Amnesty UK submission to Home Affairs Select Committee on Immigration Detention

This submission outlines that the UK’s routine use of immigration detention violates international human rights obligations, presents evidence that detention is used as a matter of course, and sets out recommendations to ensure it is only used as a last resort.

The UK has international human rights obligations to ensure that in any given case, immigration detention is necessary, proportionate and used only as a last resort. As Amnesty identified in 2009, globally, 

"The routine or automatic use of detention... violates both the spirit and frequently the letter of states’ international human rights obligations."

The routine use of detention in the UK does exactly that. In this submission to the Committee for its inquiry into immigration detention, we provide explanation for that conclusion, draw attention to our research finding the use of detention to be a matter of routine, and make four recommendations.