Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the (a) mean and (b) median time spent is by the current cohort of detainees at the Gatwick detention centres.

Information on the length of detention of people in detention is available in table dt_11_q of the detention tables in the latest releases of ‘Immigration Statistics, October to December 2017’, available from the Home Office website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/681703/detention-oct-dec-2017-tables.ods

The available data provides the length of detention for the detention estate as a whole, and are not broken down by individual place of detention.

There are a small number of detainees who have been detained for long periods of time, which would skew the mean value. The median is therefore the most suitable average for these data.