David Bolt's first annual review finds some progress, but a lot more needed to make process more efficient and effective
David Bolt, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI), on Thursday published his first annual inspection report on 'Adults at Risk in Immigration Detention', which looks at whether and how the Home Office's Adults at Risk policy is making a difference. The policy was introduced in 2016 to protect vulnerable people at particular risk of harm in detention.
The Independent Chief Inspector's comprehensive 147-page is here. It covers the period November 2018 to May 2019 and was commissioned by the Home Secretary in response to a recommendation in the 2018 Stephen Shaw report on the detention of vulnerable persons.
David Bolt's report was submitted to the Home Office on 29 July 2019, but has only now been published.
The Chief Inspector said: "This first report is deliberately wide-ranging, since it seeks to place the 'Adults at Risk' process in context, drawing on other recent ICIBI inspections, in particular, those concerned with the Home Office's overall understanding and response to vulnerability and its management of the non-detained population."
"During the inspection, the Home Office and the Immigration Minister were keen to stress to me that Adults at Risk was a 'work in progress', something that Stephen Shaw acknowledged in his later review. It is clear that there has been progress, not least in the reduction in the numbers of persons detained, and Home Office managers and staff deserve credit for the efforts they have made and continue to make in this area."
David Bolt finds, however, that a lot more progress is needed.
The report states: "there is clearly a lot more that the Home Office can and should do to make each component of the Adults at Risk process more efficient and more effective, and it is reasonable therefore to continue to describe it as a 'work in progress'. However, because there are so many moving parts to this, and because the available data and information is rudimentary at best, throughout this inspection it has been hard to get a sense of the Home Office's vision for the finished article and therefore to judge whether it is moving fast enough (undoubtedly not, for those who are detained), in the right direction (probably, although some stakeholders argue that Adults at Risk has made things worse) and when it will have gone as far as it can (which is possibly never, given the complexities of what it is trying to manage but everyone involved would benefit from clearer goals)."
David Bolt says there are "serious shortcomings" with the Rule 35 process (which is a mechanism in the Detention Centre Rules 2001 to ensure that particularly vulnerable detainees are brought to the attention of those with direct responsibility for authorising, maintaining and reviewing detention).
The report finds that Home Office's Detention Gatekeeper (DGK), which was introduced as a key protection mechanism in the Adults at Risk process, has "significant weaknesses".
One of the weaknesses highlighted is a lack of the required specialist knowledge among DGKs. The report found that DGKs are carrying our Internet searches on detainees' medication: "Even where the referring unit is meticulous in its completion of the referral form (according to the DGK, this is not done to a consistent standard), and where the DGK reverts for further information, there is still the problem that neither party has any professional medical knowledge and therefore both are resorting to internet searches to try to understand the significance of medication found with the person being referred."
The Independent Chief Inspector is also concerned to find that Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) are treated differently, and essentially less favourably, than other detainees. "[P]rison staff operate their own systems and are largely unaware of the Adults at Risk guidance," the report states.
David Bolt says the Home Office needs to do more to understand the differences in treatment of FNOs and to demonstrate that they were justified, though the Home Office believes the Independent Chief Inspector's report understates the challenges associated with managing FNOs.
The Independent Chief Inspector makes eight recommendations in the report.
The Home Office's 7-page response to the report is here. As stated in the response, the Home Office accepted two of the Independent Chief Inspector's eight recommendations and partially accepted five others. One of the recommendations was not accepted.
In a press release issued on Thursday, David Bolt said: "I am sure that, like me, immigration detainees and those who fear they may in future be detained, along with the large body of interested stakeholders, will be disappointed with what the Home Office appears willing or feels able to do to improve how this is working.
"Although challenging, in light of my findings I did not regard my recommendations as especially radical or contentious, and some people will no doubt feel that they did not go far enough. However, I was hoping that the Home Office could move at pace and implement the recommendations relating specifically to the Adults at Risk process by 31 March 2020. The proposed timescales for those improvements the Home Office now says it is making are therefore also disappointing."