Question
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 18 February (HL13421), how many detainees of each recorded faith are held in immigration removal centres.
Answered on
9 April 2019
The current faith breakdown of full and part time chaplains in the immigration removal estate is 15 Christian (all denominations), 10 Muslim, 5 Hindu, 5 Sikh, 2 Jewish, 2 Jehovah’s Witnesses and 2 Buddhists. Chaplains of other faiths are accessible to detainees across the estate on request.
Information on detainees’ religious identification, where declared, is held by service providers on their own internal detainee management systems. Current data is available for the following IRCs; Brook House, Tinsley House, Yarl’s Wood and Morton Hall. This data shows that for those detainees who declared their religion, 233 identified as Christian (all denominations), 203 as Muslim, 83 as ‘other religion’, 33 as Buddhist, 29 as Sikh and 18 as Hindu. This is management information which has not been assured to the same standards as official statistics.