Town and Country Planning (Napier Barracks) Special Development Order 2021

Motion to Regret

Moved by

That this House regrets that the Town and Country Planning (Napier Barracks) Special Development Order 2021 (SI 2021/962) extends the planning permission for the Napier Barracks to continue to be used as asylum accommodation despite (1) a High Court judgment on 3 June 2021, which found standards and operational systems at the barracks to be unlawful, (2) concerns being raised over the unsanitary and crowded conditions, and (3) reports of intimidation and mistreatment of residents; and that, despite the current expiration date on planning permission being known for 12 months, the Order was laid when the House was not sitting.

My Lords, I start by suggesting that there may be a form of discrimination going on in this House. It seems that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, the Minister, always seems to get last business on the day before Recess. I know she is far too diligent and industrious to complain herself, so I thought I would put that on the record.

I move that this House regrets this order, which permits continued use of Napier barracks despite a High Court judgment which found standards and operating systems at the barracks to be unlawful, with concerns being raised about unsanitary and crowded conditions and reports of intimidation and mistreatment of residents.

The 13th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of this House drew the House’s special attention to this order. The fact that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration and the High Court had concluded that Napier barracks was unsuitable for long-term use, should have been disclosed to Parliament, yet there was nothing in the order nor in the Explanatory Memorandum about those things. It criticised the Explanatory Memorandum for lacking detail about proposed improvements to the living accommodation and amenities on site and said that better arrangements for physical and mental health care were a matter of urgency. The committee also criticised laying what was in effect an emergency provision, when the date of the current planning permission had been known for 12 months in advance, reporting

“we found this reason for laying a potentially controversial instrument when Parliament was not sitting unconvincing.”

This House recently discussed Napier barracks being used to house asylum seekers in our debates on the Nationality and Borders Bill. On 3 February, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, who regrets she cannot be in her place today, told the Committee that the APPG on Immigration Detention had received evidence, all of which was “overwhelmingly negative”,

The use of dormitory-style accommodation means a lack of privacy, which can be particularly problematic for gender and sexually diverse residents. It can lead to sleep deprivation, affecting mental health and well- being. Five years ago, the Home Affairs Committee recommended that room sharing, where asylum seekers have to share sleeping accommodation with people they are not related to, should be phased out across the asylum estate. The use of former military barracks can be traumatising for those who have suffered abuse or torture. For these reasons, evidence to the APPG from a dozen organisations said that accommodation such as Napier barracks was inappropriate for people seeking asylum, representing a threat to public health and impeding medical care. People have little to motivate or occupy themselves in such accommodation, making them increasingly desperate, particularly when their detention exceeds six months and they are still unable to work. The current time limit of six months in places like Napier is being removed by the Nationality and Borders Bill.

Even those with vulnerabilities are being housed in Napier barracks. We know from the experience of those who have suffered significant trauma that they are unlikely to readily identify themselves and, although a Minister in the other place gave an assurance that torture victims receiving treatment would not share sleeping quarters, there is no guarantee that those who have suffered significant trauma will be readily identified.

In the same debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, reminded the Committee of the judgment in a case against the use of Napier barracks in June 2021, where the courts found that there were inadequate health and safety measures, that there was a failure to screen victims for trafficking and other vulnerabilities, and that the Home Office continued to use the barracks, against Public Health England advice. A Covid outbreak affecting 200 residents was described by the court as “inevitable”. Some 70% of those in Napier barracks accessing clinical services disclosed an experience of violence in their home or transit country, according to Doctors of the World, demonstrating their vulnerability and the inadvisability of their being detained in Napier. Placing too many people in one place was also likely to overwhelm local health services.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, told the House that, because of the “poor health” experienced by residents, “deaths within the centres” and the other reasons that I have already mentioned against the use of places such as Napier to house asylum seekers, the Republic of Ireland is phasing out accommodation similar to Napier by 2024. Meanwhile, this Government are extending the use of Napier barracks by five years and using it to inform the final design of how accommodation centres will operate under the proposals in the Nationality and Borders Bill. What plans are in place for similar accommodation to Napier being brought into use?

