In the last Parliament, we had become sadly quite used to the last Government’s response to any questions about the Home Office funded community-based alternatives to detention pilot projects – for example: see here.
Just recently Olivia Blake MP asked a question of the new Home Office Minister, Angela Eagle MP. Now we can certainly hope for a better and more positive answer, but the key thing is that the learning from these two pilots is no longer being dismissed so easily. There is hope!
We will continue to make the case for the Government to reflect on the rich learning from the independent evaluations of these pilots, which show that there is a compassionate and practical alternative to immigration detention.
