Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reasons her Department has cancelled the two pilot schemes offering an alternative to immigration detention.

As part of the Department’s immigration detention reform programme, we are conducting a series of two pilots exploring alternatives to detention. In line with international best practice, each pilot will run for two years, before a final evaluation

The first of these pilots, Action Access, has provided women who would otherwise be detained with a programme of support in the community. This pilot will conclude on 31 March 2021 after operating for two years, as planned. The second pilot, the Refugee and Migrant Advisory Service, is currently supporting both men and women in the community and will remain in operation until June 2022

We are working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on these pilots and they have appointed the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to independently evaluate this work. These evaluations will be published, with the evaluation report of the Action Access pilot scheduled for early Summer 2021. We will use the evaluations of these pilots to inform our future approach to case-management focused alternatives to detention.