Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to implement a statutory limit for the length of time suspected illegal immigrants can be detained.

As Stephen Shaw noted in his follow up review of the welfare of vulnerable people in immigration detention, the debate on a time limit for immigration de-tention rests mainly on slogans rather than evidence. My rt. hon. Friend the Home Secretary has commissioned an internal review of how time limits work in other countries and how these relate to any other protections within the de-tention systems in those countries.