Home Office is keeping asylum seekers locked up in detention centres 'even after accepting they have been tortured'

Inquiry hears that under-fire department has failed to produce 16 improvement plans for its centres – one dating back to December 2016

The Home Office is keeping vulnerable asylum seekers locked up in detention centres even after accepting they have been tortured, MPs have been told.

In every one of nine sample cases, detention was “maintained” despite officials acknowledging torture had taken place, inspectors revealed.

The inquiry also heard that the Home Office had failed to produce improvement plans demanded for 16 of its centres – one dating back all the way to December 2016.

It was accused of waiting for migrants and asylum seekers to “give up” and leave the country, rather than settle their cases – exploiting the much-criticised absence of a time limit on detention.

The inspectors from HMI Prisons joined the growing calls for a time limit, warning of a “deep level of emotional distress” and rising number of suicides.

Hindpal Singh Bhui, the team leader, said 23 people had been locked up for more than one year at one centre, adding: “All too often we see cases where a kind of standoff develops.

“The Home Office is waiting for detainees to give up – whereas what we would rather they were doing is working very efficiently, effectively and quickly to resolve cases.”

Mr Singh Bhui said the sample of rule 35 cases – people known to be vulnerable – had been carried out at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre, finding torture in nine of the 10 people examined.

“Every one of those people had detention maintained despite the evidence of torture being accepted,” he told the Home Affairs Committee.

Peter Clarke, the chief inspector of prisons, said the backlog of improvement plans had risen from 12 to 16 – despite an apology for the delays from Caroline Nokes, the new immigration minister.

“If I have this degree of difficulty getting a response, what must it be like for detainees?” he asked.

Mr Clarke criticised the “uncertainty and distress” caused by the lack of a time limit, noting that 50 per cent of detainees were eventually “released back into the community”.

“Many of them go into detention and they don’t know how long they will be there for,” he warned.

There is growing criticism of Britain for being the only EU country without a statutory time limit for the detention of migrants, including by the UN Human Rights Council.

The Home Office has paid £21.2m to migrants it unlawfully detained over the past five years, laying bare its “chaotic decisions” critics say.

Ms Nokes argued that only 5 per cent of people “subject to immigration rules” were in detention and that the total was going down.

But she admitted the Home Office could “do better’, saying: “Of course I’m deeply troubled by some of the cases I have seen.”

Later, the minister came under fire over the decision – sneaked out late last Friday evening – to extend the G4S contract to run Brook House immigration removal centre.

The move comes months after secret footage revealed guards apparently choking, mocking and abusing detainees at the centre, near Gatwick airport.

The immigration minister insisted it made sense to keep G4S in place, because the contract expired this month and a transfer to another company would be potentially “difficult”.

“It was imperative to resolve the matter,” she told the MPs – arguing it had been announced at the “first opportunity” after the end of purdah for the local council elections.