The Information Tribunal heard an appeal today by the Home Office against an Information Commissioner decision requiring it to release data regarding failures by commercial contractors at the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook immigration detention centres.

In a freedom of information request, Corporate Watch asked the Home Office for internal audits of the two detention centres written by contractors Serco and the Geo Group and detailing the companies’ performance against their multi-million pound contracts.

Some information regarding the level of contractual penalties was released. Amongst other details, the court heard that the Home Office imposes a penalty of just £10,000 for an incident of self-harm resulting in death. This is a worryingly low figure for an incident of such magnitude.

Corporate Watch continues to seek crucial further information regarding the number and value of contractual penalties that have been imposed on the contractors for their failures. This will shed light on the way that the detention centres are run; how many failures the Home Office is willing to tolerate; and thus whether private provision is really working.

The Home Office claims that releasing this information will jeopardise commercial confidentiality. Corporate Watch contends that private contracting should not be used as a shield to obscure critical information about the running of these controversial facilities.

Evidence provided by the Home Office’s witness Colin Welch suggests that there are problems in the operation of the contracts and that private sector providers “may elect to incur a performance failure for failing to have sufficient staff on a given day” rather than staffing a facility to the required levels, as “the additional costs of paying staff on overtime…has a greater value…than the [contractual penalty].”

Corporate Watch argue that the Home Office evidence suggests a system that is not working, as the department admits that bidding corporations will increase their prices to take account of penalties rather than improve services, and will elect to incur penalties rather than absorb the cost of safe staffing levels. It is compounding this by objecting to the publication of data which might highlight this issue.

Daniel Carey, a lawyer at Deighton Pierce Glynn who is assisting Corporate Watch, said that:

“This case is a good example of the value of Freedom of Information Act requests. There is an obvious public interest in knowing the extent to which detention centre operators are reducing staffing to unsafe levels and absorbing contractual penalties rather than employing more staff, particularly if they then increase their contract bids to offset the penalty costs. These are practices which the Home Office has admitted before the Tribunal. I hope the Tribunal will support the Information Commissioner’s Decision to require the release of the penalty information.”

The Information Commissioner’s decision notice can be downloaded here.

See Corporate Watch’s background to the case here.

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Inspectors have raised concerns after finding people’s arms are being tied to their waists for hours on board deportation flights. New reports published today highlight the use of “waist restraint belts”, which inspectors described as “almost equivalent … to the most extreme and very rarely used” restraint equipment in prisons.

The belts were introduced by the Home Office as part of a new training program for deportation staff, after Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga died at the hands of G4S guards in 2010. An independent panel, which advised on the use of this new equipment, warned last year that “indiscriminate use of the restraint belt was not justifiable ethically or legally”. It said ministers would have to approve its introduction and it should only be used as “an exceptional measure”.

However, inspectors have found that the waist restraint belts “were now embedded in practice” and that they risked “being overused”. On three flights to Nigeria and Ghana, the belts were used on ten deportees by private security guards from the Capita-subsidiary Tascor. Inspectors said that “the justification for several of these uses was not explicit in the records” which they examined. On another flight, the belt was used on eight passengers, even though five of them did not resist being put on the flight. Nick Hardiwck, the chief inspectors of prisons, said in his report that “while risk factors were used to justify each case, the evidence was sometimes minimal.”

‘Tied up’

The reports refers to one passenger, Mr A, who was on suicide watch. He was strapped into a waist restraint belt, “although there was no clear evidence of a risk of harm to others”. Corporate Watch tracked down a detainee who was on the same deportation flight as Mr A. Speaking under the condition of anonymity, he described the scene on board: “A lot of people were tied up, in like a vest on your tummy and arms. They tightened up the back so you cannot move and you have pain in your back. You cannot move your hands. They put people on that plane like animals,” he said. (A commercially available waist restraint belt is pictured above.)

Inspectors are also concerned that the belts were kept on for longer than necessary. A woman was strapped into a waist restraint belt for a deportation to Pakistan until after the plane took off, “which was too long in view of the fact that she was compliant and cooperative throughout the process”, inspectors said. One man, who had refused to board a flight, was strapped into a restraint belt “continuously for eight hours … which was inappropriate”, the reports say. It caused swelling to his wrists and he had to be examined by a paramedic.

The advisers who tested this belt said it was: “a custom-designed piece of restraint equipment, manufactured from manmade fibres and using plastic snap-locks and Velcro fasteners, designed to be worn around the subject’s waist. Soft cuffs, with plastic snap-lock and Velcro fasteners, are attached to the belt by retractable cords.”

They said that: “In the ‘free’ position, although still connected to the belt, the cords are long enough to allow the subject relatively free movement of his arms and hands (for example, for eating). In the ‘retracted’ position, the subject’s hands are pulled in to the front of the belt, where they can be further secured by a snap-lock fastened mesh.”

The authorities initially proposed that the belt “should be worn by all, or nearly all, detainees subject to enforced removal”. However, the independent advisers said that “such indiscriminate use of the restraint belt was not justifiable ethically or legally. The belt therefore remains part of the proposed set of techniques only for use on the most disruptive and difficult detainees.”

However, the inspectors found that waist restraint belts were used six times on three flights to Pakistan, and that approaches to security were “unduly indiscriminate in some respects.”

Belts, chains and shackles

The Home Office’s use of restraints came under fire last month at an inquest into the death of Alois Dvorzak. The 84 year old Canadian detainee died at hospital in handcuffs, shackled to a detention custody office by a six foot long chain. Staff justified the restraints on the grounds that he might try to escape.

Karen Abdel-Hady, who was the Home Office’s director of detention operations at the time of Dvorzak’s death, said that nine out ten people in immigration detention centres were taken to hospital in handcuffs. She said a new policy had since been introduced and there is now a presumption that detainees should not be restrained.

Although the Home Office insists that lessons have been learnt from Dvorzak’s death, the deportation flight inspectors found that some authorisation forms for using restraints “did not indicate what specific risk factors might have existed”, and lacked sufficient detail. This appears to falls short of the Home Office’s own guidance on the use of these belts, which requires a senior manager to record “whether the restraint was reasonable, proportionate and necessary”.

Corporate Watch spoke to one former detainee who claims he was recently restrained by guards in a device which sounds similar to the new belts. He says it blocked his airflow and caused him to pass out. He spoke anonymously, fearing reprisals from the Home Office:

“The guards tried to pin me down with their legs and their knees. After some time they put a belt from under my my armpit down to my abdomen. They started tightening it and I was screaming and screaming ‘This is too tight for me!’ After some time I passed out – there was no air”, he said. “Someone shouted that they should put me in the recovery position. I was in panic and hyperventilating. They held my head and tried to force a tablet into my mouth. I was choking and gagging for 30 minutes.”

