On 24th March 2020 the House of Lords debated the emergency legislation from the Government to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic. The Bishop of Rochester, Rt Revd James Langstaff, spoke in the debate, highlighting issues to do with church closures, funerals, and care of the vulnerable, including the homeless, and those in prison or immigration detention:
The Lord Bishop of Rochester: My Lords, in these days I have been reflecting on the words of the Hebrew psalmist who, at the time of his people’s exile, articulated the question:
“How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
In many ways we are entering into a strange land, and indeed in some ways a land of exile: a land in which we are exiled from many of our normal patterns of living, in which people of faith are not able to attend their places of worship and in which many people find themselves having to live life in entirely new ways.
On 3rd April 2019 Baroness Whitaker asked the Government “whether they intend to implement the recommendations of the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Immigration Detention (HL Paper 279), published on 7 February, in particular those related to indefinite detention.” The Bishop of Durham, Rt Revd Paul Butler, asked a follow-up question: 
On the 15th May 2018 Lord Beecham asked Her Majesty’s Government an urgent (private notice) question, “what measures are in place to ensure the safety and well-being of asylum seekers during periods of detention in the prison system and during their removal from the United Kingdom”. The Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Paul Butler, asked a follow-up question about alternatives to detention:
On the 27th February 2018 Lord Paddick asked Her Majesty’s Government an urgent (private notice) question, “what steps they are taking to respond to the hunger strike at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire”. The Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Revd Nicholas Holtam, asked a follow-up question about the appropriateness of the number of individuals detained in detention centres:
On 25th May, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb asked Her Majesty’s Government “whether they will make it their policy routinely to publish statistical information on the detention of pregnant women under the Immigration Act 2014.” The Bishop of Southwark, Rt Rev Christopher Chessun, asked a follow-up question:
