Medical Justice Aims

• To defend and promote the health rights, and associated legal rights, of immigration detainees in the UK.
• To end the medical abuse of detainees and the damaging effects of immigration detention on their health.

Medical Justice Objectives

1. To provide independent medical advice to people held in immigration detention, which may include clinical assessment, review of existing treatment, recommendations for further treatment, access to detainees’ choice of doctor, access to appropriate treatment and hospital care, and the writing of medical reports.

2. To record, collate and publish our findings of the state of health care provision in immigration removal centres (IRCs), and the effects of immigration detention on detainees’ physical and mental health.

3. To campaign for the immediate release of vulnerable groups from immigration detention who, according to Home Office policy, should only be detained in “very exceptional circumstances”, in particular victims of torture, children, pregnant women and people with serious physical and mental illness. There should be proper care in the community on their release.

4. To challenge incorrect and harmful judgements made by medically unqualified Home Office officials and immigration courts on authoritative medical evidence produced in asylum claims and in applications for release from detention.

5. To raise awareness and call for action from the health professions, health regulatory authorities, and the wider public on the damaging effects of immigration detention on people’s health, and the poor state of health care provided in IRCs.

6. To bring to the attention of government Ministers and civil servants growing evidence of the damaging effects of Home Office policies on the lives and health of people detained in the UK’s IRCs.

7. To campaign for the transfer of all health care provision in IRCs from existing private providers to the National Health Service.

8. To call on the government to close immigration detention centres due to the persistent, widespread and serious harm to health these institutions have on people incarcerated within them, and for an immediate moratorium on the building of any new IRCs.

9. To campaign with health professionals, lawyers, ex-detainees and others who can help, to realise our objectives.