Despite passing out, the guards continued trying to deport him. “They put me in a wheelchair and moved me into the deportation van. On the way to the airport my condition deteriorated and they called an ambulance on the motorway and I went to hospital for some hours.” He says he was taken to hospital in handcuffs, despite the new Home Office policy. “I was still handcuffed on the way to hospital. The handcuffs cut the bone of my wrist and I’m having pain in the scrotum and lower back from the assault”, he said.

Desperate deportations

These inspections of deportation flights also describe some of the situations asylum seekers have to face. Two detainees arrived at the airport, “in a small van that had been contaminated with their urine”, inspectors found. The men were then kept in the van for several hours, “which was unacceptable treatment.”

One man, who was on suicide watch, had lived in Britain for 15 years and was being taken away from his mother who was very ill in hospital here. Another man, who was placed in one of the waist restraint belts, had been on suicide watch for the last six months in a series of detention centres.

In the days before one of these deportation flights featured in the inspection reports, volunteers at the Unity Centre in Glasgow spoke to many of the men facing deportation. Among them were fathers leaving behind their partners and young children. The sense of fear and desperation was so strong that it was clear something might happen on the day of the flight. In the event, one young man, ‘Fred’, scaled the fence at Harmondsworth detention centre. The inspectors said this caused “considerable delay” in taking people to the airport. He threatened to jump whenever Home Office officials tried to come near him, and a mattress was placed underneath him. In the end, the flight left without him, and he came down from the fence at the end of the night.

Corporate Watch visited Fred in detention a week later. He said he was born in Sierra Leone, where his father, an aid worker with the British Red Cross, was killed during the civil war. He had lived in the UK since he was 11 years old with his surviving family. He said all the detainees were talking about not wanting to go on the flight, “but no one was doing anything. So I got up the fence and they couldn’t touch me.”

At 24, he had spent the last two years of his life in detention, apart from a brief spell when he was released on tag, and made to walk miles each day to report to the Home Office. His face was vacant and expressionless. Detention was sucking the life out of him. He was being deported on the basis of police ‘intelligence’, not evidence or convictions, of association with a London gang. Operation Nexus allows the Met Police to remove people from the UK if officers believe it would be ‘conducive to the public good’. Despite Fred’s desperate resistance, he was later deported to Sierra Leone.

But the protests will not go away. There will be another deportation flight for dozens of Nigerians from London to Lagos, on Tuesday 24th November. Campaigners from Movement for Justice rallied outside the Nigerian High Commissioner on Wednesday, and women in Yarl’s Wood detention centre have published a statement opposing the flight, saying “we refused to be slaves to the British government”. The latest revelation that deportees are being strapped up in restraint devices will only add fuel to the fire.

The reports are available on the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website:

Detainees under escort: Inspection of escort and removals to Nigeria and Ghana (28 – 29 July 2015)

Detainees under escort: Inspection of escorts and removals to Pakistan (30 June – 1 July 2015)

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Doctor: detainee healthcare ‘unsafe’ and ‘alarming’

A doctor told an inquest jury yesterday how the healthcare department at a detention centre was so unsafe that she stopped working there.

Dr Farrah Jarral told the jury at West London Coroner’s court that she had worked as a locum GP at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre (a stone’s throw from Heathrow Airport) in January 2013.

Harmondsworth’s healthcare wing, run by private medical company Primecare, was “extremely basic, staffing wise and facility wise”, said Dr Jarral. She witnessed several “alarming” incidents. “It feels like a prison,” she said.

Dr Jarral was particularly concerned when she saw 84 year old Alois Dvorzak in the detention centre on 30 January 2013. She warned the Home Office that it was “entirely inappropriate for an elderly frail man like that to be in detention”.

Dvorzak died on 10 February 2013. When Dr Jarral read about his death in the media, she was “devastated”.

Alois Dvorzak had been travelling from Canada to visit his daughter to Slovenia. He stopped over in London, where immigration officers refused him entry and were concerned about his health. They took him to East Surrey Hospital where doctors said he was fit enough to be repatriated. The Home Office put Dvorzak in Harmondsworth detention centre, run by the Geo Group, until a flight back to Canada could be arranged.

Nursing staff at Harmondsworth told Dr Jarral that they “were very concerned about a frail man who had dementia”.

She was “very surprised” that East Surrey had assessed him as “fit to fly”.

East Surrey Hospital had obtained a list of Dvorzak’s medication from his care home in Canada. He was on at least 13 different drugs, including olanzapine, citalopram, and lorazepam.

Dr Jarral said that this “significant information” about Dvorzak’s health “was not available to me at the time”.

Senior Coroner Chinyere Inyama asked Dr Jarral: “When you see medication prescribed like that does this indicate a major mental illness?”

Dr Jarral replied: “Absolutely.”

The coroner asked Dr Jarral what she would have thought had she known that Dvorzak was taking those medicines.

The doctor replied: “I would have been worried if he had self capacity to make decisions. He was on a major tranquilliser and anti-depressant …There should have been a full mental health assessment by a psychiatric doctor, not by nursing staff. For a patient to be on a combination of these three drugs would indicate significant mental health concerns.”

Dvorzak had also been prescribed blood thinners. Dr Jarral said that would have been “relevant to a patient who had previous heart failure or a stroke”.

Dr Jarral told the jury: “When I went to see him he was lying on a bed and was very withdrawn. He was very frail. He had a blank facial expression that’s common with dementia. … Having established that this patient was not talking much and was very frail it was clear to me that this man was not suitable to be in detention.”

She was told to fill out a form alerting the Home Office that Dvorzak was not suitable for detention. Jarral completed and submitted the form, called a Rule 35 report, but she had little confidence in the reporting system.

“I thought the piece of paper . . . was going to get lost,” she said. “It was not a system I could feel confident in. I wanted to speak to a person.”

She relayed her concerns to a Home Office worker and reiterated that it was “really inappropriate for him to be in detention”.

Dr Jarral asked if any attempts had been made to contact his family. She said the Home Office told her that they “could not confirm or deny if this had happened and said it was none of our business”.

(The jury has heard from other witnesses that more medical information about Alois Dvorzak had already been obtained from healthcare workers in Canada and the Home Office was in contact with the Canadian authorities.)

Dr Jarral was told to fill out more paperwork. She did that, and “documented in medical notes that I felt he was unsuitable for detention”.

After leaving Harmondsworth on 30 January 2013 Dr Jarral was still “so concerned”.

Having received an email from an NGO worker with whom she had raised her concerns, she decided to call the Canadian High Commission.

She told the jury that at the time she had been very worried about breaking patient confidentiality but “in hindsight I could have gone further”.

She said diplomatic staff recorded her concerns that a Canadian citizen in Harmondsworth was “vulnerable and very at risk”.

“The next thing I knew was an article in the Guardian reporting his death. I was devastated,” Dr Jarral said.

