July inspection report published, though situation at Manston has since significantly deteriorated
A timely, though now no longer current, inspection report was published today by HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMI Prisons) on the Home Office's short-term holding and processing facilities for asylum seekers at Western Jet Foil (WJF), Lydd Airport and Manston in Kent.
Image credit: UK GovernmentConditions at Manston have attracted plenty of attention and crticisim in recent days, with reports that the former military site is now holding around 4,000 people despite originally being intended for around 1,000 to 1,600.
BBC News has an explainer here about the current problems at the site. The Times reported on Saturday that Suella Braverman had blocked the transfer of thousands of those detained Manston to hotels during her first, six-week spell as Home Secretary. Sir Roger Gale, MP for North Thanet in Kent, told The Times that he understood the overcrowding at the site was caused by a deliberate policy not to book more hotel space. Braverman made a statement to the Commons yesterday on developments at asylum processing centres in Kent.
HM Prisons' new 37-page report can be downloaded here. The inspection was carried out in July so, needless to say, the significant new developments at Manston in the last few weeks are not covered.
Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, says in the report that July's inspection found considerable improvements had been made to both infrastructure and processes compared to two previous inspections of reception facilities in Kent, carried out in September 2020 and November 2021.
Nevertheless, substantial problems and challenges were found to remain, with Taylor noting: "Some aspects of governance were weak, especially in safeguarding and health care, and inconsistent practices affected detainees' welfare and dignity. For example, some were not allowed access to mobile phones to let their families know they were safe, and in some parts of the site they were, inexplicably, not even allowed to close toilet doors fully."
Taylor continued: "Most detainees spent short periods at WJF before moving to other sites, principally Manston, where more than 4,000 people had passed through in the previous three months. However, once at Manston, the length of detention was far too long, often more than 24 hours and sometimes far in excess of this. The longest recorded detention of a child was 48 hours, which was unacceptable. The marquee accommodation was well equipped, but only for short waits. It was particularly disappointing once again to see exhausted detainees forced to sleep on floor mats between rows of seats or on wooden benches. Much more accommodation was available at Manston, but it was as yet unstaffed and did not have proper sleeping facilities. Detainees could not go outside for fresh air regardless of the length of detention."
In fresh information since HMI Prisons' inspection, David Neal, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, told Parliament's Home Affairs Committee that last week he had met people who had been held at Manston for over 30 days.
HM Prisons' July inspection identified the following six priority concerns:
- Exhausted detainees were regularly held for more than 24 hours in non-residential accommodation.
- Professional interpretation was used inconsistently, with the exception of the screening interview.
- Governance of health care processes was weak.
- Detainees' vulnerability was not always recorded to inform subsequent assessments (detainees with disabilities and trafficking victims were held at Manston, but no detainees had been designated as adults at risk).
- Some children were detained for too long (the documented average length of detention for unaccompanied children was 27 hours and the longest was 48 hours).
- The governance of security clearances and training of staff at Western Jet Foil and Manston sites was weak.
Eight further concerns were identified, including inconsistent and fragmented data collection by the Home Office.
On this, the report notes: "[R]ecords of time in detention were not accurate because they only started when detainees were given IS91 documentation at Manston. The records did not include time spent waiting at WJF or Lydd, nor time waiting to be processed and served with immigration documents at Manston. We saw detainees waiting at Manston for several hours to be processed. This gave a misleading picture of the total length of detention."
Commenting further on legal rights at the site, HMI Prisons said: "Basic information about detainees' right to legal representation and how to report poor quality representation was displayed in holding rooms at Manston, but only in English. We did not see any detainees being informed about their legal rights or directed to this information. A list of legal representatives and their contact details was also displayed, but there was little space at Manston for detainees to meet or call their legal representatives in private if they wished. There were no records of visits to the site by legal representatives. Mobile phones were available for detainees to make calls once they had been issued with their immigration papers, but they were not routinely offered and could have hindered communication between detainees and legal representatives."
On developments since the July inspection, the Guardian today quoted Charlie Taylor as saying: "Recent intelligence from a number of credible sources, including the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, the Independent Monitoring Boards and staff associations, suggest that the current situation at Manston has significantly deteriorated since our July inspection. We are hearing that detainees are now being held in greater numbers and for much longer periods of time in cramped and uncomfortable conditions, often supervised by staff who have not been suitably trained."
Taylor said HMI Prisons is, therefore, planning a swift return to Manston and expects to see substantial improvements. He added that in the meantime, Home Office contractors need to "get a grip" and urgently act on the findings of the July inspection report to make sure all detainees are held in safe, decent and humane conditions.
A Home Office spokesperson said the department welcomed the positive finding in HMI Prisons' report and added that work would continue in order to resolve the current pressures at Manston as an urgent priority.
The Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees (AVID) said on Twitter this morning that Manston should not be referred to as a 'processing centre': "It is a detention facility managed by an army general - with a current number of up to 3000+ people detained, undoubtedly the biggest detention centre in Europe."
Writing in the Guardian today, Enver Solomon of the Refugee Council says problems at Manston and more broadly in the asylum system are largely being driven by a belief held by the Conservative government that people seeking sanctuary in the UK are undeserving and breaking the law.
Solomon wrote: "The view is they should be treated with hostility, then expelled to Rwanda. The asylum system therefore is deliberately neglected and made worse in the hope that it will act as a deterrent. But there isn't a deterrent effect and instead, regardless of the best efforts of hard-working government officials, we are left with a dysfunctional system that is far from fit for purpose."