THE Home Office has defended its processes for immigration incarceration as new figures show that asylum seekers and others have been held at Scotland's detention centre Dungavel for many months and in some cases more than a year.

A cross-party group of MPs and peers has recommended that immigration detention should be capped at 28 days, saying that Home Office officials are failing to follow guidance that the practice should be used sparingly.

The panel said government should consider alternatives such as allowing detainees to live in the community.

Current Home Office policy puts the health of detainees at serious risk, said the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Refugees.

It said there were also considerable financial costs to the taxpayer because there is no time limit on detention.

The UK was the only nation in the European Union not to have an upper time limit on detention, it said.

New figures show that in January, 41 detainees at the Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre in South Lanarkshire had been there for more than three months. Thirty-two detainees had been there for more than six months, while two had been there for more than a year.

One detainee from Iran who had been at Dungavel for 11 months had been in the detention system for almost two and a half years in total.

BBC Scotland, which obtained the data, said it had spoken to one man who was in detention for more than three years in total at Scotland's only immigration removal centre before his eventual release.

The Home Office said it was open to anyone in detention to apply for bail or challenge the decision in the courts.

It said: "Detention is an important part of a firm but fair immigration system, helping to ensure that those with no right to remain in the UK are returned to their home country if they will not leave voluntarily.

"People are only detained for the shortest period necessary and all detention is reviewed on a regular basis to ensure it remains justified and reasonable.

"Parliament demonstrated its support for our policy when it rejected a proposal to limit the length of detention during the passage of the Immigration Act last year. Repeated failure to comply with the removals process, often along with serious criminal offending histories, are key factors in lengthy detention.

"But a sense of fairness must always be at the heart of our immigration system - including for those we are removing from the UK."

The Home Secretary Theresa May has commissioned Stephen Shaw, the prisons and probation ombudsman until 2010, to carry out a comprehensive review of the immigration detention estate which the Home Office said was "to ensure the health and wellbeing of all detainees, some of whom may be vulnerable, is safeguarded at all times".

During the independence referendum, senior SNP figures promised that a Scottish Asylum Agency would be set up in an independent Scotland, while the Dungavel detention centre would be shut down. The agency, which would be separate to its immigration service, would handle asylum applications.

They wanted to end both dawn raids and the practice of detaining asylum seekers whose applications to stay in the UK have been rejected.

The charity Medical Justice found two years ago that at least 14 asylum seekers had been wrongfully detained at Dungavel since 2010 - including rape victims, torture victims, and people known to be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.