 Dr Jarral told the jury that she “went into that situation with very little information” because facts about Dvorzak’s health had not been given to her, or there were “some major factual inaccuracies” in the Home Office’s emails.

“There were occasions where it seems the message has completely been lost. There was no mention of mental health even though he had been on these drugs.”

Dr Jarral said it was “worrying” that the Home Office were “cutting off medical information from doctors”. She said this was “not a safe way to practice”.

She said she had been made to feel “silly calling the Canadian High Commission when they were fully aware” of  Dvorzak’s predicament.

Dr Jarral said she already had concerns from previous visits. She told the jury:

“There where a few incidents that alarmed me about healthcare at Harmondsworth. It was not really set up for delivering healthcare. It was very sparsely equipped and staffed.”

She was scathing about the absence of electronic medical records and recalled how she was given paper notes that may have a name misspelt.

It was not possible to get rapid test results like it was in a hospital, even though detained patients might be on medicines such as anticoagulants, whose use requires careful monitoring.

The doctors were often locums, agency staff who turned up for a day and then went away, Dr Jarral said.

The coroner asked her what training new doctors were given at Harmondsworth.

Dr Jarral replied: “I was given brief verbal sign posting. This is pretty concerning. In a situation where people are in prison or detention there are higher incidents of mental health and trauma. Doctors need training because there are issues that are more in focus than outside and accidents could lead to someone being harmed.”

She had particular concerns about the reporting process that is supposed to keep people safe. Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules (a statutory instrument) requires doctors working in detention centres to inform the Home Office about detainees who have experienced torture before coming to the UK or who are otherwise unfit to detain. Officials are required to consider this information and release the person.

Dr Jarral said that there were “very huge consequences” when doctors failed to submit adequate Rule 35 medical reports. She said: “The consequences of not filling that in properly could be people sent back to their country and killed, if you hadn’t had that training and experience to detect serious torture.”

Dr Jarral, who had worked at other custodial facilities, including Wormwood Scrubs prison, said she decided that it “was not safe to continue at Harmondsworth because my actions could lead to someone being harmed”.

Mr Hilton, representing the Home Office, reminded Dr Jarral that the jury had been told that East Surrey Hospital staff found Dvorzak “stable. Fit to be released from our care. Does not need medication from us. Has capacity to make decisions”.

Dr Jarral replied: “I have much doubt that he would have had capacity. He said there were ‘demons tormenting him’.”

She said: “He needed to be on an elderly care ward for several weeks.”

Hilton asked if that was “not a viable option because he was not a UK citizen?”

Dr Jarral said non-citizens could be admitted to acute emergency care. She said doctors at Harmondsworth needed more training because it can be “critical to someone’s life”.

The inquest continues.

This article was also published on openDemocracy

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Mitie profits over £2m from detention centres despite criticisms

Mitie Care and Custody, the company that runs the majority of Britain’s immigration detention centres, has recorded a six fold increase in its annual profits. The firm cashed in over £2 million for the last financial year, up from £333,000.

The company’s director attributed the profit rise to taking over the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres outside Heathrow airport in September 2014. The Home Office is paying Mitie £180m over an eight year contract to run these centres.

This contract has proved highly profitable for the company, but comes amid deteriorating care and decreasing staff morale at those centres, which used to be run by rival outsourcing giants Serco and the Geo Group.

Mitie’s newly released profit figures run until the end of March 2015. In that month, both centres faced open revolt among detainees who were angry at worsening conditions and staged a wave of hunger strikes. Staff also complained about their new corporate bosses. One disgruntled guard claimed that the new management was making staff work more shifts, and said Mitie has “fucked this place up, they fucked it up”.

Secret filming showed the new centre manager, Paul Morrison, telling detainees they would be locked in their cells for two hours longer each day under Mitie’s “more efficient” contract. When challenged by detainees about his motives, Morrison insisted this change was not designed to make more profit. Financial records reveal that Morrison and other centre mangers now hold shares in Mitie Care and Custody.

The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), which visits the centres on a regular basis, also raised concerns after seeing the first four months of Mitie’s tenure. In their 2014 annual report, they said that Harmondsworth was “in large parts a depressing, dirty place and in some cases has a destructive effect on the welfare of detainees.” They highlighted “the poor maintenance of the Centre, detaining vulnerable detainees in unsuitable conditions, the continued detention of those ‘unfit to be detained’ and the complaints process.”

Although things were far from perfect under the old contractor, the Geo Group, inspectors said that “Some procedures and systems that worked under Geo (albeit to a substandard level) are currently suffering under Mitie as a result of staffing and organisational changes.” And the criticisms didn’t stop there:

“Maintenance issues, inherited by Geo, despite being addressed by Mitie, remain outstanding at the time of writing. Staffing levels do not seem adequate to meet the needs of detainees. Staff morale is low. This adversely affects the welfare of detainees. The IMB continued to receive complaints about staff behaviour.”

They concluded that “an increasing number of problems have related to the contractor where the changing of contracts has left gaps in service provision for the detainees.”And over at Colnbrook, the inspectors weren’t that impressed either. They said that, “The change in contractor [from Serco to Mitie] has resulted in significant staffing issues … staff are overstretched and have less time available to interface with detainees, resulting in an increasing level of dissatisfaction amongst the detainees.” Keith Vaz MP has claimed that Mitie took on the Colnbrook contract for 30% less than their predecessor Serco, so these staffing issues are hardly surprising.

The IMB’s annual report on Colnbrook also said that facilities for physically disabled detainees were “inadequate”, and “access for detainees to see a doctor during 2014 has deteriorated and this is a significant cause for concern.” Tellingly, 43% of complaints to the IMB in 2014 were made in the last four months of the year, after the contract changed hands.

Inspectors also “observed a general deterioration in the cleanliness of the centre, activities not being operated as frequently as before the change in contract, and staff morale being low. It is not apparent whether these issues are teething problems associated with the significant changes inherent in a change of contractor or whether the staffing profile envisaged in the new contract is inadequate.”

But the inspectors couldn’t check this out, because they “have not been given sight of the new contract on the grounds that it is commercially sensitive.”

And if detainees made complaints, they were unlikely to be investigated independently. “There have been serious failings in the complaints system in 2014”, inspectors said. They often found that complaints are investigated by the managers:

“for the area where the complaint emanated without any independent scrutiny. The investigation usually takes the form of obtaining statements from staff involved in the incident that resulted in the complaint, and seldom involves speaking to the complainant to fully understand their perspective on the issue.”

Perhaps inevitably then, “The vast majority of complaints are not substantiated.”

But Mitie ‘Care and Custody’ is undeterred. Its director, Colin Dobell, wraps up the company’s accounts by saying the firm “continues to be active in bidding and developing opportunities in the central government justice outsourcing sector and expects to be successful in securing new business in the year.” Although Dobell sees difficulties ahead “as the new government implements its next round of budgetary cuts”, he expects the firm to “respond positively to the challenges and opportunities this creates.”

