11 April 2003
The Home Office has rejected the key recommendation from an inspection of asylum seeker detention centres that children should not be held for longer than seven days.
Chief inspector of prisons Anne Owers said centres should avoid holding children at all, but should operate a one-week limit where this was unavoidable.
But Home Office minister Beverley Hughes insisted on April 8, the same day the report was published, that it was 'completely impractical' to set any time limit on the detention of children, as this would be used by detainees to evade removal by 'lodging last minute and time-wasting appeals'. No one was detained longer than necessary, she said.
Refugee Council acting chief executive Margaret Lally said: 'We believe that detention centres are wholly inappropriate places for children under any circumstances, yet the number of children being locked up and the length of time they are being detained for has increased.'
Owers' inspection team found that the Prison Service is providing far worse services than private contractors at immigration removal centres.
Inspectors visited the Prison Service centres at Haslar, near Portsmouth, and Lindholme, Doncaster. The privately-run centres inspected were Oakington, Cambridgeshire, and Campsfield House, Oxfordshire, both run by Group 4, and Wackenhut's Tinsley House, at Gatwick Airport.
'Detainees felt particularly unsafe in the two Prison Service-run centres,' the inspectors found, with only 10% at Haslar and 15% at Lindholme saying they felt safe. By contrast, two-thirds of those at Oakington felt safe.
Complaints about staff attitudes were also highest at Lindholme and Haslar. These were 'geared towards offenders', the report said.
The inspectors also urged the Home Office to lift rules that prevent detainees from taking paid work within the centres. This left detainees 'inactive and frustrated', they said.
Meanwhile, Hughes has withdrawn plans to open induction centres for asylum seekers at Sittingbourne, Kent and Saltdean, Brighton. She gave no reason for the decisions. Both plans had provoked strong local protests.
PFapr2003
