About BiD

BID’s three offices in London, Portsmouth and Oxford supported 2,115 people during the course of the last year. BID staff prepared a total of 265 bail applications (an increase on last year), of which only 195 were eventually heard in court. 95 of those were successful. At just under 50% success rate, this is significantly better than the overall rate of success for bail, which is 18%. From cases we have been able to follow up, we know that 521 people who received support from BID were released over the last year. BID continued its programme of workshops, delivering either workshops or legal surgeries in six detention centres. We provided bail workshops and legal surgeries to a total of 799 people, an increase of over 100 compared to the previous year.

Tangible, external recognition for BID’s work came in the form of being shortlisted for both the Liberty Human Rights Award 2010, and the JUSTICE Human Rights Award 2010. BID won the JUSTICE Human Rights Award on Human Rights Day last December.

Following the government’s announced intention to end the detention of families with children, and the closure of the family unit at Yarl’s Wood IRC, BID shifted the focus of its family casework to separated families. Over the year the family team advised 51 families who had been separated by immigration detention. 36 bail applications were lodged, 20 people were bailed and 4 families were removed. The average length of detention for clients who were released was 269 days.

The family project referred ten cases for unlawful detention Judicial Reviews or civil claims over the year. There were two important JR judgments of separated family cases which BID had referred the previous year. Both judgments found the clients to have been unlawfully detained for parts of their detention, and one in particular (MXL) explored the application of UKBA’s statutory duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in all its actions and decision-making. This judgment is also referred to in the recent `Bail Guidance for Immigration Judges’ written by the Tribunals’ judiciary, and it states on the issue of length of detention:`a period of weeks may be disproportionate where one of the effects of detention is to keep a parent apart from young children’. (MXL and others [2010] EWHC 561 (Admin))

The family team had referred over ten cases to solicitors in 2009 where children had been detained with one or both parents. These cases are now starting to be settled out of court. The first two clients have received £75,000 and £100,000 in damages. In both cases the children who were detained have been awarded large sums of money which they will be given when they become adults. BID wrote witness statements for these cases which provided information on the general experiences of families detained with their children, based on our casework.

Last year we reported on the case in which Liberty was intervening for which we provided the evidence. Judgment in the case (Suppiah & Others) was handed down in January 2011. The judge found that both claimants had been unlawfully detained with their children. Although he stopped short of finding the policy of detaining families with children unlawful, he nonetheless found that the UKBA had failed to apply the policy with the rigour it deserved.

Since the government’s announcement in May 2010 that they intended to end the immigration detention of families with children (reported on last year), there have been a number of positive developments: far fewer children have been held in detention and for much shorter periods. Whereas in 2009 we were working with children who had been detained for months, the government now plans to introduce a time limit of one week on the detention of children. In the first quarter of 2010, 230 children entered immigration detention; in the first quarter of 2011 only nine children entered immigration detention.

At the same time, however, it is extremely disappointing that the government has not fulfilled its commitment to completely end the detention of children. In certain limited circumstances, children continue to be detained at Tinsley House Immigration Removal Centre and the government is opening a new Short Term Holding Facility (secure accommodation centre) for families in Crawley, Sussex, in autumn 2011.

Over the last year we were involved in intensive dialogue with civil servants to influence the outcomes of the child detention review. We also met Damian Green (Immigration Minister) on several occasions as well as meeting and briefing politicians about our concerns, who in turn asked the Minister questions in parliament to increase the pressure on the government and foster parliamentary scrutiny of the child detention review. We asked an MP to table an Early Day Motion on detention of children, which was tabled and signed by 43 MPs. We also published several briefing papers and consultation responses outlining recommendations for change in this area using evidence from our casework. We published a new research report on the immigration detention of children, titled ‘Last Resort or First Resort?’ (http://www.biduk.org/162/bid-research-reports/bid-research-reports.html).

Our public campaign to end the immigration detention of children received substantial press coverage in outlets including BBC News 24, the front page of the Observer, and Radio Four’s Today Programme. We generated coverage in a number of ways, including organising a group of peers to write a letter (drafted by us) to the press calling for an end to child detention.

Section 4 accommodation: The delays in allocating accommodation for former foreign national prisoners continued, and BID intervened in the case of Razai and others v Secretary of State (2010) EWHC 3151 (Admin) which related to the failure of the UKBA to consider many applications for Section 4 accommodation from former criminals, effectively preventing detainees who had completed criminal sentences from being able to apply for bail. As a result of the judgment, the UKBA put in place new processes for allocating accommodation.