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Home Office ‘self-audit’ system for detention centres revealed

The government’s system for monitoring companies it pays to run migrant detention centres has been called into question after a year-long freedom of information battle won disclosure of confidential ‘self-audits‘. The documents reveal how contractors are paid according to their own monthly performance reports. The Home Office has refused to say if it scrutinises the data submitted by the companies.

The Home Office was forced to hand over the files to Corporate Watch after the Information Commissioner decided there was “a very strong public interest” in doing so. The majority of Britain’s immigration detention centres are run by private companies under multi-million pound outsourcing deals. The firms are required to send monthly ‘self-audit’ reports to the Home Office, detailing any contractual failings and penalties incurred. Despite the importance of such documents in measuring compliance, it is thought to be the first time that such documents have ever been made public. The performance reports, from May 2014, reveal some failures by contractors but, more importantly, raise serious questions about the integrity of a ‘self-audit’ system.

The government’s confidence in large outsourcing companies, particularly Serco, has been challenged by a series of scandals. Serco is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office for overcharging the government on an electronic tagging contract. In another widely publicised failing, the company recorded prisoners as being delivered to court in time for hearings when they were not.

Audits ‘should raise questions’

Contractors can provide significantly different levels of detail to the Home Office, because there is no standard template for the self-audits, it has emerged. The report lengths are arbitrary, with one contractor’s audit more than half the length than that of their rival. The GEO Group, which operated Harmondsworth, simply left blank a section titled “details of accepted failures” in their “monthly contract review tool”. The Home Office has refused to explain what follow up action it takes after receiving self-audit reports, raising concerns that the monitoring system lacks any integrity. A Home Office spokesperson commented “Self-audit reports are part of a range of measures, including regular independent inspections, to ensure our contractors continue to provide safe and secure accommodation for detainees.” (The frequency of these independent inspections is another issue – the prison inspector last visited Colnbrook in 2013, and his visit before that was in 2010.)

A Serco spokesperson told Corporate Watch: “Serco managed Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre on behalf of the Home office until August 2014. The last report before this date by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons confirmed that Colnbrook IRC was a generally well-managed centre that had been on a consistent path of improvement in recent years. The report also found that detainees had good access to appropriate primary care services.”

However, Serco’s self-audit should have caused the Home Office alarm, according to a medical healthcare professional who analysed the document for Corporate Watch. Noel Finn, a former mental health nurse for Serco, said he had “significant concerns” about the report, adding that “The Home Office has a duty of care to ask what’s going on here.” Under the contract, Serco was required to provide full medical screening to all new arrivals. However, the figures show that 686 people in one month, or 72% of arrivals, signed disclaimers to not see a doctor. The Home Office refused to comment on whether it had challenged Serco about this high number of disclaimers. When we queried this figure with Serco, the company said that “This is fairly normal. All detainees see a nurse on arrival at the centre and are asked if they want to see a doctor the next day. It was not uncommon for a large number to say that they were fine, did not want to see a doctor and sign a disclaimer. Obviously residents are able to request to see healthcare at any point while in detention.” But disclaimers enable the company to escape its contractual requirement to give a ‘full medical screening’ by a doctor, and means that almost three quarters of people in its custody (and therefore under its duty of care) were not fully checked on arrival for undiagnosed medical problems – but just seen by a nurse.

One graph in Serco’s May 2014 self-audit had months of data missing

Serco’s self-audit claims that psychiatrist appointments received 100% attendance, and that appointments with mental health nurses had 98% attendance. Serco told us that “Good attendance for mental health related clinics and meetings is not uncommon.” However, these figures are incredibly high, given that people with mental health problems are often unwilling to attend appointments. For example, a month after the report was written, a Serco mental health nurse from Colnbrook told an inquest that one detainee had become uncooperative simply when he saw the words ‘mental health’ on the nurse’s name badge. Again, the Home Office refused to tell Corporate Watch whether it had queried this attendance figure with Serco.

The report shows that only 77% of Colnbrook staff were trained in emergency first aid. This appears well below target, something that Serco effectively conceded in its response to us; “All staff would have been diaried-in to receive refresher training to provide the required level of cover for the centre”. Another point was that the nursing contingent took 17 sick days in one month, but cover was adequate “mostly due to the willingness of our staff to work additional shifts and change shifts at short notice”, Serco reported. When we challenged Serco if it was safe for healthcare staff to work extra shifts at short notice, the company said it was “not aware of any shifts that were back-to-back”, but said it no longer had access to the centre’s records. The Home Office would not tell Corporate Watch if it had raised concerns about these working practices.

Flowers, bee stings and protests

Serco’s report also contains a surprising amount of detail on mundane matters such as gardening and art classes. It is not clear why the Home Office needs to know about the daffodils in a detention centre, yet Serco’s centre director at Colnbrook reported that “The warmer weather has started to arrive and plants and flowers are now beginning to bloom adding much more colour to the garden. All the daffodil bulbs have now been removed and stored for later in the year.” And in the art room, he reported that “Lesson topics this month have been on Bracelets and how to make varied styles rather than the general straightforward ones.” The reports give a sometimes bizarre picture of what goes on inside Britain’s immigration detention centres. At Colnbrook, a member of Serco staff “wearing a full bee suit and trained as the beekeeper was stung multiple times by bees in the staff garden. She experienced an allergic reaction and swelling of the affected arm”, and required hospital treatment.

A protest inside Harmondsworth in May 2014 was ten times larger than the GEO Group, its operator, told journalists. The self-audit report for that month shows that the centre manager knew the demonstration involved “up to 300 detainees”, nearly half of all inmates. The company had told the media that “A short and entirely passive protest took place at Harmondsworth involving between 30 and 40 detainees”. GEO told Corporate Watch that it “absolutely did not consciously make a false statement to the media.” The protest was against the fast track asylum system, and detainees occupied the centre’s courtyard, sitting down and refusing food. One man involved in the protest told volunteers at the Unity Centre that “Conditions are very bad, we all feel we are going crazy. We feel alone and isolated like we have been left in the middle of the bush.” The unrest quickly spread to three other detention centres across the country. Months later, the High Court found that fast track carried “an unacceptably high risk of unfairness” and was unlawful. The system has now been suspended.

Harmondsworth: graph shows reasons why some detainees were deemed at risk of self-harm

Lawyers, TV shows and deportations

Cuts to legal aid have meant that detainees have very little access to lawyers. Serco noted that “solicitor demand continues but many [detainees] are becoming more and more frustrated due to lack of funding and options available to them.” However, the centre director hoped that tension could be reduced by sports events on TV. “There was also a lot of sport activity on the television which is always popular and diverts attention from detention. These are factors which indirectly can impact positively on the number of safety events.”

The Home Office arranges specially chartered flights for deportations to particular countries, such as Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The self-audits shed some light on how people are selected for these flights, which raises concerns that people are being rounded up on the basis of their nationality rather than their individual immigration cases.

