New report ‘damning exposé’ of Home Office treatment of vulnerable people say Lib Dems

The Liberal Democrats have said a report released today provides a “damning exposé” of the Home Office’s treatment of vulnerable people.

The report follows former England and Wales Prisons and Probation Ombudsman Stephen Shaw’s 2016 and 2018 reviews of the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons.

The then Home Secretary commissioned the Chief Inspector to report on “whether and how the Adults at Risk policy is making a difference”. This is the second of those reports.

Upon the report’s release, Chief Inspector David Neal said that “…seven of the eight recommendations made in ICIBI’s first annual inspection were accepted in full or in part, none of these had been closed by January 2021,” and that “known flaws with the Adults at Risk policy itself remained unaddressed.”

The ‘Adults at Risk’ policy was introduced to comply with the Immigration Act 2016.

Section 59 of the Act mandates that the Home Secretary issue guidance for defining vulnerability, the criteria of which can be used to decide whether a person ought to be detained.

Responding to the findings, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said: “This is yet another damning exposé of the appalling way the Home Office treats very vulnerable people.

“Priti Patel has failed repeatedly to take this seriously, and her decision to reject so many of the Inspector’s recommendations means that more people will be wrongfully detained at huge cost to the taxpayer.

“Detaining vulnerable people for months on end is inhumane, unnecessary and expensive. The Government must urgently implement the Inspector’s recommendations in full to save both misery and money.”