Surveys on legal representation in detention: Working in partnership with the Information Centre about Asylum & Refugees (ICAR) BID designed and executed a survey on the level of legal representation across the entire detention estate (these figures are not currently collected by the government), along with questions on detainee awareness of the on-site legal advice scheme (known as the DDA (Detention Duty Advice) scheme), the effect of transfers between centres on continuity of legal advice, and rates of bail applications by legal advisors. The survey was run in Nov/Dec 2010, and again in June 2011, and will be run every six months. Results are published on the website (www.biduk.org). Findings from the first survey revealed that 19% of those interviewed had never had a legal representative while in detention. The survey results proved invaluable for our submissions to government consultations, and lobbying and policy work with the UK Border Agency, Ministry of Justice, and the Legal Services Commission (LSC), which administers legal aid payments. Respondents’ comments have helped us identify those issues of most concern to detainees. We shared our findings with the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, and with other NGO stakeholders for use in their own lobbying work, as well as with Asylum Aid, who are working with the LSC and UKBA on the roll out of the Early Legal Advice Pilot (ELAP) for asylum seekers.

Access to legal representation in detention: We continued to meet with the LSC to highlight our concerns about i) insufficient capacity of the DDA scheme and ii) the quality of work provided under the scheme. We monitored the operation of the DDA contracts, and published two new BID bulletins on the right to legal aid for bail applications. One was aimed at individuals and organisations that support detainees and the second was written for detainees. The bulletins were written as a response to concerns expressed to BID by detainees and visitors’ groups that detainees were finding their files being closed by firms and they were being left without representation. The bulletins sets out the circumstances under which detainees should be granted legal aid for representation, explain the means and merits tests, what services and actions detainees can expect from their legal advisor under legal aid, and how they can go about complaining if they are not satisfied with refusals of legal aid or files are closed without explanation.

The Travel Document Project: BID has carried out a research project on documentation procedures for foreign nationals facing removal or deportation who have no travel documents. A sizeable proportion of the immigration detainees that BID works with are not in possession of any form of travel or identity document and are not able, for a variety of reasons, to provide the UKBA with sufficient information to enable their re-documentation and subsequent removal. In addition, foreign embassies and high commissions in the UK vary widely in their approach towards and speed in acknowledging their citizens and providing travel documents. Foreign national ex-offenders typically face major re-documentation hurdles as a result of loose ties with their country of origin after many years in the UK.

Obstacles to re-documentation therefore have the capacity to leave immigration detainees in de-facto indefinite detention, facing little progress in their case and without guidance from UKBA on the steps that could be taken to conclude the documentation process in a timely manner and thus end their detention. Once the research was completed and written up, a mini-site was created within the main BID website to house the project, providing both legal advisors and detainees with information about cases where documentation issues are delaying progress and lengthening time in detention. This can help legal advisors when assessing whether or not the length of detention and the purposes for which detention is being used, have become unlawful.

BID has made submissions to the following consultations and enquiries:Justice Select Committee enquiry into the role of the Probation Service; Ministry of Justice `Proposals for the reform of legal aid in England and Wales’ (Feb 2011); Ministry of Justice `Breaking the Cycle’; Written and verbal evidence to `The case for legal aid: an enquiry into legal aid funding, its implications for litigants and for access to justice’ organised by the Haldane Society/Young Legal Aid Lawyers; Chief Inspector of UKBA’s planned thematic inspections for 2011/12; Home Office consultation on quarterly immigration statistics; Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s three year human rights review.

The last year has been both busy and successful for our strategic litigation. Several former clients have been awarded compensation for unlawful detention and we have intervened or provided information to the intervener in five separate cases. BID intervened in two Supreme Court cases: Walumba Lumba (Congo) and Kadian Delroy Mighty (Jamaica) 2011, UKSC12 – which found that it is unlawful for the Secretary of State to apply an unpublished policy that conflicts with a published policy; Shepherd Masimba Kambadzi (Zimbabwe) 2011, UKSC23 – which found that periods of detention where no detention reviews were carried out were unlawful, although damages would only be nominal where it could be found that had the reviews been carried, detention would have been maintained anyway; one case that is pending judgment in the European Court of Human Rights – Mustafa Abdi v United Kingdom (ECHR, Application 27770/08) which focuses on whether immigration detention can be used to enforce compliance with immigration measures rather than for the purpose of removal; and the cases of Razai & Others and Suppiah & Others, both of which were described in preceding paragraphs.

Working with a design firm we launched a new website in October 2010. We are now able to offer detainees, supporters, researchers, journalists, and legal practitioners searchable resources and regular updates on our work. In May 2011 we launched our Twitter feed @BIDdetention, and have a growing number of followers. These new resources allow us to position our communications more accurately and respond to events in the sector with a sense of immediacy.