The Harmondsworth centre manager wrote in a discussion about the number of people arriving and leaving detention that “Figures rising and falling can often be attributed to the amount of charter operations in progress by DEPMU [Detainee Estate Population Management Unit] and other pick up operations in effect from the Home office enforcement teams. In certain circumstancesthese two departments m[a]y work together to focus on a specific nationality to fill a charter which will reflect on the amount of arrivals and first night in detention and will also affect the amount of departures”. [Emphasis added]

Days after that report was written, a leaked Home Office intelligence dossier emerged which showed immigration snatch teams were targeting nationalities in specific industries, such as Nigerians working in barber shops. Rounding up people based on their nationality, in order to fill a mass deportation flight to that country, would amount to a collective expulsion, contrary to European laws.

After fighting for a year to keep these self-audits secret, the Home Office has shown that the system it uses to ‘monitor’ companies paid to run detention centres is deeply flawed. Although the companies declared a handful of failures at their centres, the Home Office does not appear to scrutinise the reports, giving the companies carte blanche to under-report issues. This leaves people in their custody vulnerable. But the arrangement could be mutually beneficial to the Home Office and its contractors – the payments keep coming, and the government can turn a blind eye.

(Mitie took over the running of Harmondsworth and Colnbrook in September 2014.)

This article was amended on 3 December 2015 following a direction from the Information Tribunal. The original version may be republished pending the outcome of a case currently being considered by the Tribunal.

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The Information Commissioner has ordered the Home Office to disclose confidential self-audit reports written by the companies that ran two controversial immigration detention centres. The decision follows a ten month freedom of information battle by Corporate Watch.

The Commissioner slammed the Home Office for a series of delays and said there is “a very strong public interest” in disclosure. He said the reports contain “detailed breakdowns and insight” into the performance of Serco and the Geo Group on their multi-million pound government contracts for operating the Colnbrook and Harmondsworth facilities. The Home Office has to hand over the documents by 13 July 2015 or risk contempt of court. The Home Office can still appeal the Commissioner’s decision.

Corporate Watch made a Freedom of Information request after Immigration Minister James Brokenshire told Parliament in 2014 that contractual performance at the centres was monitored through “monthly staffing and self-audit reports”. However, the Home Office said the documents were confidential and that disclosure could harm the “commercial interests” of Serco and the Geo Group. Government departments routinely conceal details of their contracts with outsourcing companies by invoking exemptions in the Freedom of Information act, sections 41 and 43, which protect “information provided in confidence” and “commercial interests”. Corporate Watch appealed to the Information Commissioner to review the Home Office’s use of these exemptions.

In a critical decision, the Commissioner found that even though releasing the documents is likely to damage the companies’ commercial interests, this is outweighed by the public interest in disclosure. The Commissioner said it is “highly relevant that the contractors are paid with public money” to run the detention centres and that disclosure will increase transparency about whether “a value for money service is being provided to the taxpayer”.

He also cited concerns in the media which suggested the operation of detention centres was a “problematic area generally”, as well as reports by the Prisons Inspector into Harmondsworth and Colnbrook that were “to varying degrees of severity, critical of their operation.” The Harmondsworth inspection found that there was an “inadequate focus on the needs of the most vulnerable detainees” and “shocking cases where a sense of humanity was lost”, referring to the deaths of two detainees. At the time of that inspection, Harmondsworth was run by the Geo Group, an American private prison giant.

The confidential audits were written almost a year after that inspection, in May 2014, and the Commissioner said “there is a strong public interest in favour of disclosure in order to reveal whether, according to the contractors’ own accounts, the operations of these IRCs [Immigration Removal Centres] improved.” The “vulnerable nature” of people held in the detention centres “made all of the factors in favour of disclosure … more acute”, he said. Over a hundred asylum seekers and other migrants at Harmondsworth reportedly went on hunger strike in May 2014, protesting against poor conditions and fast-track deportations.

In September 2014, Harmondsworth and Colnbrook were taken over by a different company, Mitie Care and Custody. Keith Vaz MP has claimed that Mitie took on the Colnbrook contract for 30% less than their predecessor Serco, raising concerns about pressure on staff. Secret filming released earlier this year by Corporate Watch showed that Harmondsworth continued to be dogged by problems in the months after Mitie took charge, with Home Office staff filmed admitting that conditions in Harmondsworth were “shit”.

Maurice Frankel, Director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, said “This is an important decision which shows that where private contractors providing public services are failing to meet the required standards, their performance may have to be disclosed in the public interest even if it could be harmful to their commercial interests or a breach of confidence. Contractors cannot expect to be able to conceal substandard performance.

In this case, fortunately, there was no doubt that the information was subject to the FOI Act, because the Home Office held it. But where information about performance is held solely by the contractor the FOI right of access may not apply. That substantial loophole needs to be addressed if we are to have proper scrutiny of contracted out services.”

You can download the Information Commissioner’s decision notice in full here

Read Corporate Watch’s tips on making Freedom of Information requests here

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As a hybrid of prison labour and sub-zero hours exploitation, the cheap work done by migrants in UK detention centres is open to challenge in the courts, one barrister argues.

Inside the walls of the UK’s ‘Immigration Removal Centres’, a regime of low-paid labour has seemingly cast detained migrants outside the protections of the law – while saving companies and the government hundreds of thousands of pounds in wages.

Corporate Watch’s research, alongside a new film Working Illegally, highlight the current scale of labour exploitation within the detention centres – with migrants being used to perform tasks essential to the running of centres for just £1 an hour (and £1.25 for a smaller category of ‘jobs’).

Legal vacuum

The companies are exploiting a legal vacuum. Detained migrants are neither “workers” nor “employees” for the purposes of contract and employment law.

Instead, they are subject to a special scheme established by statute (Section 153 Immigration and Asylum Act 1999), organised via Detention Centre Rules and executed by private contractors with an apparent financial incentive in expanding the hours and the tasks.

Detention Centre Rule 17 gives you a good idea of what was originally envisaged:

“Paid Activity

17(1) All detainees shall be provided with an opportunity to participate in activities to meet, as far as possible, their recreational and intellectual needs and [for] the relief of boredom”.

(3) Detained persons shall be entitled to undertake paid activities…”

Using the limited framework of “paid activity” for the purposes of “relieving boredom”, the companies running the detention centres have instituted vast schemes in which thousands of hours’ work are being performed – including essential tasks such as cleaning and cooking. It is arguable that by expanding the nature and purpose of work far beyond the plain wording (and intent) of the legislation, the Home Office and the companies are acting unlawfully (the schemes are “ultra vires” – namely, they are without statutory support).

Without the detainee labour, the companies would be forced to hire workers/employees to make sure the same jobs were done [and would be paying the minimum wage to do so]. That’s where the savings are generated. The scale is highly indicative of the regime being expanded for purposes beyond the Detention Centre Rules, rendering it unlawful.

