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UK: Home Office forced to reveal pregnant women kept in immigration detention centres

08 April 2016

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"The Home Office is only supposed to lock up pregnant women in immigration detention centres in very exceptional circumstances. But if you try to find out how many of them satisfy this criteria, things get difficult very quickly.

The information started being centrally collected last year, but it wasn't made public. So in February, campaign group Women for Refugee Women sent off a Freedom of Information request. The Home Office waited until the final day of the 20-day time limit and then refused, citing a commercial interests defence.

By April, the commercial interest argument had disappeared and the Home Office was now refusing on the basis that it was 'management data' - in other words, of an insufficient quality for publication. This is also nonsense. Women for Refugee Women complained to the Information Commissioner's Office. They ruled against the Home Office."

See the story: Home Office forced to reveal pregnant women kept in immigration detention centres (politics.co.uk, link)

And see: ICO respone to FOI request (pdf)

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