MPs and Peers on the Joint Committee on Human Rights are to examine proposed Home Office reforms to immigration detention made in response to the Windrush detention scandal.
The Home Office proposals, published this week, include piloting a scheme to manage in the community individuals who would otherwise be detained at Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre, increase use of face-to-face meetings to identify vulnerabilities and resolve potential problems, and reassess its adult at risk policy.
The Home Office has also set up the Windrush Taskforce, which has issued more than 2,300 documents confirming status and enabled more than 2,100 individuals to become British citizens.
Members of the Windrush generation, who migrated to the UK before 1973, including Anthony Bryan and Paulette Wilson, were wrongly detained and deported due to Home Office errors. Both Bryan and Wilson had indefinite leave to remain in the UK but did not have the correct documents to confirm their status.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid has personally apologised to those affected.
Harriet Harman MP, Chair of the Joint Committee, which will begin its inquiry at the end of this month, said: ‘The wrongful detention of Anthony Bryan and Paulette Wilson were not simply “mistakes” but systemic failures in the system, so the apologies to them from the Home Office in this response to our report were necessary.
‘Our Committee will closely examine the government’s outlined proposed reforms to the immigration detention system during our upcoming inquiry. For example, we’ll look at the piloting of an automatic bail referral system after two months and the idea of increasing the size and scope of the system for checking detention decisions, and whether these, amongst the other proposals, go far enough to address the current problems in the system.
‘We will also examine the case for time limits on immigration detention and, if indefinite detention is to end, how this should work in practice when we examine the evidence in coming weeks.’
The Home Office has also commissioned an independent review into the scandal, which is due to report back by 31 March 2019.