Employees/Workers – the National Minimum Wage exemption

The special scheme which has allowed low-paid labour to become institutionalised inside ‘Immigration Removal Centres’ is designed to place the work outside the bounds of contract and employment law – the Government’s position would appear to be that there is no implied contract in operation and therefore no status for the detainees in civil law, either as “workers” or “employees”.

The status-labels of “worker” and “employee” (legal terms of art) define the rights and protections afforded to individuals. A worker, for example, has access, amongst other things, to the national minimum wage and sick pay; an “employee” has a higher status – bringing with it rights against their employer such as unfair dismissal and redundancy protection.

In general, you’re better off as an employee than a worker – which is why zero-hours contracts were created to deny employee status to a million people in the UK.

But what if you’re not even a “worker”? One example of this sub-zero category are interns, who are often doing a job over an extended period which saves the company money but who are still denied a status that would lead to a proper wage and attendant protections.

Detained migrants, meanwhile, have no right to work outside immigration detention since, as “persons liable to detention” under the Immigration Act 1971, they are by definition people without leave (or permission) to remain in the UK.

But if the aim and effect of the special scheme is to put detained migrants outside “worker” status, it’s hard to reconcile with s.153A of Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (enacted in 2006) which states: “A detained person does not qualify for the national minimum wage in respect of work which he does in pursuance of removal centre rules”.

If detainees cannot, by definition, be workers, why create an explicit exemption? The implication is that detainees might very well be workers and a statutory exemption is therefore necessary to head off any potential national minimum wage claims brought in the Employment Tribunal or County Court.

This remains an untested area of the law – only by a challenge being brought would the Government’s real position be flushed out. And if the exemption only applies to work done “in pursuance of removal centre rules”, namely Rule 17, any work which can be shown to be done outside those aims would also arguably fall to be compensated in accordance with the minimum wage.

Treating detainees like “prisoners”

The detention centre arrangement is analogous to the way “paid work” is arranged in prisons (under The Prison Act 1952) – but with several crucial differences. The operation of, and justification for, low-paid labour as part of penal policy have always been made clear and have a statutory basis: the aim in prison is explicitly to rehabilitate (engaging in work is meant to help prepare prisoners for a return to life on the outside) and punish (the state can expect convicted prisoners to be compelled to work a minimum period each week – ie. It is not voluntary). It is for that reason that Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “forced labour”, includes a qualifier that the right doesn’t apply to “work required to be done in the ordinary course of detention”. (Interestingly, International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions, while exempting prison work from notions of “forced labour”, do not do so if the labour is benefiting private companies.)

But immigration detainees are not criminals serving a sentence, they are not engaged in work “[compulsorily] required to be done in the ordinary course of detention”, nor, if the Home Office are to be believed, are they meant to be detained for any reason other than to facilitate ‘removal’ within a matter of weeks.

The reality on the ground in the last decade is that as migrants spend longer and longer in detention – and as companies seek to make financial savings – the detainees are being treated like prisoners, including having imposed upon them a regime of work which is uncannily similar to what convicted criminals undergo – without the justification that penal policy might be said to provide.

While the Home Office fall-back position may be that “paid activity” in detention centres is ultimately “voluntary”, the evidence gathered by Corporate Watch indicates that many detainees feel obliged to participate in the scheme in order to receive payment which is used to meet essential living needs, including toiletries. And apparent consent is not the end of the matter: detainees who are especially vulnerable should not be placed in a position where low-paid labour becomes necessary. As with any victim of forced labour, power, coercion and exploitation can vitiate a voluntary decision.

Even the regime in prisons is now likely to be reformed. The Howard League for Penal Reform has long campaigned for the minimum wage to be paid in prisons – alongside “normal” protections: “There is no reason why prisoners should not sign private law contracts with their employer like normal employees”. These were proposals which the Conservative Party once hinted it would support.

Shaky foundations

But if there is a moral and public policy case for prisoners to be entitled to the minimum wage, the claim of detained migrants to the same is equally, if not more, potent. Without any of the “penal policy” justifications for low pay, the Government and the companies have never even sought to provide a reasoned basis for engaging detainee migrants in labour at rates of just £1 an hour.

More fundamentally, the entire scheme as it has developed since 2006 in fact rests on a shaky legal foundation which is open to challenge.

About the writer:

Taimour Lay is a barrister at Garden Court Chambers specialising in immigration and human rights. This article is a version of a talk given at a preview of the film Working Illegally on 26 March 2015.

The post Are £1-an-hour jobs legal? appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Secret filming reveals conditions inside Harmondsworth immigration detention centre for the first time, where hundreds of people face deportation.

The footage was shot by a detainee and obtained by Corporate Watch as part of a five month investigation into Mitie, the outsourcing firm that took over Harmondsworth in September 2014 under a multi-million pound Home Office contract.

The videos, some of which are also featured on Channel 4 News tonight, reveal:

– Home Office staff admitting that conditions in Harmondsworth are “shit”, and that detainees are not allowed cameras to photograph inside the centre because the government “don’t want the bad publicity that would entail”.

– A guard saying that the new Mitie management has “fucked this place up”, making staff work more shifts and get less rest. “It’s just gonna break. There’s only so much people can take”, the guard warns.

– Paul Morrison, Mitie’s most senior manager at Harmondsworth, telling detainees that they will be locked inside their cells for two hours longer at night as part of the company’s new contract.

– Detainees living in unhygienic conditions with pigeons flying around inside, overflowing drains, rotting food in the kitchen and bed bugs in their cells.

– A detainee suffering injuries from what appear to be epileptic fits.

– Mitie guards selling counterfeit clothes to detainees that had been confiscated at customs by the UK Border Force.

This footage was recorded by a detainee on a secret camera, and given to Corporate Watch over a period of several months. Harmondsworth holds people with a variety of irregular immigration situations: including asylum-seekers, visa over-stayers and foreign nationals who have served prison sentences in the UK. According to the latest Home Office statistics, only 57% of people who exited the detention system via Harmondsworth were deported, during the period covered in the videos.¹

When Mitie took over Harmondsworth, its chief executive Ruby McGregor-Smith pledged that her firm would provide “the best environment possible for the people in our care – putting decency, dignity, and safety at the heart of everything we do.”

The contract, worth £180m over eight years, involves Mitie merging the 615-bed Harmondsworth facility with the adjacent Colnbrook detention centre. This will create a ‘super-size’ detention centre, with capacity for 1000 detainees, making it the largest in Europe. This new contract means Mitie now detains more migrants in the UK than G4S and Serco combined.

Home Office staff: “[if media got photos of the] rats and whatever other shit that’s in here… that looks bad for the government”

Camera phones are banned in immigration removal centres. When asked about the reason for this policy, a Home Office representative at Harmondsworth said he thought it was to prevent detainees sending photos to the media of fights, self-harm, and “these bad conditions like the rats and whatever other shit that’s in here”, because the government “don’t want the bad publicity that would entail”.

