National Preventive Mechanism Tenth Annual Report 2018–19 Committee against Torture The CAT scrutinises countries by conducting a review in Geneva every few years. The Committee stressed the importance of receiving information from NPMs, as well as NGOs and human rights commissions, ahead of the review session, which took place in Geneva in May 2019. NPM members prioritised drafting a submission for the Committee to inform its review. The submission highlighted crosscutting issues in places of detention across the UK, noting human rights concerns in prisons, police custody, mental health detention, immigration detention and health and social care. Further, the CAT review was an opportunity for the NPM to work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) which held an awareness-raising event on the CAT process and supported a comprehensive civil society submission for the review. Collaboration As in previous years, the NPM and its members collaborated actively with a range of international actors, including monitoring bodies and inspectorates from other countries, academics and NGOs. The NPM and its members provided input to other NPMs, expert forums and new detention monitoring initiatives over the year, as follows. • T he NPM continues to work closely with the Geneva-based NGO, Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT), with whom we discussed the need for an NPM-led network in Europe. The Council of Europe provided the NPM Chair and a member of staff from the APT with the opportunity to give an update on the proposals for an NPM-led network at a 52 • • • • • meeting of the European NPM Forum in Ljubljana on 17 and 18 April 2019. The NPM Chair and an inspector from HMI Prisons’ immigration team attended the Second Regional Meeting on Torture Prevention with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR), and the Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT) in Milan in December 2018. They provided input into an expert discussion on monitoring immigration detention, as well as the different roles NPMs can play in torture prevention. The NPM Secretariat continued to support the efforts of authorities and wider stakeholders engaged in the process of establishing an NPM in Australia, meeting with the Principal Commissioner for Children and Young People in Victoria, Australia and continuing its discussions with others. The Head of the NPM Secretariat presented on the NPM to the Annual Faculty of Forensic Psychiatry at a conference in Vienna in March in a plenary session on rights and responsibilities in detention. A representative from CQC spoke at a seminar in Copenhagen on ‘Enhancing Monitoring Methodologies for NPMs’. They, along with ICVA, also hosted the South African Human Rights Commission as part of a study trip to the UK. ICVA met with a delegation from China comprising lawyers and scholars with an interest in torture prevention and illtreatment.