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham visited Napier barracks earlier this year and described the conditions at the camp as “far from ideal”. He said that he remained “deeply concerned” after visiting. Military helicopters flying overhead and landing next to Napier, so loud that visitors could not hear each other speak, were likely to have a retraumatising effect on residents, for example. The right reverend Prelate made the important point that

“People thrive in communities. A more compassionate and effective asylum system would give people accommodation within communities that allowed for proper social integration and proper access to education and healthcare”.—[Official Report, 3/2/22; col. 1022.]

He said that this would people to better “integrate” in the long term.

In the Explanatory Memorandum, the Government blame the Covid pandemic for not being able to follow the previous regime, where asylum seekers spent only a few weeks in “initial accommodation” such as Napier barracks before moving to “dispersal accommodation”, generally flats and houses, with hotels sometimes being used as a short-term contingency. The Government claim that the usual turnover, where asylum seekers leave the asylum support system and make their own way in society, was disrupted because of Covid. However, the numbers claiming asylum also significantly reduced because of Covid.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham quite rightly pointed to the fact that asylum application processing needs to be quicker and more accurate so that time spent in asylum accommodation is shortened rather than extending the use of accommodation such as Napier barracks, as this SI does. The Government also try to blame those crossing the channel in small boats to claim asylum in the UK, yet the overall numbers claiming asylum is about half of what it was more than a decade ago.

The Minister may say that conditions at Napier have improved but today, the APPG on Immigration Detention published its report of its visit to Napier barracks on 2 February this year. In summary, it found: inadequate safeguarding of vulnerable people such as victims of torture and trafficking, with little done to identify residents in need of support; the physical environment of the site was run down, isolated and bleak, with many buildings in an extremely poor state of repair; a near total lack of privacy and private spaces at the site, with residents continuing to be accommodated in dormitories of up to 12 to 14 people and having to share showers, toilets and other facilities; high noise levels in the dormitories, and the sleep deprivation and the negative impact on residents’ mental health resulting from this; inadequate access for residents to healthcare and legal advice and the difficulties they face in engaging with their asylum claim at the site; the site’s prison-like nature and military features, including security checks upon entering and the presence of security guards patrolling; and the lack of autonomy, choice and control over the daily lives that residents experience at the site.

In 2016, Louise Casey, now the noble Baroness, Lady Casey of Blackstock, in her report on social integration called for more to be done to bridge divides between people in order to bind communities together. The continued use of Napier barracks as set out in this statutory instrument will have the opposite effect: a detrimental effect on residents both within and around the barracks and on social integration generally. This House should regret it, and I beg to move.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for bringing this Motion. It is regrettable that the poor Minister is here yet again—clearly, someone thinks she has not worked hard enough this term—but I thank both her and the noble Lord for making this possible. It is a source of huge regret that we are still in this place with Napier barracks and the asylum detention estate more generally, which is too large and overcrowded because we detain too many asylum seekers. If we can learn something from recent weeks and months and from the public response to the Ukraine crisis—the way people in our country have been prepared to open their hearts and homes to refugees and asylum seekers from Ukraine—we might extrapolate from that a broader policy change in relation to all refugees and asylum seekers, regardless of the conflict and the continent from which they are escaping.

I refer noble Lords to the very recent annual global Amnesty International Report, which your Lordships will know covers the entire world and cites profound human rights concerns from Amnesty. In the section on the United Kingdom, the accommodation of asylum seekers in former military accommodation is cited as “inhumane conditions”. That is what Amnesty International says about the United Kingdom. That must be a source of embarrassment and shame, not just to those of us in your Lordships’ House but to most people in the United Kingdom, were it brought to their attention.

I just hope that, in her reply, the Minister might look to future planning. We are where we are for the moment with Napier barracks, and this is highly regrettable given the High Court judgment and all the reports which the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, pointed out. Can the Minister give us a glimmer of hope for a vision of what asylum accommodation might look like in the months and years ahead? Is there some inspiration to be drawn from this Ukraine response?