Source · Select Committees · Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 11
11
Rejected
Paragraph: 59
Establish a robust firewall between police and Home Office on victim immigration data sharing
Recommendation
The Government should establish an appropriate firewall-type mechanism between the police and the Home Office to prevent data sharing for the purposes of enforcing immigration rules against victims of abuse. The firewall should be designed to ensure the police only share information with Immigration Enforcement on victims in exceptional circumstances, which must be narrowly defined and be for the purposes of assisting in the safeguarding of the individual or taking action against their abuser. If and when police become aware a victim has irregular immigration status, they should provide that person with information about local support services (including legal advice) and encourage them to seek advice on regularising their status. The National Police Chiefs’ Council guidance should be updated to reflect this.
Government Response Summary
The government rejected the establishment of a firewall-type mechanism for data sharing between police and the Home Office regarding victims of abuse, stating it is in the public interest for individuals without lawful status to be brought into the immigration system and that a firewall would be impractical for police to encourage regularisation of status.
Paragraph Reference:
59
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 permits the Home Office to share and receive information, including with public authorities and law enforcement partners for the purpose of crime prevention, detection and effective immigration control, respectively. Keeping our communities and the vulnerable safe is work that those within the Home Office are proud to prioritise on a daily basis. It is in the public interest that individuals without lawful status are brought into the immigration system to enable their status to be resolved. It may also protect the public, including vulnerable migrants, from individuals who are considered a harm to their local communities. The immediate priority is always the welfare of the individual and to ensure that all vulnerable migrants receive the support and assistance they need regardless of their immigration status. Victims of crime must be treated first and foremost as victims. Before any enforcement action is taken on a person who is found to have no legal basis to remain in the UK, the details of the case are carefully considered. It would not be appropriate to introduce such restrictions on data sharing as it is important to preserve the police’s ability to work with the Home Office to help resolve a victim’s uncertainty about their immigration status and so remove the perpetrator’s ability to control and manipulate them because of their status. A firewall would not prevent a perpetrator referring a victim directly to immigration enforcement. The Home Office remains committed to introducing an Immigration Enforcement Migrant Victims Protocol for migrant victims of crime. The protocol will give greater transparency to migrant victims and their dependents on how their data will be shared and will set out that no immigration enforcement action should be taken against that victim while investigation and prosecution proceedings are ongoing, and the victim is receiving support and advice to make an application to regularise their stay. The Protocol will be implemented later this year. The NPCC guidance ‘Information sharing with the Home Office where a victim or witness of crime is a suspected immigration offender’ already sets out under what circumstances police should share information with Immigration Enforcement and specifies that when someone reports a crime, the police must always, first and foremost, treat them as a victim, and that police must never check a database solely to establish a victim’s immigration status. The guidance also sets out that when an individual reports as a victim of crime the focus will always be to investigate the allegation and put in place reasonable measures to protect the victim from harm. It refers officers to the College of Policing’s guidance on initiating support and protection for victims of domestic abuse within the Major Investigations and Public Protection Authorised Professional Practice7 which guides officers to measures to protect the victim and signpost to local support services. It would not be practical for the police to encourage victims to seek advice on regularising their stay if they are unaware of the victim’s status due to a firewall.