Source · Select Committees · Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 27
27
Accepted in Part
Paragraph: 168
Collect and publish data on protected characteristics of detained asylum seekers.
Recommendation
Monitoring and mitigating adverse effects of detention on groups of asylum seekers with vulnerabilities arising from Equality Act protected characteristics requires much improved data. The Government should collect and publish data on the protected characteristics of detained asylum seekers, including where they are detained and for how long.
Government Response Summary
The government states it already publishes data on some protected characteristics like age, sex, nationality, and pregnant women in detention, along with length and place of detention. It acknowledges methodological challenges in collecting full protected characteristics data but is actively working on understanding this and developing a new caseworking system (Atlas) to improve data recording.
Paragraph Reference:
168
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
In relation to the recommendation at paragraph 168, information on detained asylum seekers is already published, as a subset of the data on all individuals detained under immigration powers, can be found in the immigration statistics quarterly release at - https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immigration-statistics-quarterly-release. This includes age, sex, nationality, as well as length and place of detention. Data on the number of pregnant women in the detention estate is also published as part of the Transparency data, which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/migration-transparency-data (see Immigration Enforcement subset). Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the code of practice for statistics, taking into account a number of factors including user needs, availability and quality of data, and sensitivities regarding data protection. We recognise our responsibility to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty in considering how we can best meet the needs of people with protected characteristics. There are specific methodological challenges in collecting data about protected characteristics from non-UK nationals, but we are actively undertaking work to understand how we can best manage this. We are developing a new caseworking system (Atlas) for immigration data, to improve the data we are able to record.