Immigration Detention

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing this vital debate.

Every year, approximately 2,000 women seeking asylum in the UK are detained, many at Yarl’s Wood detention centre near Bedford. The majority of those women have survived traumatic life events such as rape, domestic violence and threats of abuse, and many have been psychologically affected. Being locked up or detained can be particularly distressing and counter-productive, forcing some to relive their traumas.

Some 40% of those women who were interviewed recently admitted that they had self-harmed and 20% admitted to having attempting suicide. In a recent report, the chief inspector of prisons, Nick Hardwick, said:

“Yarl’s Wood is rightly a place of national concern.”

The inspectorate found that about half the women who were in detention centres pending an asylum decision felt unsafe. Worryingly, the report detailed that since the previous inspection, the treatment and condition of those held had deteriorated significantly.

One woman said:

“I felt so upset and frightened because I was arrested and locked up and tortured back home. I have scars on my feet and arms where I was beaten by police and guards and so the situation and male guards in Yarl’s Wood made me feel extremely frightened…it feels like being locked up in prison back home.”

Women have alluded to significant breaches of privacy while being held, including allegations of sexual harassment and violations of dignity. Female staffing levels are also considered to be inadequate.

The parliamentary inquiry recommended a mandatory 28-day limit on all immigration detention. Referring to cases involving women, it called for gender-specific rules for detention. It stated that there should be no detention of pregnant women or survivors of rape and sexual abuse. The current Home Office policy stipulates that pregnant women should be detained only in the most exceptional of circumstances, but in 2014, 99 pregnant women were held at Yarl’s Wood alone.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is suspicious that when I visited two women at Yarl’s Wood this summer, both of whom had suffered exactly what she is outlining, they were released that day? Does she agree that the reason might be that the Government do not want too much scrutiny of what is going on at that centre?

[Paula Sherriff]

I absolutely agree with those comments.

Detention is a costly exercise at about £40,000 a year. The comparative cost of maintaining those seeking asylum in the community is significantly cheaper. There is significant evidence that the detention of asylum seekers is expensive, unnecessary and unjust. There is a clear appetite across the House for a change in culture and I look forward to seeing real progress on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I have been exceptionally moved by all the stories I have heard since I joined the debate from Committee, but the story told by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) in particular highlighted some of the effects of detention suffered by young men. However, I want to focus very much on the detention of women.

As I said, I visited Yarl’s Wood detention centre in August, completely freely—I was allowed to go because I did not ask the Government whether I could go, but had arranged to visit residents with a refugee women’s organisation. I went to see an individual who had been detained there and then deported and who, when she returned, was detained there again. When I arrived, I was told that I was not allowed to see her because she had been released—which I was utterly delighted by, to be perfectly honest. I then made a request to visit another inmate. When I was talking to her, I found out a few startling things about the place and about her case.

The woman had been there for four months—long beyond any 28-day period. She had come from Nigeria, seeking asylum due to her sexuality—she told me a horrific story, which does not bear repeating, about why she had to come here. When she arrived, brought here by somebody she trusted, she was kept in a cellar in London for two years and repeatedly raped by men who had paid to have sex with her. This woman is a victim of human trafficking. As somebody with some expertise in this field, I asked her why she had not qualified for the national referral mechanism for human trafficking, which would certainly not have detained her, but given her a 60-day reflection period, along with benefits and support. She said that two inconsistencies in her story meant that she was not believed to be a victim of trafficking and, because she had known the person who brought her here, she had not qualified.

I have met lots of victims in my life, many from this country. Let us imagine having to give evidence—to tell the same story over and over again—in a language other than our mother tongue. Things are going to get confused; and maybe, in a room in Solihull or Croydon, people do not want to talk to the man behind the desk about how they were ritually raped. It was easy for me to do a basic risk assessment for this woman and find that she was a victim of a horrific crime. I am delighted to say that the next day she was released from Yarl’s Wood. I am no conspiracy theorist, but it seems a bit suspicious that every person I have been to see has been released, so I plan on visiting every woman in Yarl’s Wood over the next few weeks.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

If that is true, as everybody accepts it is, we will ask my hon. Friend to visit all the centres in future.

[Jess Phillips]

I am on quite a lot of Committees, I have two small kids and I do not live anywhere near Bedford, but I will give it a go: I will shut the place by stealth if that is what it takes.

What I saw when I visited Yarl’s Wood was not some horrific sort of gulag; there was a visitors centre on the front of what was clearly a prison, on a really weird and eerie estate, and the staff were all completely lovely. It was more than reasonable of them to let me see another person who I had not been down to visit. I did not see any horrors, but given the stories that the women told me, and because I am trained and have an understanding of what it is like for women who have suffered terrible crimes against their person, I can totally understand why they find detention so difficult.

If the detention system has to continue, there is an absolute need to ensure a gender-specific service, exactly as we would commission gender-specific services in our local authorities. No local authority commissioning framework would ever allow a women’s refuge to be run completely by men. We have to stop detaining women who have been victims of brutal and enduring sexual violence without even offering them proper counselling or any support while they are there. None of these women seems to have had anyone talk to them about these problems.

Furthermore, we have to make sure that 28 days actually means 28 days and that the very first questions asked by those processing any women are what has brought them to this country and whether they have been trafficked. We should be using the very good systems put in place by the Government in the national referral mechanism—although they are good only if they are used. In my opinion, Yarl’s Wood should be closed immediately, because the detention system as it stands is not fit for women.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, because one concern for us is that victims of trafficking who are taken in by local authorities might be removed from those authorities, and in effect re-trafficked, as he says. We are trialling child advocates in a number of local authority areas to see what system works best for children who are the victims of human trafficking.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Considering the thousands of victims of trafficking who have gone through the NRM, will the Home Secretary tell the House how many human trafficking-related convictions there were in the last 12 months? How does that figure fit with the Prime Minister’s assertion that we are tackling those who commit these crimes?

