If Amnesty International released a report about a country where thousands of people were locked up last year, without having done something wrong or being put before a court, where they could not access decent legal advice and weren’t given an automatic review to the legality of their detention by a court or similar competent independent and impartial body, many people would think that country was showing serious disregard for human rights. They might even help us by signing a petition or writing a letter.

Well, we released such a report very recently. It was about the UK. And the people receiving this treatment are people who have sought asylum.

People have a right to seek asylum, enshrined in international law. Yet people who have sought asylum in the UK are being detained – we suspect that over 25,000 may have been locked up last year alone – some at the end of the process when their asylum claim has been dismissed, others for the entire duration of their claim. At Amnesty International, we think that depriving someone of his or her liberty should not be taken lightly, hence this new examination of the Government’s asylum detention policy.

Our report sheds light on the hidden plight of a vulnerable group of people in the UK: those who have sought asylum at some stage and who are detained solely under Immigration Act powers. While the number of asylum seekers in the UK is declining, the number held in detention – including children – is increasing.

The UK authorities have claimed that detention is pivotal to their strategy in removing asylum-seekers whose claims have been dismissed to prevent them from absconding. The truth is that no Government assessment has ever been published that looks at the risk of absconding, or the number of people that do so. The people we interviewed for our report – and we visited removal centres all over the country - had been reporting regularly and without fail to the authorities when requested. They showed no risk of absconding. Yet they were detained all the same.

The decision to detain someone who has sought asylum doesn’t have to be authorised by a court, and there is no prompt and automatic judicial oversight of the decision to detain. Nor are there automatic reviews by a court when detention continues. In addition, there are no maximum time limits regarding the length of detention. The result is that people languish in removal centres, in some cases for years.

Cuts to publicly funded legal aid for asylum cases have only made things worse. Since April 2004 access to legal advice is becoming more difficult as fewer private practitioners offer legally aided advice and representation, particularly for people who have sought asylum and are detained at the end of the asylum process. The plight of many of the people we spoke to was exacerbated either by poor quality legal advice and representation, or by the complete lack of such advice and representation. We came across many in detention who had been abandoned by their legal representative after being detained. Lack of effective legal assistance also affects people’s chances of being granted bail.

An increasing number of asylum seekers are being detained for the duration of the asylum process where their claims are considered under accelerated asylum procedures. The vast majority are refused asylum. In February, the Government announced a projected target of up to 30 per cent of new asylum applicants would be put through a “fast track detained process” by the end of this year.

The human cost of detention is incredibly high. Many of the people we spoke to when researching the report were detained in remote locations and in grim, prison-like establishments. Particularly unacceptable is the detention of victims of torture and families with young children. The detention of these people inflicts untold misery on the individuals concerned and their families. Some people are driven to mental illness, self-harm, even attempts to take their own life.

In some circumstances – immediately before someone is removed from the country if their claim has failed, for example – international law allows the detention of people who have sought asylum. But people are being locked up when there is little chance of removing them, for instance when their home country will not provide documentation or will not accept them. They are then left stranded in detention. We believe that detention is not being carried out according to international standards, that it is arbitrary and serves little if any purpose at all in many cases. Other measures, such as requiring people to report regularly to the authorities, would often suffice.

Amnesty International is calling for detention only ever to be used as a last resort – where in the UK it is increasingly being used as a first port of call. Non-custodial measures should always be considered first. And we want the Government to come clean and reveal how many of these people it is locking up: detailed statistics of the total number of people who have sought asylum and who are detained solely under Immigration Act powers should be provided each year, noting at what stage of their asylum application they were detained.

There should be a statutory prohibition on the detention of vulnerable people who have sought asylum, including torture survivors, pregnant women, people with serious medical conditions including mental illness, elderly people and unaccompanied children.

And we are calling for an automatic and regular review of the lawfulness of the decision to detain. Each decision to lock someone up should be reviewed as to its lawfulness, necessity and appropriateness by means of a prompt, oral hearing by a court or similar competent independent and impartial body, accompanied by the appropriate provision of legal aid.

It is not acceptable to treat like criminals people who have come to this country seeking our protection. Nor is it acceptable to deny them access to the legal safeguards that we take for granted, and leave them languishing in detention with no end in sight. Seeking asylum is not a crime: it is a right.

For further details of Amnesty International’s report visit www.amnesty.org.uk
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