which we are looking at under a different heading.
  (Ms Rogers) Yes. One of the problems with immigration detention—and I think this is where it contrasts so much to people detained in prison facilities as convicted criminals—is the indeterminacy of detention: how long it is going to go on for.

  535. And automatic bail would help that.
  (Ms Rogers) Automatic bail would help to alleviate that.

  536. What sort of limit would you like to see set on detention?
  (Ms Rogers) In terms of time?

  537. Yes.
  (Ms Rogers) That is very, very difficult to say. It depends on the individual circumstances.
  (Mrs Tarshish) There are instances where you could have an alternative to a situation where it could not be resolved legally very quickly. For people who are, for example, serving long times in indefinite detention, you could give them temporary admission and put a restriction on their movements or reporting restrictions. There are alternatives. You do not have to keep somebody in indefinite detention. They have not committed a crime. I think we often lose track of the fact that it is not a crime. They have no beginning, middle or end to this: for some of these people in long-term detention it must be harrowing never to know when you will be released and how. It cannot be effective taking up a space like that. I think it is inefficient.

  538. One of the reasons we have been given is that it takes a long time for certain nationalities, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese and Algerian, to get their country to provide the appropriate travel documents.
  (Mrs Tarshish) Yes.

  539. That is one of the main reasons why—
  (Mrs Tarshish) But, as I said, there are alternatives to taking up long-term spaces. I just think it is not an efficient use.