[Mrs May]

The very reason why the last Government, in which I was Home Secretary, brought forward the Modern Slavery Act was to heighten the ability of our police and prosecutors to bring people to justice. There has been concern for many years, since before 2010, about the lack of prosecutions for modern slavery. The Act gives the police extra powers and has increased the sentences for people who commit this heinous crime. It will improve the ability of the law enforcement agencies to bring people to justice. That is why I look forward, under the Act, to seeing more of the perpetrators of these crimes brought to justice.

Home Affairs and Justice

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech. This is the first time I have been called a maiden, and it seems a little unusual as my children watch me from the Strangers Gallery. I assure everybody here that it is good that they are behind the glass—I can see them talking up there!

I am exceptionally proud to be one of the new women MPs elected to this Parliament, and to be one of the working parents elected—we have a lot to offer when deciding what is best for our country, which has not always happened. Like those of my predecessor, John Hemming, my roots in Birmingham, Yardley run deep. I know from reading his maiden speech that this was a source of great pride for him—and I feel the same.

A Brummie accent is a rare thing in this Chamber, and I look forward to changing that. Like so many Brummies, my nan and grandad from both my mother’s and father’s sides moved from Birmingham’s Peaky Blinders-famed inner city industrial areas in Small Heath, Ladywood and Winson Green to the estates of Yardley and Sheldon that were newly built in the ’30s and ’40s. They were proud of their new homes and raised all their children there.

My family benefited from decent council houses and good communities, and during my campaign I was proud to knock on the doors of three different houses where my parents had lived—on Garretts Green Lane, Frodesley Road and Gleneagles Road.

During the campaign, I visited Yardley Great Trust, a charity whose history in the area is even longer than mine. Originating in the 14th century, the Yardley Great Trust has helped to alleviate poverty and support residents in their sickness and old age, and it continues to do so today. In 1966, the Yardley Great Trust gave my mom a grant to help poor local kids stay in education, so that she did not have to leave school to help her single mother with the housekeeping before doing her A-levels. She went on to achieve a great many things and gave me and my brothers a good life and lots of opportunities. Birmingham, Yardley was good to my family, and I plan to repay this debt.

I requested to make my maiden speech in this section of the Queen’s Speech debates because, along with all things Birmingham, Yardley, I am deeply committed to improving our country’s response to victims of domestic and sexual violence and abuse in all its forms. Having worked for years in a service that operated refuges, rape crisis, child sexual exploitation services and human trafficking services, I know that we need to do more. We need look no further than at the poor rape conviction rates to know that for very vulnerable victims our justice system is too often just another establishment that has failed to protect them.

For years before I sat on these Green Benches—and, I am sure, for many more after—there will have been calls for Government Departments to work better together to understand the multiple and layered effects that our decisions have on people’s lives. I can think of no better example than the interaction between the Department for Work and Pensions and our Justice and Home Affairs Departments. I have no doubt that the Home Secretary is committed to ending child sexual exploitation, and it is true to say that her Department has invested in improving services for victims of sexual violence. However, as a Government, it is no good to give with one hand and take away with another. This Government’s rumoured plans to remove housing benefit from people aged under 21 will be disastrous for these vulnerable victims. While I do not agree with this measure at all, I want to compel the Government to remove from this new legislation vulnerable people in supported accommodation. To make my point, I shall tell the story of Helen.

Helen was an 18-year-old girl I met in my first week in my old job, and she has stayed with me for the last six years. She had been abused by her father as a child, and had been in and out of local authority care throughout her—so-called—childhood. Between the ages of 15 and 18, she had been exploited by one “boyfriend” or another, all of them much older than her and none with her best interests at heart.

Helen had come to ask for support from our services following her abuse. She was being supported by an independent sexual violence adviser so that she could be helped to give statements to the police, and seek convictions and justice for her childhood abuse. However, following the breakdown of her relationship with her mother and, subsequently, her grandmother, she became homeless, and her life was difficult and chaotic. In the absence of a stable living environment, she again fell victim to those who abused her, and fell out of the justice system.

Eventually—after cycles of absconding and returning —we were able to secure supported living for Helen. I remember driving her to what is now my constituency to take her to St Basil’s, a brilliant youth homelessness charity. With the aid of housing benefit and the home she was given, she was able to learn to look after herself and, with support, seek justice in order to move on with her life and make a future.

Where will Helen go now, in a future that will not give her housing benefit? How many A and E visits will she make during this Parliament? How many custody suites will she block up? How many police reports will be filed for her by a stretched force? Worse still, how many other people will be abused by those who abused Helen while justice is not done? If that is not enough to alarm the justice and home affairs teams who are sitting opposite me, perhaps I should put it differently: how much will this cost their Departments?

In the last Parliament, the domestic violence lobby was able to ensure that victims living in refuges were exempt from universal credit and the benefits cap. Although the Government’s decision was an afterthought, it was the right decision to keep women and children safe. I urge this Government not to make the same mistake of making the most vulnerable young people an afterthought. I urge them to exempt young people who are at risk of homelessness, and those who are in supported accommodation, from their welfare reform. Last year, 25% of the victims who lived in Birmingham and Solihull Women’s Aid refuges alone were aged between 18 and 21. We must protect these victims.

Justice and security do not end in their defined Government Departments. In my constituency, there are lots of Helens, and it is my job to amplify their stories so that we stop finding it easy to look away. I will never look away. I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the chance to tell that story, and I look forward to telling many more.