The APPG on Immigration Detention held its AGM on Tuesday 24 May 2022.
In addition to the usual AGM business, the session included a briefing on “Action Access“, the first government-funded alternatives to detention pilot project.
Set up in the wake of the 2016 and 2018 Shaw Reports, the pilot aimed to test whether support in the community leads to more efficient case resolution for migrants and asylum-seekers when compared with immigration detention.
Run over two years (2019-2021) by the charity Action Foundation, the pilot supported supported 20 women seeking asylum in a community setting in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The majority of the women had previously been detained in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, Bedfordshire.
A UNHCR-commissioned evaluation of the pilot was published in January this year. It found that participants in the pilot experienced more stability and better health and wellbeing outcomes whilst being supported by Action Access in the community than they had while in detention. Evidence also suggested that these outcomes were achievable without decreasing compliance with the immigration system.
The APPG is grateful to the panel of expert speakers – Andrew Leak and Tahlia Dwyer from UNHCR, and Emily Malcolm from Action Foundation – who discussed the pilot and its evaluation results in more detail, as well as the government’s response so far and implications for immigration detention policy going forward.