Guard: new Mitie management “fucked this place up”

One disgruntled guard explains that the new management are making staff work more shifts with less rest in between. The guard says his shift is 13.5 hours long. During a conversation in the gym with the detainee who is secretly filming him, the guard says that Mitie has “fucked this place up, they fucked it up”. He warns “It’s just gonna break. There’s only so much people can take.”

Harmondsworth has a history of riots and disturbances. There was a major riot in 2004 after a detainee was found hanged, and another riot erupted in 2006 after the prison inspectorate issued what it described as the “poorest ever” report it had given on a detention centre.

Just weeks before Mitie took over Harmondsworth from the previous contractor (Geo Group, an American multinational), there was a non-violent protest involving 60 detainees. The prison service riot squad (the ‘Tornado’ team) broke up the detainees and moved dozens to other centres. The Home Office has refused to answer a freedom of information request by Corporate Watch about that disturbance, saying:

“If we were to disclose this information it could substantially prejudice the operation of immigration removal centres. This is because disclosure may enable individuals to obtain information on the security procedures deployed during a disturbance which could compromise the integrity of the security at the facility. This is clearly not in the public interest.”²

Mitie is locking detainees in their cells for two hours longer at night

Our investigation has found that after Mitie took over Harmondsworth, the company began locking detainees in their cells for two hours longer at night, from 9pm to 8am, instead of 10pm to 7am. Detainees are now spending almost half of their time locked inside their cells. This appears to be contrary to the Detention Centre Rules 2001, which say there should be “a relaxed regime with as much freedom of movement and association as possible”.

At a meeting with Mitie managers and a director, a detainee asks why the lock up times were changing (the meeting took place in the visitors’ hall at Harmondsworth, with its distinctive painting of the London skyline). Mitie’s detention centre manager, Paul Morrison, told them it was because “we’re having a reconfiguration of what we do and what we deliver in the centre as part of our new contract and our process.”

Morrison says this is because “we want to deliver a better service in the day, and we’ve only got ‘X’ number of staff”. However, the Financial Times has previously reported that Mitie’s new contract does involve job losses. Morrison says the company’s solution is to “squeeze the end and beginning of the day so that that pushes in lots and lots of hours into the day”. He claims that this is “the only way we can realistically” deliver an improved service: “the price that we pay is a little bit of an earlier lock up”. Morrison says he hopes that the detainees will “understand the reasons for doing it”.

The detainee responds “I do understand, it’s saving money.” Morrison insists: “No it’s not saving money it’s being more efficient.” The detainee replies: “That goes against my freedom. I’m here for that reason, and I don’t want to be pushed, I don’t want to be squeezed, for more money or for more profits to be made.”

One week after the meeting with managers, where detainees warned that they were not ready to comply with being locked-up for longer at night, a “very depressed” detainee claims he set fire to his cell around 8am. He says that a guard watched him do this through the hole in the door but did not stop him. He claims that later on the officers refused to let an ambulance take him to hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.

Corporate Watch made a freedom of information request to the Home Office asking for any documents from this incident. The department refused disclosure.³ Mitie has not responded to requests for comment about these allegations.

This would not be the first time a suicidal detainee has set fire to their cell in a Mitie run detention centre. The company’s only previous experience of running a detention centre before taking over Harmondsworth and Colnbrook had been the smaller Campsfield centre in Oxfordshire. In October 2013, two people were hospitalised and 180 people had to be evacuated after a major fire engulfed the roof, causing damages estimated at nearly £1m. A suicidal Afghan detainee had set fire to bedding in his cell, and the blaze spread uncontrollably because no sprinklers were installed – despite the fire brigade telling the Home Office to do so back in 2008.

Mitie’s detention centre manager at Campsfield during the fire was Paul Morrison. Mitie has now put him in charge of Harmondsworth and Colnbrook.

Detainees living in unhygienic conditions with little privacy

Although Mitie describes itself as “one of the largest cleaning services companies in the UK”, with a “world-class team”, the videos show instances of very poor hygiene at Harmondsworth.

Pigeons are filmed flying around inside the detention centre. Mitie’s website says, “As one of the country’s leading providers of bird control services, we are able to keep your buildings pest free, for good … a failure to deal with these pests could be putting your duty of care to your employees at risk.” But at Harmondsworth, detainees can be seen catching a pigeon with their own hands.

In addition, a tray of rotting food is left forgotten in the kitchen for four days, bed bugs are found in a cell, and a communal sink is blocked and overflowing. At the meeting with Mitie staff, one of the managers says the sinks “will all be fixed in the next couple of weeks … lot to get through”. But two weeks after the meeting, the footage shows that the sink is still blocked.

At the same meeting, the manager says: “The situation with washing machines in the centre is that 80% of the washing machines and dryers we’ve got are broken in some way or are not safe.” The meeting also includes staff saying that some toilets and showers are still blocked. Mitie says they plan to replace these toilets but “until then we’re dealing with a pretty old set of toilets”.

A detainee complains that some of the shower door locks are broken. The video shows a detainee undressing for the shower in full view of the other detainees on the wing. At the meeting, a manager says Mitie has just replaced 250 mattresses after complaints that they were “too hard, but I think if we are honest there are other issues apart from them being too hard”. Detainees had complained to Corporate Watch of a bed bug infestation ahead of this meeting.

Fit for detention?

Home Office guidance states that people suffering from serious medical conditions or disabilities which “cannot be satisfactorily managed within detention” should only be detained in “very exceptional circumstances”.

Corporate Watch has obtained photos of wheelchair-bound detainees inside Harmondsworth, as well as videos revealing that a detainee collapsed twice within a fortnight, as a result of what appear to be epileptic fits. He dislocates his shoulder and knocks his head. A guard confirms on camera that he saw the man fall down the stairs.

The charity Epilepsy Action says: “an overwhelming majority of people with epilepsy perceive stress as the commonest trigger of their seizures. Indeed, studies have suggested that stressful experiences… can increase the number of seizures in some individuals who have epilepsy already.” Being detained and threatened with deportation is clearly a highly stressful experience.

The most recent inspection of Harmondsworth, published in January 2014, reported: “A major concern is an inadequate focus on the needs of the most vulnerable detainees, including elderly and sick men, those at risk of self harm through food refusal, and other people whose physical or mental health conditions made them potentially unfit for detention.”[Link to PDF]

The report concluded: “It was hard to dispel the feeling that Harmondsworth was in a state of drift. There was some uncertainty about the future of the management contract… there needed to be a refocusing on individual needs of the most vulnerable people in detention, some of whom had been utterly failed by the system.”

