Back to list

Date submitted

10 July 2026

Submitted by

Interested party

Dear Crown Applications, I write as an elected councillor for a central Oxford ward and as a psychotherapist working for a local charity with refugees, asylum seekers, and other vulnerable migrants, suffering traumatisation, complex grief, and terror of the future. I have been a psychotherapist for 30 years, and am educated to UKCP level. In the past I was an elected Councillor for 14 years and have now returned to this 16 years later, partly because I want to be able to stand up to the voices that seek to divide us from our neighbours and make us suspicious of the valuable diversity that has given the UK so much over the past decades, and indeed centuries. When people come to the UK seeking a place of safety, they arrive already traumatised and grieving for lives (theirs and loved ones) that have been broken and torn apart by forces beyond their control (war, social instability, the targeting of minority groups etc). Many are reliving traumas that are beyond the imagining of most people in the UK. They need safety, calm, reliability and welcome. They want to rebuild their lives, contribute and work. When we imprison such people without charge, we take away their hope that there is a place for them in the world, where they can be safe and start to heal. Imprisoning people who have been tortured, or hounded, or bereaved catastrophically, for indefinite periods, so that they cannot even hope for a time beyond release, makes people very much more ill, breaks their spirits, and makes jobs like mine very much harder. Some people who are detained will kill themselves under this type of strain. We rely on people who come to the UK from other countries. Many of those I have worked with now work for the NHS. People who come here are often trained in the very skills that we have too few of; nurses, doctors, teachers, IT specialists. Many are young and hope to be engineers, security guards, police officers, architects. They have dreams like all young people. But dreams die in indefinite detention without charge. The human spirit can take a lot, but there is a limit. Once somebody comes to me broken and with lost hope, that is much harder to work with than severe multiple traumatisation and complex loss. People can end up getting leave to remain and then spending the rest of their lives traumatised by what has happened to them right here in the UK. For these humane reasons I ask that the application is refused. If it is not refused at this stage, I ask that it is examined through a full Public Inquiry. Yours in hope,