Staff selling confiscated counterfeit clothes in Harmondsworth

Mitie staff at Harmondsworth are selling clothes to the detainees that were confiscated as counterfeit goods at customs. An officer explains that the clothes were “taken by the UK Border Force when people come in … It was people trying to import them in who were trying to sell them for counterfeit because you can sell it as a designer make.”

The Home Office’s Detention Centre Rules say: “No officer shall take part in any business or pecuniary transaction with or on behalf of a detained person without the leave of the Secretary of State”. Mitie has not commented on this scheme to Corporate Watch.

Why did Mitie win the contract?

Harmondsworth used to be run by the Geo Group, an American private prison company, from 2009. Over the next five years, six detainees died in Harmondsworth, or shortly after being moved to another facility, according to the Institute of Race Relations. This made Harmondsworth the most deadly place for migrants to be detained in the UK. It was against this alarming context that Mitie took over Harmondsworth from Geo in September 2014. But Corporate Watch has found that many of Mitie’s senior staff used to work for the Geo Group.

Mitie corporate video: Paul Ferry, Colin Dobell and Alex Sweeney (L-R)

For example, Colin Dobell set up the UK division of Geo in 2005, and over the next few years the company secured contracts to run Campsfield in 2006 and Harmondsworth in 2009. Months later, Dobell moved to Mitie Parking Services, a dormant Mitie subsidiary that was promptly renamed as Mitie Care and Custody. With Dobell as a director, this new Mitie company went on to win the contracts for Campsfield in 2011 and then Harmondsworth in 2014 from the Geo Group.

Paul Ferry, who attended the meeting in our videos, was a business development manager at Geo from 2006-2009, before becoming a director of Mitie Care & Custody with Dobell in 2009. Similarly, Alex Sweeney was Geo’s centre manager at Campsfield when the fire brigade’s warning to install sprinklers went unheeded. Sweeney moved to Mitie and led the company’s bid for Campsfield. He is now a business development director at MITIE, with key responsibilities that include tendering for procurement opportunities with the Home Office. How can Mitie deliver a better service at Harmondsworth than Geo did, given that several of its top brass are ex-Geo men?

Mitie has not responded to several requests for comment from Corporate Watch.

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A child was locked up for 62 days “by mistake” at an immigration removal centre, a new report by the chief inspector of prisons released today reveals.

An inspection into the Campsfield centre in Oxfordshire, run by outsourcing giant Mitie, also found asylum seekers living in overcrowded and dirty accommodation, insufficient legal advice for detainees, and torture survivors held in violation of Home Office rules.

Despite these problems, Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector, said:

“Overall, this was a very positive inspection. Staff and managers at Campsfield House should be congratulated in dealing professionally and sensitively with detainees who were going through what, for many, was a difficult and unhappy time.”

The report found that three children were held at Campsfield between 2012 and 2013, in contravention of government policy. One of the children, a 16 year old, was assessed by social services as being an adult. After 62 days in detention, social workers realised they were a minor and ordered their release. The inspectors said that the child “was held by mistake and should never have been detained”. Mitie’s policy on safeguarding children was:

“up to date and comprehensive, but there was no named member of staff who took the lead on safeguarding children … Some staff had undertaken the Mitie safeguarding e-learning package but the centre could not provide us with exact figures. A member of staff was to attend training with Oxfordshire’s local safeguarding children board after our inspection.”

Mitie are also holding detainees in overcrowded cells according to the report. The inspectors said: “Too many detainees lived in cramped conditions, with four sharing accommodation designed for two.” The signs of overcrowding are apparent:

“the dining area was not big enough for the number of detainees using it and hygiene in the kitchen required improvement … The laundry was not big enough for the population. During our inspection two washing machines did not work and detainees said this was a regular occurrence.”

Ironically, given Mitie is best known as a cleaning company, the report recommended:

“Toilets and showers in all residential units should be deep cleaned … some toilets and showers were very dirty and needed maintenance … bed linen was in poor condition and we saw soiled pillows and mattresses.”

These problems may arise in part from the fact that Mitie is paying the detainees just £1 per hour to do these jobs. The report found 24 detainees worked in the dirty kitchen, and in total “Seventy-four job roles, totalling 1265 hours of paid work per week, were offered … Opportunities included cleaning, kitchen and laundry work”.

Asylum-seekers who have suffered from torture are not normally allowed to be detained by the Home Office. But at Campsfield, the screening process that is supposed to protect against this, known as Rule 35: “failed adequately to safeguard the most vulnerable detainees, including those who had been tortured.” The report found:

“In two separate cases, a doctor stated that a detainee might have been the victim of torture but caseworkers maintained they should remain in detention stating that this would not impact on the detainee’s health; the impact on their health was irrelevant as Home Office policy is not to detain torture survivors. In another case, a caseworker maintained that a person should remain in detention because he ‘did not mention being tortured during your screening interview ….’”

Healthcare at Campsfield is provided by The Practice, a private medical company. There was evidence of short-staffing: “only one member of staff was available at night which was not compliant with current healthcare guidelines”; and of staff cutting corners:

“nurses had labelled items supplied from stock inadequately, which could have posed a risk to patients. A nurse was observed giving a detainee a dose of ibuprofen without referring to his notes for contraindications, which was potentially unsafe.”

And none of the Mitie custody staff had been trained to use the defibrillator, a life-saving piece of equipment if detainees have heart attacks, which has happened in many other detention centres over the last few years.

The report also found legal support for detainees in Campsfield was insufficient: “Too many detainees who required an immigration lawyer did not have one.” The half-hour legal aid sessions were “oversubscribed”, and there was not enough advice about bail. Perhaps inevitably then, inspectors found “Some detainees were detained for unreasonable periods of time. Home Office caseworkers sometimes failed to act with reasonable diligence and expedition.” It took the Home Office over seven months before they even interviewed one detainee about his asylum claim. In another example, an undocumented Iranian man had been held for almost ten months, although the Home Office had no “established process at present” to obtain the paperwork needed to deport him to Tehran. The inspectors concluded: “There was little prospect of this case being resolved within a reasonable period and ongoing detention therefore appeared illegitimate.”

Against this catalogue of errors, it is therefore surprising that the chief inspector was able to conclude that the report was overall ‘very positive’. Worryingly, major incidents have been omitted from the document. There is no mention whatsoever of the fire at Campsfield in October 2013 that spread due to an absence of sprinklers and caused 180 people to be evacuated. Mass hunger-strikes by detainees, most recently in May 2014, just months before the inspection, are also absent. And the inspectors are careful not to blame Mitie, the company in charge, focusing instead on reforms needed at the national level by the Home Office.

Giving a centre a positive report even after overcrowding its cells, paying £1 per hour for important work, wrongly imprisoning children and torture survivors shows the low standards expected of the companies profiting from the detention of migrants.

The full report is available to download here (pdf)

Photo taken from the Standoff Films documentary ‘Campsfield House: An Immigration Removal Centre’.

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